In 1990 Herman Franke’s masterly dissertation Twee eeuwen gevangen. Misdaad en straf in Nederland was published. An abbreviated version appeared in English in 1995: The emancipation of prisoners: A socio-historical analysis of the Dutch prison experience, awarded best foreign study by the American Society of Criminology. Franke analyzes the developments in the Dutch prison system from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. Despite the size of almost a thousand pages, the book reads like a novel. Even before Herman Franke’s untimely death in 2010 there were plans for a re-publication of the book in a hardcover. That re-edition was finally made available by Boom criminologie in 2020. In this special issue of Justitiële verkenningen, eight prison experts from science and practice reflect on the contemporary prison system from the perspective of the book. It offers tools to rise above the delusions of the day in public and scientific discussions about punishment and to relate new developments to the theoretical concepts introduced by Franke.