II. Constitutionalism Period reform of the prison

As it is applied to some sentences, imprisonment is the first and foremost punishmentof punitive sanctions. In the early periods of human history imprisonment, which wasn?t applied widely then, has been used commonly since 16th century. Penal confinement can be described as; incarceration of free persons to specific places by enserfing. The confinement is performed in penal institutions.Being an indispensible body of enforcement systems, penal institutions have been formed in various types because of some reasons such as; the conditions of society in which they are situated, physical structure, condemnation and imprisonment status, architectural types and execution systems they apply. As part of accelerating westernization and modernization, penal institution system of Ottoman State were revised and some regulations were enforced notably in following the proclamation of Reformation Ordinance (Tanzimat) period. Throughout history, penal institutions have always been problematic in all countries. As a matter of fact, plenty of issues concerning this topic in the Ottoman State remained unsolved. Just before the dispersion of Ottoman State, although some attempts were carried out to solve the concerning issues, they remained insufficient to meet the requirements of the age. As the state administration took some important steps to improve prison conditions, they could not implement the reforms because of financial distress at that time. Desired regulations could not be enforced and planned movements have been left half-done. Yet the works remained just on scripts. However, all these attempts and related ordinances shed light on the Law of Criminal Execution of newly founded Turkish Republic as well as the future regulations.Key words: Prison, constitutionalism, reform, of prison reform,