Discipline and Punish: The birth of the Prison

The book “Discipline and Punish: The birth of the Prison” paints a magnificent portrayal of
the historical shift of carceral institutions and punishment practices from mid eighteenth to
mid nineteenth century, especially with regards to the French penal system. In this scenario
many discontinuities occurred both in the display of power of the sovereigns, and in the
system of surveillance, constraint, control, examination and education of prisoners, as well
as in the way that disciplinary punishments were conceived and administrated to infringers.
The book, although specifically focused on prisons, also hints at other disciplinary
institutions, such as schools/asylums, hospitals, barracks and factories, where the same
technologies of behaviour were applied.

The manuscript is divided into four parts. PART ONE—TORTURE: (1) The body of the
condemned; (2) The spectacle of the scaffold. PART TWO– PUNISHMENT: (1) Generalized
Punishment; (2) The gentle way of punishment. PART THREE—DISCIPLINE: (1) Docile
Bodies; (2) The Means of Correct Training; (3) Panopticism. PART FOUR—PRISON: (1)
Complete ad austere institutions; (2) Illegalities and delinquency; (3) The carceral.

Summary: The carceral.

Foucault dates the completion of the carceral system to February 22, 1840: the date
of the opening of Mettray prison colony. This colony is the disciplinary form at its most
extreme. The chiefs and deputies at Mettray were technicians of behaviour. Their task was
to produce bodies that were docile and capable. Historians of the human sciences also date
the birth of scientific psychology to this time. Mettray represented the birth of a new kind of
supervision.

At Mettray, the timetable stressed physical exercise, hard work, and the organised recording of
results. The aim was to produce “strong, skilled agricultural workers”. The prison trained other
professionals too, focusing on techniques of “pure discipline”, rather than science, although
Psychology was to develop in that institution. He explains “the disciplinary technique became a
discipline which also had its school” (Foucault, 1977: 295). Traditionally, the school has been
understood as a limited, relatively self contained and independent institution.

Why choose this moment as the beginning of the modern art of punishment? Mettray was
the most famous of a series of carceral institutions. If the great classical form of
confinement was dismantled, it still existed albeit in a different way. A carceral continuum
was constructed that included confinement, judicial punishment and institutions of
discipline. The breadth and precocity of this phenomenon was striking. Prison turned the
punitive procedure into a penitentiary technique, with several important results:

1) A slow continuous gradation was established that made it possible to move from
order to offense and back to the "norm".
2) The carceral network allows the recruitment of major delinquents—the nineteenth
century created channels within the system that created docility and delinquency
together.
3) Most importantly, the carceral succeeds in making the power to punish legitimate
and accepted. The theory of the contract only partly explains the rise of a new power
to punish; another answer comes from the idea of a carceral continuum that was the
technical counterpart to granting a right to punish.
4) The carceral allowed the emergence of a new form of law: the norm. Now, the
judges of normality were everywhere; a reign of the normative exists, to which
everyone subjects his body.
5) The carceral texture of society allows the body to be captured and observed.
6) Because the prison was rooted in the mechanisms and strategies of power, it could
resist attempts to abolish it. This does not mean that it cannot be altered: processes
that affect its utility, and the growth of other supervisory networks, such as
medicine, psychiatry and social work, will alter the prison.

The overall political issue of prisons is whether we should have them, or something else.
Now the problem lies in the increasing use of mechanisms of normalization and the powers
attached to them. The carceral city is very different to the theater of punishment. Laws and
courts do not control the prison, but vice versa. The prison is linked to a carceral network
that normalizes. Ultimately only the rules of strategy control these mechanisms. Foucault
sees this book as a historical background to various studies of power, normalization and the
formation of knowledge in society.

According to Foucault, embodied in it was a “carceral continuum” a diverse range of institutions

given over to the surveillance for the training and the normalization of individuals. He explained
Penitentiary rationality as the central part of the carceral system. Nevertheless, the point that
Foucault emphasises throughout is that discipline works under surveillance upon one’s actions and
engages one’s will to perform. He described this process of constant supervision benefited in the
production of obedient and capable bodies.

He believes it is this which not only helps in reforming criminals but also to the education of
students, management of workers and training of modern army. In his eyes, Mettray represented the
birth of a new kind of supervision. He described Mettray as the punitive model (Foucault, 1977:
296). Foucault believed that the discipline of individuals will be achieved through microphysics of
regulation. Foucault argues that surveillance attempts to transform individuals through observation
and discipline and individuals therefore start to internally control themselves. Surveillance was seen
to hold the key to reform.

He argued, “this great carceral network reaches all the disciplinary mechanisms that function
throughout society” (Foucault, 1977: 298). Throughout the last part of Discipline and Punish
Foucault suggests that a “carceral continuum” runs through modern society. He believed the
mechanisms of discipline and power that control the prisoner’s life also control that of the citizen.
Foucault’s account of the development of the prison and the carceral system makes it clear that
society has a “carceral texture” and is penetrated by the same mechanisms that function within the
prison.

He believed other governmental programs, such as welfare and new educational techniques,
expanded from the penal system. He called this expansion of disciplinary control the “carceral
archipelago”. It created a whole society of docile bodies submitting to the will of the state. He
argued, “we have seen that, in penal justice, the prison transformed the punitive procedure into a
penitentiary technique; the carceral archipelago transported this technique from penal institutions
to the entire social body” (Foucault, 1977:298).

Finally, it gives an increase to the theatrical suggestion which Foucault refuses to accept is that the
prison is the symbol of our “disciplinary society”. This however, does not mean that society is like a
prison and everybody in it is targeted, what he argues is that society, like prison and other
institutions keeps individuals under surveillance in order to keep peace and the birth of the prison
which Foucault describes is in fact the progress of contemporary society itself. Foucault argues,
classicists such as Beccaria saw retribution as a process for requalifying individuals as juridical
subjects whereas Foucault believes that law breakers have placed themselves outside the society by
committing an offence but the penal process should aim at returning them back as law abiding
citizens (Cavadino & Dignan, 2002: 45). He sees the carceral as the answer because here he believes
the offender is not outside the law and society. In Foucault’s words, “the carceral with its far
reaching networks, allows the recruitment of major delinquents and transforms their lives into
disciplinary careers” (Foucault, 1977:300). Within sociology, the work of Michel Foucault has
completed a different understanding of power and discipline compared to analysis deriving from
Weberian and Marxist theory. For Foucault the modern prison, with its mechanisms of total
surveillance, represented a new form of knowledge and power. For Marx, the class struggle was the
main problem in society as he believes the rich (bourgeoisie) get richer and the poor (proletariat) get
poorer. Similarly, according to Foucault the ruling class used criminality as a way of preventing
confrontations that could lead to revolution. He believed the ruling class used the law to diminish
the power of these uprisings and the dominant class used the delinquent class as a means of
profiting themselves (Smart, 1983).

Analysis

This section draws together the threads of Foucault's argument, with few new ideas. The
prison, the penitentiary and the carceral system are all put in their place. The carceral
system in particular is extended beyond the walls of the prison; we can, Foucault suggests,
talk about the modern system of punishment as a "carceral city" because the prison is so
closely linked to the rest of society by a network of power that shapes everyone's life.

A new way of seeing the carceral system is also suggested. The idea of a continuum, in
which different levels of severity are arranged on a scale, resembles the kind of
classification or ranking that is established in the process of observation. An acceptance of
the carceral system points to the triumph of the law of the norm, and to the end of
Foucault's account of the transformation of judgment. A society like ours where the carceral
system operates is one in which the human sciences judge all and exclude some on the basis
of norms. This is an unchangeable fact, but it should not prevent resistance against the rule
of the norm.

The carceral system is powerful and in many ways harmful, but Foucault holds out some
hope of change. However, the chief agent of change is likely to be the growth of the human
sciences themselves, which may one day take over some of the supervisory and
observational work of the prison. Whether this will represent a degree of progress is left
uncertain. Foucault's last words suggest the real purpose of this account is not to inspire
rebellion against the modern disciplinary system, but to promote understanding of its
components and operation.