Letters for the Ages Behind Bars is a history of imprisonment told through the letters of people incarcerated over many centuries for crimes committed or sometimes even for no reason at all. It is a story that runs from St Paul right up to the present day.The act of depriving someone of their liberty is one of humankinds most enduring responses to crime through history. What society has sought to achieve over the years by doing so has shifted across the centuries and there is now a variety of purposes to express disapproval for the purpose of straightup punishment through the removal of freedom to protect the general public to rehabilitate perhaps even to forget about those with whom we simply cannot cope.