Penal sanctions also change in quantity and quality, with a movement away from corporal punishment and toward depriving the individual of possessions or freedom, i.e. fines and imprisonment. This development corresponds to the increasing differentiation within society, and the increasing focus on the individual, in this case as criminal or victim. Durkheim makes an interesting point about prisons only coming into existence when a society reached a sufficiently advanced stage of material development to permit the existence of secure and fortified establishments, such as castles or other large dwellings of a king or class of notables. This was the kind of institutionalized I mentioned earlier in the paper. Now that a country has driven towards institutionalization,...

Offenders'd not suffer corporal punishment because it is generally disapproved of in the society. Such an attitude leads to leniency of punishment which may often prove to be damaging for social cohesiveness and general peace.
Karl Binding, Das Problem der Strafe in der heutigen Wissenschaft, in 1 Strafrechtliche und strafprozessuale Abhandlungen 61, 84 (1915).

Id. At 86.

Id. At 85.

Emile Durkhiem, the Division of Labour in Society, trs. George Simpson, New York, Free Press paperback edn, 1964.

John Horton, "The Dehumanisation of Anomie and Alienation: A Problem in the Ideology of Sociology," British Journal of Sociology, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 283-300