'Terror To Evil-Doers'

This is the history of the foundations of modern carceral institutions in Ontario. Drawing on a wide range of previously unexplored primary material – including the papers of prison inspectors and officials and the correspondence of those who wrote to the authorities – Peter Oliver provides a narrative and interpretative account of the penal system in nineteenth-century Ontario.

In a century of massive social change, the penal system remained rural, local, decentralized, and resi…