Imprisonment in Poland from the 15th century to the middle of the 19th century

Abstract

The study presents the development of imprisonment in Poland up to the 19th century. The old Polish law, in the scope of broadly understood punishments in the wild, provided for several significantly different forms of isolation. These differences were a consequence of the entities to which they could be used, the manner of execution, and the consequences of use (disgraceful or non-disgraceful). The places of its execution were also varied. These could have been dungeons, fortresses, castles, monasteries, prisons, taverns rented for this purpose, or the house of the convict. Imprisonment sanctions becoming markedly accelerated, changed the system of medieval execution of penalties based on corporal punishment in the direction of modern penal systems, based on isola-tion, as an independent and dominant criminal sanction.