The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European ExperiencePresent day unease about the treatment of lawbreakers has deep historical roots. Pieter Spierenburg traces the long period of evolution that gave rise to the modern debate about punishment, and relates it to the development of Western European society. He argues that two elements, the public character of punishment and its infliction of physical suffering, were originally at the heart of the penal system. From the sixteenth century onwards, however,