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: .: 19. 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. Sewn, contemporary marbled boards, spine missing, uncut copy with dustsoiled edges, interior fine. This is the copy of Mr. Merghelijnck of Ipres, judicial registrar of the Veurne Ambacht. He most probably received this copy from the author (small handwritten note - from the author ?- tipped in on the first fly leaf). 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). Interesting copy of the first edition of this pioneering work on prison reform along the lines of the Enlightenment. .

Keywords: