Michel Foucault’s study of the prison in his seminal work, Discipline and Punish, paved the way with strong a foundation for contemporary criminologists interested in the field of surveillance studies and governmentality. In this foundation, Foucault had posited several crucial ideas and thoughts about the emergence of prison and its relationship with the larger society body. This essay seeks to provide a clear understanding of the key themes and ideas of the Foucauldian perspective about prisons and how it affects the way contemporary criminology is perceived. On top of that, an inclusion of David Garland’s viewpoint on prisons will also be included. This paper also seeks to establish the legacy of Foucault’s work and how it has impacted contemporary …show more content…
Foucault’s panoptic principle, the few seeing the many, developed from the study of prison. The idea of the Panopticon was first introduced by Jeremy Bentham in his utopic design of the prison (Bentham & Bowring 1843). From the perspective of the prisoners, the guard toward is placed in the epicentre of the panoptic design. The prison is designed in such a way that the guards will have a clear 360 degrees’ view of the prisoners which speaks of its efficiency in the designs. On the contrary, there is no way for the prisoners to know if there is a prison guard stationed in the guard tower and whether if they are being watched or not. The ingenuity of the Panoptic principle clearly exerts itself as a place for the production of a hidden power for governing the prisoners. As Foucault clearly points …show more content…
As Foucault argues “the judges of normality are present everywhere” (Foucault 1977, p. 304). In the prison situation, the prison guards or institution managing the prisons are embodiments of the conduct of conduct which can be understood as a discipline of the intended behaviour such as ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘correctional work’. The guards are tasked to ensure the prisoners are reproducing the knowledge which is social norms or management of conducts and the mind as well as the behaviour are rightfully disciplined in a coercive form of socialization. The prison guard judges what is ‘normal’, societal norms and ideals of conducting oneself and ensuring prisoners are rehabilitated and reintegrated into the society. Bring the argument further, the disciplinary society as understood in Foucault’s term pervades our everyday lives in the form of institutions such as the school, hospital, army barracks, and factories. As Foucault delineates how the carceral network has entrenched into the institutions we interact daily:
“We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is
Relations during this time with the prison and the outside world are discussed, as well as how these relations dominated life inside of a prison and developed new challenges within the prison. After Ragen left, Frank Pate become his successors. Pate faced a problem because he neither sought nor exercised the charismatic authority of Ragen. The Prison remained an imperatively coordinated paramilitary organization, which still required its warden to personify its goals and values. Jacobs goes on to discusses how what Pate did, was not the same direction or ideas that Ragen was doing or had. Jacobs’s counties this discussion with the challenges and issues that prison had during the time of 1961 through 1970. Jacobs blames that the loss of a warden who could command absolute authority, the loss of local autonomy, it heightened race problems among blacks, and the penetration of legal norms exposed severe strains in the authrotitarian system, and says pate cant control
Many young criminals are less likely to become career criminals if punished through public embarrassment than through prison. Prison can be a sign of manliness or a “status symbol” (Jacoby 197). He says “prison is a graduate school for criminals”, providing evidence that criminals want to be convicted and be in prison, to strengthen their status (Jacoby 197). Jacoby knows how to properly get his view across to the reader, by saying that prison is not as effective now, as it used to be.... ... middle of paper ...
In “Panopticism” Foucault states, “the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (Foucault, pg. 201). The function of the Panopticon is to keep the prisoners orderly by instilling fear inside of them, this fear forces them to stay in their cells, and to remain compliant. The Panopticon is a building designed for surveillance.
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
Michel Foucault's "Panopticism" is based on the architectural concept of the panopticon. Foucault extended this concept to create a new sort of authority and disciplinary principle. His idea was that of the anonymous watchers hold in and has the power to influence the ones being watched. This concept is two fold – it is subject to the person being watched not being able to know when they are being watched and to the rules of society places on individuals on how they should act in a given situation. This idea can be applied to every day life, like how we set up testing rooms for students or when reading literary works such as Dracula by Bram Stoker. In Dracula, there are power differentials caused by a character or characters "seeing" what others do not and caused by societal constructions.
In Western cultures imprisonment is the universal method of punishing criminals (Chapman 571). According to criminologists locking up criminals may not even be an effective form of punishment. First, the prison sentences do not serve as an example to deter future criminals, which is indicated, in the increased rates of criminal behavior over the years. Secondly, prisons may protect the average citizen from crimes but the violence is then diverted to prison workers and other inmates. Finally, inmates are locked together which impedes their rehabilitation and exposes them too more criminal
In Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, he examines the role of the panopticon in the prison system in the eighteenth century. The panopticon was a method to maintain power and to ensure good conduct amongst prisoners. The panopticon is described as a central tower where one in power can oversee the surrounding area. Surrounding the center tower are cells containing prisoners. The inmates aren’t able to communicate with one another. Also, the prisoners are unable to distinguish whether it is a guard on duty watching their every move. The architectural design of the panopticon gives guards or those in power the upper hand. As a result of the prisoners being unable to determine whether someone ...
The theory of Panopticon by Foucault can be applied in this poem. According to Foucault, there is a cultural shift from the old traditional discipline of inmates to a European disciplinary system (314). In this new disciplinary model, the prisoners always assume that they are under constant watch by the guards and they start policing themselves. Panopticon is the process of inducing inmates to a state of conscious and ...
Michel Foucault may be regarded as the most influential twentieth-century philosopher on the history of systems of thought. His theories focus on the relationship between power and knowledge, and how such may be used as a form of social control through institutions in society. In “Truth and Juridical Forms,” Foucault addresses the development of the nineteenth-century penal regime, which completely transformed the operation of the traditional penal justice system. In doing so, Foucault famously compares contemporary society to a prison- “prison is not so unlike what happens every day.” Ultimately, Foucault attempts to exemplify the way in which disciplinary power has become exercised in everyday institutions according to normalization under the authority network of individuals such that all relationships may be considered power relations. Thus, all aspects of society follow the model of a prison based on domination. While all aspects of society take the shape of prison, most individuals may remainignorant of such- perhaps just as they are supposed to. As a result, members of society unconsciously participate in the disciplinary power that aims to “normalize,” thus contributing to and perpetuating the contemporary form of social control. Accordingly, the modern penal regime may be regarded as the most effective system of societal discipline. [OK – SOLID INTRO]
Foucault describes in the “carceral archipelago” and how it transported the technique from the penal institution to the entire social body on pg. 298 of the text in relation to how technologies, powers and disciplines were connected in a series of prisons, institutions, and other organizations that governed or directed how social norms, punishments and regulations were administered. The archipelago referred to a collection of islands, which show relationships and structural similarities, as well as differences. Foucault uses Mettray as an example to show the emergences of more formalized structure or accountability as we could term it today with examples of power-knowledge over individuals. Foucault describes Mettray as the most disciplinary form at its most extreme, explaining that the models in which are concentrated all the coercive technologies of our behavior (p. 293). The prison was successful because it structured prisoners through the processes of discipline and control. The prison showed that it had the capabilities to transform its functionality to applications and technologies other than the carceral (punitive), such as hospitals, schools, and other public administrations by making the power and knowledge that is held over individuals normal. Its systems, because they were so effective were not destined to remain exclusively to the punitive environment. The technology that they enveloped was extremely useful, and as a result, discipline and structure have been profoundly influential in the development of social norms and behaviors in societies.
Foucault wrote a book called Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison explaining his thoughts on how he discipline should be taught. Discipline and Punish is a book about the emergence of the prison system. The conclusion of the book in relation to this subject matter is that the prison is an institution, the objective purpose of which is to produce criminality and recidivism. The system encompasses the movement that calls for reform of the prisons as an integral and permanent part. Foucault states that The more important general theme of the book is that of “discipline” in the penal sense, a specific historical form of power that was taken up by the state with professional soldiering in the 17th century, and spread widely across society, first via the panoptic prison, then via the division of labor in the factory and universal education. The purpose of discipline is to produce “docile bodies,” the individual movements of which can be controlled, and which in its turn involves the psychological monitoring and control of individuals, indeed which for Foucault produces individuals as
In his book titled Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault explores the beginning of the modern-day prison system and the culture of surveillance that it has created. Foucault argues that the modern penal system is one that executes mental and psychological punishment w...
Applied theatre and specifically Theatre in Prison, is a continually adapting field, as it reacts and changes concurrent to political and social climates, and therefore discussing its history is integral to understanding it. Examined by Foucault in Discipline and Punish, Prison, like theatre, began as a form of public spectacle, moving away from physical discipline of the body to discipline creating a ‘docile body’. Prison reformer Jeremy Bentham’s proposed blueprint of the ‘panopticon’ supports this idea creating Foucault’s ‘docile’ body through threat and observation. Another major prison reformer John Howard worked to create a similar environment of self-regulation in the late 1700’s, aiming for rehabilitation through promoting labour in
Foucault, M. (1995) Discipline and Punishment The Birth of the Prison [online]. 2nd ed. USA: Penguin Books, Ltd. [Accessed 01 January 2014].
The concept of panopticon in the penal system, which showed immediate success in reform and discipline, eventually leads to it being linked to every component of the modern society. Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon and Foucault concept of Panopticism is seen in many places today in our society. Wherever you look you will certainly find places like, schools, hospital, factories, asylums, and even universities, represent Panopticism because all of this places have some kind of surveillance s...