Elizabeth Fry (Image: Wikipedia) A prison cell is a strange place to find a social reformer.Yet that is exactly where Elizabeth Fry spent much of her time during the early nineteenth century. While many of her contemporaries viewed prisons as places where offenders simply received the consequences of their actions,
Elizabeth Fry (Image: Wikipedia) A prison cell is a strange place to find a social reformer.Yet that is exactly where Elizabeth Fry spent much of her time during the early nineteenth century. While many of her contemporaries viewed prisons as places where offenders simply received the consequences of their actions, Fry saw something else. She saw overcrowded rooms, women living in desperate conditions, children growing up behind bars and inmates leaving prison no better prepared for life than when they entered.The experience shaped her view of justice. It also led her to a conclusion that remains surprisingly relevant in modern debates about crime and punishment: “Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal.”The quote is easy to read and much harder to wrestle with. Most people support justice.
