The transformation of the politics of punishment and the birth of prison in the Ottoman Empire (1845-1910)

Abstract

This work examines the governing mentality of the Ottoman Empire by looking specifically to its punishment politics in the nineteenth century. It was aimed to examine how new kinds of punishment politics wereintroduced in the Ottoman agenda. This thesis is an attempt to define the transformation of the State mentality in which the traditional perception of justice replaced with modern penal codes. Moreover, these changes discussed on the basis of how the state was able to replace corporal punishment with a new system of imprisonment. It attempts to find the reason of what makes prison as unavoidable outcome of modernization process of the Empire in this thesis. Then it includes an evaluation how those people who were defined as criminals were subjected to some political practices by the central authority. The political practices that mostly underlined here are health care of the confined and improving the living standards of prisoners.