How does Foucault explain the emergence and persistence of the prison - Essay Example

?How does Foucault explain the emergence and persistence of the prison? Do you agree? Foucault has become one of the most influential theorists of recent times and his work on sociology is widely read, most especially in terms of his theories about the human body in society and the origins and nature of our modern criminal justice system. His celebrated book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1995, first published in English in 1979) presents his view on the modern prison, arguing that it represents a fundamental change in the way that people in the modern age perceive themselves and society. This paper summarizes the way that Foucault explains the emergence and persistence of the prison by looking at his presentation of a) the historical origins of prison, b) the most important features of the prison in the last two hundred years and c) the cultural importance of the prison in the modern world which ensures it will persist as a key feature of modern societies. After that the ideas are evaluated in the light of contemporary understanding of punishment and the criminal justice system to determine how far Foucault’s reasoning holds up in the present day. The opening pages of the book Discipline and Punish (1995) narrate a historical event which spells out the cruel nature of punishment in the middle of the eighteenth century in France. In those days criminals were often tortured and then executed in public. This created a spectacle for others to watch and even the reading of the text is a very uncomfortable experience, because it does goes into great detail about the physical torments of the prisoner. He is beaten and his body is pulled apart, before finally being burned, and the worst part is that the prisoner is conscious through most of this and talking to his tormentors, the priests who minister to him, and the onlookers who are gathered there to watch. For a modern reader this quoted historical text is very shocking. Foucault appears to be using this example in the opening pages of his book is to set up vivid contrast between the punishment of that time and place, and the type of punishment that is used in modern times. During the French Revolution and its aftermath, there was continued use of the guillotine, again stressing the aspect of public spectacle, and though these examples are presented from a particularly French point of view, they represent attitudes to punishment that were very common across Europe in those days. In Britain hanging was the preferred method of punishment, and here too, public viewing was allowed until well into the twentieth century. After his narration of this barbaric execution, Foucault describes the way that prisoners are dealt with in Paris some eighty years later. Instead of physical punishment through beatings and torture there is a rigid timetable of getting up, moving from place to place, doing certain activities, and above all submitting to the constant control of the prison guards, all to the sound of a drum beat which announced the next chapter in the day’s programme: “… the fact remains that a few decades saw the disappearance of the tortured, dismembered, amputated body, symbolically branded on face or shouldter, exposed alive or dead to public view. The body as the major target of penal repression disappeared.” (Foucault, 1995, p. 8) For Foucault this is a major change in the way that society sees the human being, and instead of imposing physical pain and public humiliation on wrongdoers, there is a shift to a more subtle form of control, and to a process which is hidden behind bars and prison walls. The main feature of the modern prison is control. The human body is still the focus of punitive retribution, but it is now a question of on-going control and suppression, rather than immediate destruction: “If it is still necessary for the law to reach and manipulate the body of the convict, it will be at a distance, in the proper way, according to strict rules, and with a much ‘higher’ aim” (Foucault, 1995, p. 11) Foucault describes the way that modern prisons uses people in very technical and specialised roles, all working in a highly regulated system, and how this de-personalizes the whole process of dealing with criminal. There are multiple restrictions placed on the prisoner, and his body is subjected to lack of freedom, and sometimes also the enforced taking of drugs such as tranquilizers, but it is no longer permitted to administer pain as part of the containment of prisoners. Even in states where the death penalty is allowed, such as some states in the United States of America, there are such institutional rules as the administration of the sentence by means of a painless lethal injection. For Foucault all of this signifies the exercise of control by those who hold power over those who are without power. Some of this thinking derives from Marxist philosophy which explains human behaviour in terms of power and social class. There is also a strong element of Enlightenment thinking in this move to see the prisoner as a body which must be treated, controlled, and above all medicalized so that “professionals” can impose their will on those who are sent to correctional facilities. Craib explains the links between an increasingly scientific approach and notions of power and control: “The Enlightenment thinkers saw a close relationship between knowledge and freedom: the more knowledge we gain the more free we can become. Foucault, drawing on the philosophy of Nietzsche, inverts that relationship. The link is not between knowledge and freedom, but between knowledge and power.” (Craib, 1997, p. 4) A focus on the human body as a physical entity encourages this whole edifice of prison, and explains the rules and regulations regarding pain. What is absent in this model is of course an appreciation of the mental and emotional suffering of the prisoner. Foucault’s reflections on prisons highlights the hierarchical nature of all human institutions, and focuses attention on the subtle forms of control that have replaced the more obvious barbaric practices of previous ages. For him, prisons are a further example of the age-old tendency for the strong to dominate the weak, and the fact that they are more subtle about it than other methods of punishment used to be, does not make them any more acceptable than the more brutal regimes of the past. Not everyone agrees with the analysis of Foucault, however, and Garland, for one, points out that there have been many supporters of the prison system who see prisons as a positive phenomenon: “for most of the twentieth century the institutions of punishment have normally been surrounded by a sense of their own appropriateness and transparency.” (Garland, 1990 , p. 4) There is, in fact, a lot of disagreement in society at large as much as in the academic community, about the usefulness of prisons as a way to deal with society’s most pressing problems of crime and dysfunctional behaviour. Some maintain that prisons can and should have a rehabilitation role, while others believe that prisons make the situation worse by putting offenders together and creating an underclass that is all the more encouraged to resist mainstream society. In Garland’s view, there is more to the prison phenomenon than just questions of power, and there are matters of cultural value and the shared goals of a society which also come into play. One way of looking at this is to use the sociological approach of Foucault which studies both the effect which prisons have on prisoners, and the effect which the prisoners have on the institution and the society around them. It is clear that many aspects of modern prisons are dysfunctional and result in worse problems than the ones they were set up to resolve. Prisoners may internalize the institutional agenda that is forced upon them, and this causes untold damage to the human spirit, resulting in an erosion of human potential to use their free will in positive and constructive ways. Meek and compliant prisoners are not necessarily an improvement on petty criminals, and this is something that society half recognises but tends not to face up to. Foucault questions not just the way prisons are organized, and the mechanics of power being exercised on prisoners, but also he looks at deeper issues and questions things that many people take for granted. Mills reminds us: “assuming that the past is inferior to the present and that we have made great progress is a value judgement, and within a Foucauldian framework needs to be avoided.” (Mills, 2003, p. 113) It is difficult to sum up all of Foucault’s theories about prison, because they tie in with many other themes that he wrote about in other books such as madness, and the nature of knowledge, along with further reflections on the way that humans relate to and with the body within the larger context of society. Smart identifies the most valuable insights regarding prisons as lying precisely in this interdisciplinary approach: “the argument is that since the beginning of the nineteenth century a whole series of transformations have taken place in the penal system – judges ‘judge something other than crimes’, namely the individual, what they are and what they might be.” (Smart, 1995, p. 75) Following this line of reason it is easy to see why modern society finds it easy to maintain prisons as a social institution, despite all the evidence showing that they do not work, and that they cause further and deeper societal problems. Prison allows the more privileged and wealthy layers of society to distance themselves from those who are poor, less well educated and out of step with the compliant majority. It also keeps the resistance and defiance of this group out of sight and contained in a context where all kinds of control can be exercised. This part of Foucault’s analysis is very convincing and causes us to rethink how our society first excludes some people from important opportunities, then labels them as deviant when they do not support a system which excludes them, and then further excludes them by locking them up when they take actions which express their rage against the system. Foucault’s perspective causes us to look at the imbalances of power in society that allow some people to define what is right and what is wrong, while never themselves having to face the difficulties that come with poverty and exclusion. One area of Foucault’s reasoning is not so convincing, and that is the focus on power as the main issue in prisons. There are other dimensions, such as prisoner to prisoner dialogue and the way that prisoners learn to adapt to prison life that might have been interesting avenues to pursue. Some prisoners achieve astonishing results in their lives, despite all the worst efforts of the prison system, and they do in the end manage to resist the oppression and change society. An example of this can be seen in Nelson Mandela, who was harshly treated by the prison system for decades but emerged the stronger, and has transformed his whole country, and arguably also many other societies with his example of non-violent resistance and reconciliation with his oppressors after such a terrible fate. Overall, however, the work of Foucault is a convincing explanation of the origins of modern prisons, and the fact that he wrote Discipline and Punish has ensured that sociologists and criminologists will not just take the existence of prisons for granted, but will endeavour to think through all the historical and scientific processes that have led to their existence. References Craib, I. (1997) Classical Social Theory: An Introduction to the Thought of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.  Garland, D. (1990) Punishment and modern society: A study in social theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. (1995) [1979] Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Translated from the French by A. Sheridan. New York: Second Vintage Books. Kermode, F. (ed.). (1985) Michel Foucault. London: Fontana. Mills, S. (2003) Michel Foucault. London: Routledge. Gordon, C. (1980) Michel Foucault. Harvester Press. Smart, B. (1985) Smart, B. (1995) Michel Foucault. London and New York: Routledge. Read More