Prison Chaplains and the ‘Modern’ Prison System in Ireland, 1830s–1870s

From the eighteenth century, new penal reform theories and technologies emerged across the Western world, and these were deeply rooted in varied Christian contexts. Pope Clement XI, for example, opened the city of Rome’s first modern prison, San Michele a Ripa, in 1703, which is said to have influenced Ghent House of Correction in Belgium (1772).