The obvious ineffectiveness of local banishment for non-violent crimes led some European states to adopt a more permanent kind of exile for thieves and other undesirables, known as transportation. But sending deviants across the ocean was not a ready option among landlocked German states such as Nuremberg and the prince-bishopric of Bamberg, which possessed neither fleets nor foreign colonies.

…The modern-day solution to this problem—internal exile, or extended incarceration—entailed a much greater conceptual leap and was thus even slower to gain acceptance. Most governmental authorities considered long-term imprisonment—except in the case of the dangerously insane—too costly and too cruel.