Foucault's analysis of punishment from torture to prison

Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish"

In Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault considers, describes and criticizes the prison system and its history. He describes in detail the ancient systems of public torture, which developed to become private executions, and the dungeons that became prisons at a later stage. In his critique Foucault then makes suggestions and comments regarding the shortcomings of the punitive system, and how these shortcomings can be addressed. With the crisis experienced in prison systems and crime worldwide today, it may be a good idea to look more closely at Foucault's suggestions for a more effective system of dealing with crime.

Torture

Part 1 may be seen as the introduction to the rest of Foucault's work. Here he gives an extremely graphic description of eighteenth-century practices of torture. One suspects then that the readers of the time were as hungry for sensation as the spectators of the torture described, and indeed as addicted to spectacle as television audiences of today.

The point that Foucault makes is that torture was punishment focused on the body of the condemned. This is a manifestation of the social paradigm of the time. The body was seen as committing the crime, and the body was to be punished for this. Foucault goes on the compare torture to Faucher's timetable for prisoners. This was published during more or less 1837. The reason for this comparison is to show how the prison system evolved from being focused on the body to a combination of psychological and physical systems.

Foucault describes the changes occurring from torture to the new system as the beginning of a "new age" for penal justice. Changes occurred in a number of areas, including the economy of punishment, a variety of reforms, new theories of law and crime, and finally the appearance of new moral and political paradigms for punishment that replaced the old systems. The most notable drivers for this change are the disappearance of punishment from the public view and the loss of the hold on the body as the target of punishment.

The fact that punishment has become hidden, leads to the following consequences: it is no longer part of everyday public perception; effectiveness is related to inevitability instead of public intensity, which is now expected to discourage crime; and the changed mechanism of punishment no longer requires justification for visible cruelty. Thus officials responsible for punishment no longer became the object of public loathing and violence. The focus here is thus no longer public spectacle as much as punishment is meant to entail a correctional, rehabilitative function. This is then also directly related to the changing social paradigm of the loss of control over the body.

A new social morality regarding the body has communicated itself to the act of punishment. The body became a more or less taboo subject of discussion or of touch. Not being able to touch the body, the executioner can therefore no longer inflict pain as a punishment. Causing painful sensations to the body was thus also seen as immoral in this regard. Alternative forms of punishment then mostly entailed depriving the offender of the right of freedom, although several other body-focused punishments such as food rationing, sexual deprivation and solitary confinement still formed part of the penal system. The public is however protected from viewing these punishments. Furthermore the rehabilitative function of the new system is taken over by psychiatrists and doctors rather than by the executioner.

The issue of justice has also evolved to include a series of questions to ensure the fairness of the punishment for a specific crime. Psychological aspects such as the degree of possible mental illness or other environmental factors that could influence the crime also began to be considered in 1832. This is the rather idealized forerunner of the jury, judgment and prison system in operation today. The penal system, when changed from public spectacle to private issue, has also changed to include a number of complexities to match the complexity of the person committing the crime. It is a recognition that human beings are more than physical bodies and that crime are more often related to psychology than to physiology.

Part 4: Prison

In the final section of his work, Foucault laments the fact that the prison system, while flawed, appears to have no alternative. He recognizes that the ideals put forth by philosophers and reformers have not been realized in practice. The prison system, having improved the state of public executions and torture, nonetheless do nothing to rehabilitate offenders. Instead the system has become a mill for the circulation of objectified individuals. Indeed, the power of the prison to punish borders on the despotic.

Foucault sharply contrasts the disciplinary prison system with the initial transformative ideal.

By becoming a prisoner, the offender relinquishes not only his or her right to freedom, but also to privacy, as stated above. Observation is used to assess the individual with all the influences that contributed to the crime. According to Foucault however, this system is defective, as it merely functions to objectify along with its individualizing function. Observation then becomes a power relation rather than a rehabilitative function. Prisoners learn only apprehension towards the observing party, rather than strategies for living a more functional life within society, or indeed the "self-correcting" thoughts and reading intended by judges.

As rehabilitative institutions, prisons therefore leave much to be desired during Foucault's time. He makes several suggestions towards improvement, the first of which is that the central function of a prison is to be the transformation of behavior. This occurs by means of effective distribution of prisoners - according to their crime as well as other factors such as age and mental attitude. Furthermore, work is to be done according to certain criteria and with certain ends in mind.

In terms of current applicability, I believe the prison system could benefit from Foucault's work, since there is even in our enlightened times much room for improvement. Indeed, debates about issues such as the death penalty and overcrowded prisons support this observation. Even now prisons appear to exist simply for their own sake, and for their function of detention. Few prisons have effective programs that actively promote or encourage individual rehabilitation.

Furthermore, many of the problems experienced in prison are directly related to the power relationship formed between prisoners and prison personnel. This issue has little changed since Foucault's writing. Instead of taking to heart their responsibility to rehabilitate individuals for reentry into society, prisons appear to operate on politics and power struggles. Thus, Foucault is thus correct in his assessment that political and legal power is yielded ineffectively, and does not even serve its most basic purpose of deterring crime. The prison system could do much worse than follow some of the suggestions made by the author.