Sociologists have been concerned to demonstrate the relationship between the ways in which societies are organized - the economic system, the social stratification system - and the kinds of penal system they develop.
Social scientists take as their subject the penality characteristic of different societies at different times. By 'penality' is meant the complex of ideas (about proper punishment, about effective punishment), institutions (laws, policies and practices, agencies and buildings), and relationships (who has the power to say who is punished, whose ideas count, what is the relationship of those who punish and are punished to the rest of society)
involved in the punishment of offenders (Garland and Young 1983: 14; Cavadino and Dignan, 1992: 58).