Discipline and Punish the Birth of Prsions

Change over time; that is a common theme with everything in the world. The concept of punishment is no different in that regard. In the 16th and 17th century the common view for punishing people was retaliation from the king and to be done in the town square. In what seemed to be all of a sudden, there was a change in human thinking, the concept of punishment changed to a more psychological approach compared to a public embarrassment/torture approach. The following paragraphs will discuss the development of prisons and what in fact gives people gives people the right to punish; as well as the overall meaning and function of prisons. The work by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison will help with the arguments

Throughout the years, the use of imprisonment has varied, along with its influences of society. It is thought that although prisons have been around since the thirteenth century, prisons as we know them now to be have only been around for the last three centuries. The first uses of prisons were not seen as a form of punishment instead they were used as a way of making people do something. People would be held in prison until they paid their debts, or awaiting trial and then leading up to their sentence. McGowen (1995) suggests that from the early 1700s ‘bridewells’ a house of correction have existed, however at that time being used merely for vagrants and drunks. At the end of the sixteenth century there was a shift in punishment to imprisonment, along with this came a new, more humane idea of reform. Criminals would spend their days of prison carrying out hard labour. However after the American Revolution, imprisonment took a step back and there was another change. There was mass overcrowding within the prison service and although the death penalty was still being used it was a symbol of the power of the state. Therefore, an everyday way of dealing with offenders would be transportation to the colonies, being either Australia or America.

The delivery of punishment has changed significantly over the centuries. Up until the 19th century in England, imprisonment was not regarded as a punishment, it was merely used while the offender waited to be sentenced to their ‘real’ punishment (Bull, 2010; Hirst, 1998). Corporal punishment such as flogging, branding and mutilation, death by hanging, and transportation to other continents such as America and Australia were common punitive measures through the ages, until well into the 1800’s (Newburn, 2003). Although these extreme penalties are no longer acceptable or practised by criminal courts in England or Australia, in some ways, the past has

One of the many things that has been highly controversial and still is to this very day is how to properly punish and treat criminals. Here in America we now have the Eighth Amendment to protect us from cruel and unusual punishment. This was based off of a Parliament Act of 1689 that created England’s Bill of Rights. Before England had come up with the idea that humans should have guaranteed basic rights, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not a criminal would die, as much as it was a matter of how they would die. Torture devices such as the guillotine, the stake, the brazen bull, and the rack were used to spread the idea of fear and punishment that was ineffectually used by leaders to try and control their people throughout the history of Europe.

In Europe, there was a social panic that encapsulated a time that was filled with a heightened craze and belief in witches. As many as one million individuals were executed for witchcraft in Europe between the 13th and 19th century, with most of the trials occurring during the 16th and 17th century (Oster, pg. 215). As citizens began to be accused of witchcraft, there was initially no way of forcing the crime to be confessed. To find out information regarding who and why their citizens were becoming witches, interrogators employed the use of torture to gain information to help stifle witches and their accomplices. Though interrogators implemented torture to, in their opinion, help maintain safety in their community, torture created an atmosphere of false accusations and hate that not only brutally terrorized citizens, but also destroyed lives and tore families apart. Torture helped sustain witch trials over a long period due to the spectacle it brought to communities. In terms of finding answers, torture forced the accused to make ridiculous confessions about themselves and others, that never occurred. Once confessions were made, officials in these communities believed that their harmful practices were therefore justified, and repeated time and again.

“The stocks, pillory, whipping, branding and the ducking-stool were the normal methods used for imposing punishment.”( Barnes 39). Although some of this prison history was exposed Carl Panzram is one of the few first hand accounts that still exist to this day. These past issues were mostly reformed however are reappearing with little resistance from public due to social stigmas and lack of knowledge.

This explains why many individuals falsely testified against those that were being tortured and maimed so they would not be accused of being witches. “Only a few were able to withstand severe and prolonged torture without admitting to what they thought their interrogators wanted to hear. ”[4] Those who believed that real witches existed, and were an insult to God, trusted that the legal process of punishing would be assisted with divine power which would protect the innocent from accusation or prevent them from giving way under torture and making false confessions of guilt. King James put it in his Daemonologie that, “God will not permit that any innocent persons shalbe slandered with that vile defection: for then the divell would find waies anew, to calumniate the best.

Humiliation, Pain and Death: The Execution of Criminals in New France,” is an article that puts

A form of punishment during the middle ages was often a trial by ordeal. Trial by ordeal was a method where the accused was given a rather brutal, and often deadly test to determine if they were found innocent or guilty. Trial by ordeal, in my opinion was an unjustified way of deciding guilt. For example, if someone was accused of doing witchcraft, they would be burned at the stake. If the person miraculously survived, he or she would be found guilty and was to be executed. But, if he or she burnt to death, the person would then be proven as innocent and subjected to a proper burial. This is where the illogic of trial by ordeal comes in. Either way, this is

In the chapter, “The body of the Condemned,” Foucault addresses the evolution of the punishment system and how it has gone from being a public spectacle to something that is done behind closed doors. Foucault opens the chapter with an extremely descriptive and gory representation of a public execution. The purpose of this was to display how execution have changed from being in the public eye to behind closed doors using the electric chair and legal injections. It was done in this fashion to deter individuals from committing heinous crimes. Today, the cost of prison time, fines, etc.. deter individuals instead. Punishment has become less about effecting the body and more about the changing the souls and integrating them back into society.

Torture (Latin torquere, “to twist”), in law, infliction of severe bodily pain either as punishment, or to compel a person to confess to a crime, or to give evidence in a judicial proceeding. Among primitive peoples, torture has been used as a means of ordeal and to punish captured enemies. Examination by torture, often called the “question,” has been used in many countries as a judicial method. It involves using instruments to extort evidence from unwilling witnesses.

Prisons have barbaric beginnings from the medieval dungeon and torture chamber in the late 18th century. They have always combined punishment with rehabilitation. The only difference is the way in which they are punished. French philosopher Michel Foucault said, “Punishment has changed from disciplining of the body to disciplining of the soul”. In 1779 the British government agreed to the Penitentiary Act which

Michel Foucault is a very famous French intellectual who practiced the knowledge of sociology. Foucault analyzed how knowledge related to social structures, in particular the concept of punishment within the penal system. His theory through, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, is a detailed outline of the disciplinary society; in which organizes populations, their relations to power formations, and the corresponding conceptions of the subjects themselves. Previously, this type of punishment focused on torture and dismemberment, in which was applied directly to bodies. Foucault mentions through his literary piece, “the soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy: the soul is the prison of the body (p.30). However, today, the notion of punishment involves public appearances in a court and much more humane sentences. However, it is important to note and to understand the idea of power and knowledge; it is fundamental to understand the social system as a whole.

This is a summary of Michel Foucault's seminal work on the history of criminal punishment and social discipline as it transformed from punitive to correctional models during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

For Foucault you cannot understand imprisonment without looking at torture first and how they both correlate to one another. Throughout this essay I will assess Foucault’s theories about torture and his views of how it has come about. I will look at how torture is a technique and the forms of disciplinary techniques that accompany torture. I will assess the power structures and how it manifests into other institutions in today’s society. Lastly how torture is needed to understand imprisonment. Torture was used as a scare tactic in the past to keep individuals under control. Society was aware of what may occur to them if they disobeyed the law. This initiated power and discipline over citizens which helps us to understand power relations today in terms of imprisonment.