seminal book examines the links between the development of capitalist political economy and changing forms of social control. Melossi and Pavarini analyse the connection between the creation of penal institutions and regimes in Europe and the USA, and the problems generated by the emergence of capitalist social relations. They provide a thorough neo-Marxist view of emergent capitalism and the penal mechanisms which are constructed to deal with the problem of labour. Contemporary to but independent from the work of Michel Foucault, Melossi and Pavarini combine research on the development of penal philosophies and institutions with a rigorous account of changing forms of capital accumulation, focusing on the use, and the problem, of labour under capitalist relations.