Christian ideology as a source of transformation of the penal system in Britain in the eighteenth century

The article analyses the problem of reconsidering penalties in the theological doctrines of English Protestantism in the early phase of the penal reform in Great Britain. The period of the Enlightenment led to radical changes in the system of criminal justice. This time is considered to be the origin of the "era of punitive restraint": gradual legislative restriction of sanctions in the form of the death penalty led to qualitative changes in the entire system of criminal penalties in general. The increasing crime rate, which plagued the eighteenth-century England, was often referred to by the penal reformers and gave rise to an abundance of religious projects of imprisonment. The authors are convinced that socially active adepts of various sects of English Protestantism extrapolated their religious views on the system of penalties execution; this laid the humanist foundation of the prison reform in Great Britain and in the continental Europe. English Protestants proposed to consider punishment as a method of rehabilitation of the convict in solitary confinement. Religious principles of the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends) were expressed in the model of a penitentiary house. According to their theology, the prison became the place and environment where the prisoner was able to establish an incredible connection with the Lord, repent and get atonement. The outcome of this theology was the hope that God would allow the prisoner to break out of prison as a "reborn person". In turn, Calvinist Protestants resisted the attempts of humanization of the system of penalties execution, considering them as a challenge to predestination. The authors underline that the majority of the conservative wing of the religious penal reformers strongly doubted the feasibility of repentance and relied on God's commandments and the Bloody Code of the 18th century to restrain crime. It is suggested that the Christian worldview of the British influenced the early penitentiary reforms in Great Britain in the eighteenth century more than the secular ideology of the Enlightenment. The methodological basis of analyzing the sources of the eighteenth century was the principles of the "new social and cultural history". It allowed to rethink the genesis of English penitentiary reforms in a specific historical socio-cultural context.

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