Inventing Corrections, Debating the Permissible in Punishment (PID236)

11am – 11.45am GMT+03:00, 28 October 2025 ‐ 45 mins

Plenary Session

Professor Resnik will chart the invention of the corrections profession that, since the 1800s, has called for improved living conditions for prisoners. For centuries, through corrections’ congresses and prison policies, legislation, and litigation, lines have been drawn between “permissible” and “impermissible” punishments. She excavates the first-ever international rules aiming to improve the treatment of prisoners, which the League of Nations adopted in 1934 as the Nazis rose to power.
 
Her trans-Atlantic account documents the impact of World War II, the United Nations, the U.S. Civil Rights movement, and of pioneering prisoners who insisted law protected them. In 1955, the United Nations issued revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners - the first international document to speak about prisoners’ “rights” and “dignity.” The 2010 Bangkok Rules and the 2015 Nelson Mandela Rules have pushed to give meaning to those propositions, as countries grabble with millions of detained people who have health and behavioral issues. Problems of funding, safety, and well-being abound. This talk is an invitation to think about the history of punishment, which is replete with changes; punishments once common (execution, whipping, transportation) have largely been abandoned. Organizations such as ICPA are pivotal in shaping new norms. As Professor Resnik explains, appreciating the interdependency of people in and out of prisons is key. Governments committed to equality should not set out to punish by ruining people economically or physically, which harms those in detention, those staffing prisons, and the communities that all of us are in.
 
Moderated by Leann Bertsch, Sr. Vice President, Corrections, USA