Michel Foucault\'s \"Discipline and Punish\"

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 2: Punishment

The second part is a further exposition of the nature of punishment and also of crime and the criminal engaging in illegal actions. The more psychological viewpoint of crime and punishment as shown in the previous section is now considered in greater depth. Foucault goes on to describe how the changing attitude towards punishment has divides itself into a consideration of the exact nature of crime and also of the kind of people most likely to engage in criminal activities. The focus has thus turned inward towards the psyche rather than outward towards the body. According to Foucault, this also, interestingly enough, affected the nature of crime, which has evolved from violent crimes that are mostly physically oriented, to more inventive crimes such as fraud.

Foucault relates this to the way in which the society and economy of the time evolved: criminality then has evolved according to the increase in wealth, the development of production, and the related values and morals developing as a result.

The new values and morals were also applicable to criminal justice, and reformers argued for less severe punishments. Punishments up to the time were frequently abuses of power rather than focused on rehabilitating the criminal or deterring further crime. What was needed was therefore a rearrangement of power in order to reform not only the system, but also the criminals involved. This section could be applied to crime today, which has evolved according to the staggering advances in technology. It appears then that, no matter what the punishment, the determined criminal is more likely than not to use whatever systems are available at the time to commit criminal acts.

Part 3: Discipline significant consideration in this Part is the concept of "docile bodies." This shows how, despite reforms towards a more psychological approach to crime and punishment, the prison system still focused much on the body during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While there are fewer occasions of direct physical contact such as torture, domination occurs by means of coercing prisoners in terms of restricted movement and labor. Furthermore this movement is not connected to the result, but rather to the power entailed in coercing prisoners into certain movements at certain times and places. In this way prisoners become "docile" bodies by means of discipline. Thus great reform schemes made way not for a better system, but for another way of oppressing the body.

The body of the prisoner is oppressed by means of space and movement restriction. These disciplines are not a means to an end; instead they are means of oppression and power displays, but no more. Rehabilitation, while ideally being part of the justice system, is not necessarily the norm of the prison system. This is a particularly apt observation, since nothing appears to have changed for the modern prison system. While many scholars make attempts to reform the prison system, all reformational ideas remain in the academic context, with nothing being applied in practice.

After addressing the body is completely docile, it can be grouped with other bodies under coercion. This occurs by means such as those mentioned above, including restricted movement and space. Restricted movement includes repetitive, pointless, exercise and labor. These practices are used to coerce docile bodies into even further submission. This is a kind of mental torture without any of the rehabilitative ideals so loftily campaigned for by reformers. Foucault states that such coercive actions objectify individuals.

Here Foucault further expounds his theory to include working-class housing estates, hospitals, asylums and schools together with prisons for their potential for observation. Hierarchical observation can then be practiced within these establishments in order to ensure that the law is obeyed, or that disciplinary action is carried out in the case of crime. People are controlled by means of surveillance. Here then the prison system communicates itself to society. It seems then that this interaction between the prison system and society is inevitable and that the one influences the other as each develops according to the passage of time.

It is also with the issue of surveillance in mind that Foucault discusses the issue of the Panopticon, a prison system where prisoners do not see the guards, but are aware of the possibility of being surveyed at frequent intervals. This is meant as a monitoring strategy to deter prisoners from committing further crimes.

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.