Market development, state formation, and the historical abolition of the debtors’ prison

Bibliographic Data

ID12664145
AuthorsAlexander F Roehrkasse (0000-0003-4996-9317, Duke University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume25
Issue1
Pages202-222
Publication date2021-10-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePunishment & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1462-4745 • E-ISSN: 1741-3095
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14624745211034920
OpenAlexW3203181478
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited44

In the late 18th century, lenders’ right to imprison borrowers for defaulting on debts was taken for granted. By the mid-19th century, this power was widely and permanently revoked. Using a variety of archival evidence, this study explains the historical demise of the debtors’ prison in New York State, the first Western jurisdiction to permanently abolish imprisonment for debt. Tracing seven decades of contestation over moral aspects of credit exchange and incarceration, it shows that the development of capitalist markets, including their cultural and technological consequences, was necessary but not sufficient to render the debtor's prison obsolete. Rather, the development of a liberal polity and a penal state institutionalized new moral views about the use of force in economic exchange, consolidating the legitimacy of bodily detention around the punishment of crimes rather than the coercion of private agreements. The analysis has implications for theories of states, markets, and violence, as well as for recent trends in penal debt, debt resistance, and prison abolition

Corporate governance · Criminology · Debt · Economics · Imprisonment · Political science · Prison · Sociology · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law