I’m in the middle of Berlin, visiting a friend. History blows at every corner of this city.
Berlin – Moabit
Today a sought-after residential area in the middle of the city, poor working class district during the first industrial revolution & still the seat of the prison.
With the factories of the industrial age, a new way of sanctioning people also became necessary.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the public spectacle of torture as punishment for crimes was in retreat.
Instead of targeting the body of the condemned person, the soul had now become the object of punishment.
The criminal was no longer the enemy of the emperor, but of the people. It was reduced to a component of a larger social machinery.
Observation and surveillance became entrenched in the methods of imprisonment as society sought to produce obedient individuals ideally suited to the disciplined and regulated industrial age.
With the disruptive markets and industry of our time, the way crimes are committed must inevitably change.
The term cybercrime is on everyone’s lips.
I am curious to see how criminal prosecution and sanctioning will adapt to the new life situations.