Samenvatting

One can only welcome the re-edition of Herman Franke’s impressive Ph.D. thesis on the history of the prison system in the Netherlands. Although a short English-language version of this book has been published, one still has to look out for a comparative assessment between his analysis and histories on the prison system in other Western countries. This contribution to the special issue of Justitiële verkenningen (Judicial explorations) does not make up an attempt to fabricate such an assessment. It only relates to the ways Franke has dealt with, on the one hand, international authors such as Cesare Beccaria, Edouard Ducpétiaux and Cesare Lombroso, who have played an important role in the development of the Western prison system. And it looks into Franke’s dealing with, on the other hand, international authors such as Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, and Michel Foucault, whose interpretations of its development to a large extent still dominate the academic debate with regard to the history of the prison system. The conclusion is that Franke’s analysis of the first category of authors really is rather superficial and his analysis of the second category is a much more balanced one.