Sensory Vibrations and Social Reform at San Michele a Ripa in Rome

Abstract

From the mid-seventeenth century, philosophical arguments about human responses to the physical environment challenged a basic tenet of prison design and administration: that prisoners could use reason to apply religious instruction towards reconsidering their criminal ways. Mechanistic philosophers asserted that humans reacted physically and psychologically on impulse to neural vibrations that were produced by sensory stimuli in their environment and that traversed their bodies and brains. Correspondingly, prison designers and administrators recrafted prisons into reform environments that used sensory cues to choreograph human physical and psychological processes and, in turn, reshape social behavior. This essay examines the early stages of such new prison design by turning to Rome, especially Carlo Fontana’s Casa di Correzione for juvenile delinquents.