Catholicism in Prisons

Abstract

The prison as we know it today is in significant respects an innovation begun by the Catholic Church. This entry discusses the roots of the contemporary prison in the practice of penance during the first centuries of the Christian era, in the development of monasticism, and in the formation of the world's first modern legal system, canon law, early in the second millennium. It also discusses efforts in current Catholic teaching to reform the practice of confinement in terms of its formative influences.