This book departs from the customary focus of penology on punishments in criminal and youth justice and deals also with the punitive elements of punishments employed, somtimes informally, in the household, nursery, school, and at work. It argues that abusive punishments are particularly deeply rooted in authoritarian states and in some Western countries such as Britain and the USA. Many punitive practices such as corporal and capital punishment have been exported from imperialist Britain over past centuries. Punishments have shifted over the past 200 years from the public spectacle of the stocks, the whip or the gallows to the seclusion of the prison yard, or the execution house.