The prisons and asylums of Canada and the United States were a popular destination for institutional tourists in the nineteenth-century. Thousands of visitors entered their walls, recording and describing the interiors, inmates, and therapeutic and reformative practices they encountered in letters, diaries, and articles. Surprisingly, the vast majority of these visitors were not members of the medical or legal elite but were ordinary people.

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public argues that, rather than existing in isolation, these institutions were closely connected to the...