Foucaults Discipline and Punish - Book Report/Review Example

Review of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish Customer name Subject Name Here Instructor’s Name Here August 16th, 2012 Book review: Foucault, Micheal, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997), 326 pages Introduction The book to discipline and punish by Michael Foucault focuses on the revolution that has taken place in the criminal justice in less than a century. The book tries to explain what gave birth to the modern system of punishing prisoners focusing mostly on imprisonment. He views the changes in the way criminals are punished in the modern society as the influence of the changing balance of power between governments and the people. The books begins by taking the reader to 17th century France when punishment was characterised by torture and public execution. He then takes the reader through the development of modern institution in charge of controlling the conduct of members of society. In the final parts Foucault looks at the modern institutions like schools and workplaces and presents them as virtual a prison that enables a disciplined society to exist in modern times. In Conclusion the author sums up crime and punishment as an instrument of the state used to control its subject. Historical Context of the book The book moves the reader from the old French kingdom and to France during the days of the French revolution through the modern times. The context in the book keeps changing showing how the context of illegality, crime and punishment keeps changing with time. The book depicts how government have used the concepts of illegality and crime to remain in control of society. The author reflects the brutality of executions when France was a monarchy and how it perpetuated the powers of the king and the feudal classes and seeks to show how modern prison are used in the present context to perpetuate the power of the state. Main ideas in the Book The main ideas in the book can be summed up to be illegality, punishment, torture and discipline. Foucault explores the concept of illegality in most of the book associating it with the manipulation of the subject class by the political class. He views the penal system “as mechanism to administer illegalities differently, not to eliminate them all”1. He alleges that illegalities were created to make new power bases for the upper classes. He discusses the narcotic trade showing how the designation of a substance as illegal creates illicit trade around it. The illegal businesses are manipulable by rogue organizations for the benefit of the ruling class. He points out some illegal business have grown in proportion as the politics and economies of the globe evolve. He stresses “delinquency is proving ineffective” showing that the rationale of declaring an illegality is flawed as once an illegality is declared it only leads to the mushrooming of other illegal enterprises2. Foucault discusses torture as the first form of punishment that existed in monarchical Europe. Torture in this context is closely linked with the needs of the ruling dynasty to control their subject. He shows that the rationale for torturing a person was the need for the authorities to make the prisoner feel the effect of his crime on his body. He writes that public torture was intended for three distinct purposes: a) to shed light on the crime committed as even the person undergoing torture would not know the exact questions that would be asked during the public interrogation b) show the prowess of the investigators (torture was supposed to lead to confession which legitimized the torture otherwise innocence was assumed), c) reflect the violence of the criminal act on the body of the criminal d) exact the revenge of those wronged by the crime on the actual body of the criminal as the law was inseparable from the sovereign body then3. This purposes of torture where meant to increase the power of the ruling class but instead it produced some negative consequence that led to the challenge of the very power torture was supposed to perpetuate. Foucault argues that the negative consequences of torture are what led to the reform of the penal code rather than concerns for the rights of convicts. These unintended implications of torture that led to changes in the way people were punished include: a) the ceremonial torture and execution shifted the sympathy for the crime from the victim to the convict, b) the executioner was blamed for the unfortunate situation rather than the convict, d) public torture and executions led to rebellions against the custodians of power4. Foucault proposes that once the ruling class realized that the torture was slowly turning the masses against them they set out to reform it leading to what he calls ‘gentle punishment’ and later imprisonment. Gentle punishment was an extension of torture where convict were required to work or were enslaved to pay for the crimes they had committed against the sovereign. According to Foucault punishment evolved through the influence of reformers who urged that the excess powers of the monarchy were cruel and inhuman. Punishment sought to deter crime and was mainly aimed at protecting the property of the upper classes. It was assumed that subjects had a contract with the law which required the Citizen to follow the law; failure to comply meant the law which he was a part of would punish him. Deterrence of crime by punishment was based on the six major principles: a) the rule of minimum quantity; the benefit one gets from the crime should be lesser when compared to the risk involved, b) the rule of sufficient ideality; punishment is representative not physical, c) the punishment should have lateral effect; anybody observing the punishment would fear as the negative effects of the punishment is great, d) the rule of perfect certainty; the link between crime and punishment would be unbreakable ,c) the rule of common truth, punishment must conform to the idea of common truth d) the rule of optimal specification; all rules must be set out clearly and their punishment prescribed5. Foucault however criticizes the development of gentler punishment noting the calls by the middle class were meant to control the use of punishment lest it becomes too dangerous. He notes the middle-class despised the lower subjects and the industrial revolution had begun making the middle class richer and owner of property6. Foucault alleges that prisons developed out of the concept of Discipline that developed in the 18th century. He depicts discipline as types of control were the society has a number of rules that control the conduct of its members. He urges that discipline creates what he defines as “docile bodies” that can be “subjected, used, transformed and improved”7. In discussing discipline he focuses on the institutions in society especially schools and military organization alleging that discipline needed in this institutions are akin to the Panopticon; a model disciplinary institution suggested by Jeremy Bentham's where everybody is watched and is unaware he is being watched and thus there conduct must be moderated at all times leading to the internalization of discipline8. He credits the concept of discipline as the main factor that led to the development of prisons. Foucault show the need to maintain a disciplined society of “docile bodies” that feel that breaking of the law is being observed led to the popularity of imprisonment as a means of modern punishment9. He concludes that the whole society is one big "carceral system" where people are imprisoned in disciplinary careers under the authority of science10. He claims that the modern society is a designed to produce Delinquents as it cannot tolerate the pettiest of crimes. Critique Foucault views in this book are very controversial as he implies that discipline, punishment and imprisonment are the strategic calculation of the upper class to maintain the balance of power in their favour. His views are radical and bring out debate about the role prisons play in modern society. His views come short of recommending the abolition of prisons while not really giving an alternative of to the modern penal system. Foucault’s work on imprisonment rather than give the history of prisons represents the views of struggle against class society views shared by Karl Marx11. Foucault expresses similar views to those of Karl Marx that the penal system could have developed differently without the influence of the upper class. Both agree that the failure in the penal system is the impact of class society. However, the book contrasts Max’s view that the power of production controls all other aspects of life. Foucault however differs with the view of Marx and leans towards an opinion similar to that of Nietzsche which says that all things that are “powerful and life-asserting” are regarded as “good” while “evil” is concept of the aristocrats who have a slave mentality12. The delivery of the book involves complex sentences that are hard to interpret and the contrast seen in this work sometimes confuses a leader. The book does not really discuss the development of prison and rather dwells on the changing power structures and fails to explicitly link the ideas in the alleged evolution of torture to the present day popular form of punishment. Conclusion The debates about imprisonment and power elicited by Foucault places the modern day penal system on the spot. The book provides valuable starting points for investigating and later improvement of the imprisonment system. It also brings up the question of whether each individual in society can claim he is free. The book can be summed up by the following question; are we really free in the modern carceral system? Bibliography Douglas, Smith, trans., On the Genealogy of Morals (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1996) Foucault, Micheal, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997) Moore, Samuel, trans., Das Kapital (New York: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (March 2, 2011) Read More