Western Penitentiary Tradition in the Kingdom of Poland
Western Penitentiary Tradition in the Kingdom of Poland

Summary/Abstract: This historical and legal study deals with the experience of modernizing the prison system in the Kingdom of Poland in terms of Western penitentiary tradition. Despite the loss of statehood, the Kingdom of Poland managed to develop a modern, humanistic penitentiary concept based on the leading foreign ideas and the experience of prison reform, implemented it into life and became one of the best practical models for other countries. The authors tried to focus on the Polish prison reformers’ systematic approach in developing the prison reforms, on the interconnection of their contributions, which were based on the world’s most advanced practices. It is the complex discourse that made it possible to reconstruct and objectively evaluate these authors’ personal contribution. The authors identified the sources of selected penitentiary concepts, which allowed eliminating inaccuracies that had occurred in the modern historiography.

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