Author: VILAIN XIIII Jean Jacques Philippe - ( Vilain Quatorze ) :
Title: Mémoire sur les moyens de corriger les malfaiteurs et fainéans à leur propre avantage et de les rendre utiles à l'état, Proposé à l'Assemblée des Députés par le Vicomte Vilain XIIII & présenté aux Corps et Administrations des ...
Description: Gand (Gent), Pierre de Goesin, (1775), large in-4°, 26,6 x 21 cm, (6)nn pp + 268 pp + 4 engraved double page plates, with many tables , all pages with a typographical border. Bound in contemporary mottled calf, raised gilt spine, edges painted red, marbled endpapers. Very fine copy. Bought in 1903 as item 8866 from the catalogue of Vve Foulard & Fils à Paris. Most of this study concerns the economic side of the penal system. New is that prisoners ought to learn a trade, so as to fend for themselves once freed. Schools for the children of the poor could prevent mendacity. In line with the ideas of the Enlightenment , Vilain XIIII, who was a longtime Pensionary (president) to the Council of Flanders (the former County), is the first here to write on the link between poverty and crime. In order to remediate he proposes a rather radical reform of the penal - and prison system in order to reeducate criminals. In 1771 in Ackergem near Gent a prison, with the architectural outlay he advocated, was built . It included the famous radial groundfloor, an idea which had a large influence on prisons built in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. (See Piet Lenders; Vilain XIIII, Leuven 1995 ; Michel Foucault ; Surveiller et punir, pp 124-125). Very nice copy in a contemporary binding of the first edition of this pioneering work on prison reform along the lines of the Enlightenment. .

Keywords: