Preface; Contributors; Introduction: 1. Elias, Foucault, Oestereich: on a historical theory of confinement Norbert Finzsch; 2. Four centuries of prison history: punishment, suffering, the body, and power Pieter Spierenburg; Part I. Hospitals and Asylums: 3. The transformation of the American hospital Morris J. Vogel; 4. The construction of the hospital patient in early modern France Colin Jones; 5. Before the clinic was 'born': methodological perspectives in hospital history Guenter B. Risse; 6. Syphilis and confinement: hospitals in early modern Germany Robert Jütte; 7. Madhouses, children's wards, and clinics: the development of insane asylums in Germany Christina Vanja; 8. Pietist universal reform and care of the sick and the poor: the medical institutions of the Francke Foundations and their social context Renate Wilson; Part II. Prisons: 9. Michel Foucault's impact on the German historiography of criminal justice, social discipline, and medicalization Martin Dinges; 10. The history of ideas and its significance for the prison system Gerlinda Smaus; 11. The prerogratives of confinement in Germany, 1933-45: 'protective custody' and other police strategies Robert Gellately; 12. 'Comparing apples and oranges?' The history of early prisons in Germany and the United States Norbert Finzsch; 13. Reformers United: the American and the German juvenile court, 1882-1923 Karl Tilman Winkler; 14. The medicalization of criminal law reform in imperial Germany Richard F. Wetzell; 15. Prison reform in France and other European countries in the nineteeth century Patricia O'Brien; 16. Surveillance and redemption: the casa di correzione of San Michele a Ripa in Rome Luigi Cajani; 17. 'Policing the bachelor subculture': the demographies of summary misdemeanants, Allegheny County jail, 1892-1923 Lynne M. Adrian and Joan E. Crowley; 18. Beyond confinement? Notes on the history and possible future of solitary confinement in Germany Sebastian Scheerer; Index.