Part 2 Punishment, Section 2 “The gentle way in punishment”

Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison
Part 2 Punishment, Section 2 “The gentle way in punishment”

from Rebecca Robinson in jus 501 (fall 2007)

• Suitable punishment “robs for ever the idea of a crime of any attraction” (104)
• Obstacle-sign constitute new arsenal of penalties must obey several conditions
o As unarbitrary as possible: “the idea of the offense will be enough to arouse the sign of the punishment”- natural consequence. (Vermeil) “those who abuse public liberty…deprived of their own” (105)
 “Power must act while concealing itself beneath the gentle force of nature”
o Complex of sign engage mechanics of force: penalty and disadvantages more lively the crime and its pleasures
 (Mably) “…source of evil” (vagabond-laziness) (106)
 Make penalty something feared (pride led to crime, let it be hurt)
o Duration integrated into economy of penalty (107)- facilitate proper action
 Punish diminishes as it produces effect (chacot, gene, normal)
o Penalty directed above all at potentially guilty (108)
 Penalty natural- retribution that guilty makes to his fellow citizens
 Body of condemned- from property of king to societal property
 (Cahiers) Public works: collective interest and visible/verifiable
o Learned economy of publicity (109) from torture (physical fear/collective horror) to decipherable sign/representation of public morality
 Ceremony of mourning (110)- from festival to school
 Secret punishment wasted (111)- criminal source of instruction
o Inversion of traditional discourse of crime: glory to misfortune (112)
• Reformers criticized imprisonment: incapable of corresponding to specific crime
o No effect on public so it is useless, even harmful to society (costly, causes idleness, multiplies vices) (114)
o Subject to defiance for citizens- obscurity causes suspicion of injustices
o Whole middle between light and death penalty
o Short transformation period
• 4 principle penalties remain in penal code all forms of detention- forced labor, detention, reclusion and imprisonment
• Scaffold replaced by prison with centralized administration (115)
• In <20 years, detention for every offense that did not require death penalty (116)
• Before, natural relation of crime to penalty (117) and security for someone, one does not punish (118) or to secure offenders (those not yet convicted)
o Prison disqualified because bound up with arbitrary, excesses of sovereign- used for philosophers and dissidents
o Counter to individuality of punishment (119) – punishes whole family
• What cause sudden shift to prison? Number of great models
o 1596 Rasphius in Amsterdam (120)- beggars/young malefactors
 Duration- could be reduces based on behavior
 Compulsory work (received wages)
 Strict timetables, obligations, prohibitions, supervision, religious readings link theory and spiritual transformation
o 1749 Ghent in Aloust- idleness caused most crimes
 Benefits: promoted work ethic, reduced taxpayer compensation to owners and number of criminal prosecutions, mass of new workers, true poor to benefit from charity (121)
 Prisoners earned wages & learned trade through compulsory work
 Duration related to length needed for correction
o English models added importance of isolation: provides terrible shock, apprenticeship, spiritual conversion (122)
o Gloucester model: total confinement for most dangerous criminals
o 1790 Philadelphia: continuously reexamined/transformed so not doomed to immediate failure like others (123)
 Constantly employed: defray expenses & to moral/material reform
 Strict timetable, limited solitary, duration based on behavior
 Penalty carried out secretly (124)
 Transformation process between convict and supervisor
 Work on soul: solitude, self-examination, religious exhortation
 Transformation based on knowledge of individual (125)
• Convergence of models: directed toward future (prevent repetition) (126), not to efface crime but to transform criminal, individualize penalties
• Disparity of models: technique of individualizing (instrument of transform) (127)
• Application of penalty to body and soul- instead of obstacle-sign, forms of coercion and schemata of constraint, applied and repeated (128) to restore juridical subject/shape obedient subject by general, detailed form of some power
• Special relationship between punished and punisher (total power free of 3rd party)
o Secrecy and autonomy imperative
o Contrary to 2 aims: citizen participation, render power adequate/ transparent to publicly defined laws (secret punishment not in legal code)
 New power as arbitrary/despotic as before (129)
• Prison=institutionalization of power to punish
• 3 way of organizing power: monarchical, obstacle-sign (130), reformist techniques of individual coercion
• Why was the third adopted? (131)