Abstract
The research consists of a review of two paradigmatic works of the critical criminology that analyze the emergence and establishing of the prison as typical punitive form of the modernity: Punishment and Social Structure, of Rusche and Kirchheimer, and The Prison and The Factory, of Melossi and Pavarini. In particular I investigate, in the light of the value criticism, the type of materialistic theoretical basis over which their arguments are developed.
Keywords:
Critical criminology; Prisons; Value criticism