Pratt, in his article "Emotive and ostentatious punishment" (Pratt, 2000, 417-439), traces the punishment of criminals through the ages, and notes how, as societies have evolved to more civilized status, they have turned away from the more violent forms of punishment such as flogging and public executions to more "civilized" forms of punishment, and even gone so far as constructing more esthetically pleasing prisons which do not offend the public, and developing transport systems so that the public do not see prisoners being transported back and forth between prisons and courts (423-424). There have been some fluctuations in recent history, he notes, where tougher measures have been reinstituted, e.g. the reinstitution of the death penalty in many states in America, and there are civilized countries in which more barbaric conditions and even torture are known to be carried out, but on the whole, that treatment of prisoners is much more refined these days than it was a century or two ago.
Pratt admits that some parts of the United States, particularly the South, were slower to adjust, even having chain gangs up until the 1970s, and having much harsher prison conditions, but he blames this on the Civil War and the slave-owning background of these states which placed a lesser value on human life (Pratt, 2000, 429). One factor in which the United States lags behind the rest of the world is in the death penalty. Public executions were outlawed in the United States by the 19th century, but continued behind closed doors (Capital). European states abolished capital punishment altogether after World War II. In the United States, executions peaked the 1930s, declined through the 1960s, and were banned between 1968 and 1976, after which time they were resumed. By 2000, 6000 executions had occurred since the moratorium, so even though more emotive and ostentatious punishments were the norm, executions were still taking lace regularly, w...