Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Essay Questions

What is the major transformation in punishment Foucault describes?

In the late 1700s through the mid 1800s, Foucault describes a shift from punishment as a public spectacle to private confinement. At first, people were tortured or executed for their crimes in public. Ultimately, they were instead put into prison, where their bodies were not on public display in the same way. This means that punishment starts to focus on reforming the private soul of the individual more than on inflicting pain on their body.

What is sovereign power?

Sovereign power is power located in the sovereign, or usually king, of a nation. It’s a kind of power that’s centralized and easy to locate. You have to act in a way that does not offend or hurt the king. But it’s also a power that is less pervasive throughout society. When you’re at home, away from the view of the king, you don’t experience power as much as you would in a disciplinary society.

What is disciplinary power?

Disciplinary power is power that trains people to act properly through social norms. Because it is a power that belongs to society as a whole, in determining norms, it is more diffuse than sovereign power, which was located in the king. Disciplinary power is everywhere, as people at all times act in accordance with the normative judgments they imagine others to be making on them.

Why are soldiers like students?

Both soldiers and students are disciplined. A solider has a proper place and set of proper behaviors expected of him in the barracks. Similarly, a student has a designated place and role in the school. In both cases, an institution organizes life in such a way to train people how to act correctly.

How is the prison an egalitarian form of punishment?

If you fine someone for a crime, the fine will impact people differently based on their wealth. Rich people can afford fines more than poor people. In contrast, prison is egalitarian, or affects everyone equally, because it isn’t taking away your money. It’s taking away something more universal: your freedom. This is something people treasure equally and have equal amounts of.

What is the Panopticon?

The Panopticon was a prison theorized by Jeremy Bentham, with a tall central tower and cells in a circle around it. The point was that if you were in a cell, you would feel like someone in the tower might be watching you at any moment, even if they weren’t, and this led you to act in a proper manner at all times. Bentham thought all sorts of institutions might be designed this way. Schools, too, might train students more efficiently if students always thought they were being watched by their teachers.

How does the Panopticon represent disciplinary society?

Although the Panopticon was originally the design for a specific building, Foucault thinks it represents society as a whole. Today, people always feel they’re being watched, even if they aren’t, just like prisoners in the Panopticon. This is because of social norms and the sense that we always have to act in accordance with them.

Where is disciplinary power located?

Discipline has no location, because it belongs to society as a whole, and social norms, rather than to a sovereign and his laws. We are subject to norms at all times. Therefore, disciplinary power is everywhere. Even when we’re by ourselves, we unconsciously act according to norms, as if we’re being watched.

What is the difference between an “offender” and a “delinquent”?

The “offender” is identified through the bad offense they’ve committed. What matters is therefore the action they have done. In contrast, a delinquent is identified as a type of person, someone with a bad personality. Their offense is then seen as just a symptom of a deeper, underlying pathological condition. Foucault thinks there has been a shift when it comes to crime, from talking about offenders to talking about delinquents. In the past, we cared about people’s actions, but now we care about the whole person, or think their actions are part of an entire personality that needs to be reformed. That means justice aims to transform individuals as a whole, not just punish an action they have committed.

How, in Foucault’s account, do the failures of the prison end up succeeding?

Prisons haven’t done the things they were supposed to do: crime rates stay the same, and often people released from prison commit crimes again, rather than being reformed. But prisons have other effects than the ones they intend. For instance, prisons produce the category of the “delinquent,” which is important for the functioning of a disciplinary society. Prisons give us a sense of normal and abnormal, and this structures our society in ways even more powerful than the reform of individual criminals.