Panopticism
The idea of isolating a certain group from the others certainly isn’t a new idea and has been aroundsince the beginning of time. It’s something that has always been and will always be for purely selfish reasonsof security. Thus, it’s not a question of whether or not certain people should be isolated but rather how itshould be done. English philosopher Jeremy Bentham created a simple institution known as the Panopticon,which bases itself on a person’s subconscious desire to conform to society. Today, this form of isolation is idealfor criminals since they’re broken down mentally instead of physically, prisoners are given a generous chanceto redeem themselves to become a part of society again, and power isn’t centralized in the hands of the wardenor prison guards.In “Panopticism” of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punishment
, the panopticon that Bentham designed is built as “an annular building; at the center, a tower; this tower is piercedwith wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, eachof which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding tothe window of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows light to cross the cell from one end to the other.”Such a structure allows individuals to be seen and restricts their ability to communicate with the security, thewarden, or other prisoners. In this case, crowds are nonexistent and each person is confined to their cell wherethey can be viewed by the watcher. As Foucault explains, the Panopticon works “to induce in the inmate a stateof conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” The brilliance of this prison is that the Panopticon forces blindness onto the prisoner where he or she is never sure if someone’swatching or not, inducing a harmless form of paranoia, keeping people in place.When a person is accused of a crime, society finds upon itself the responsibility of punishing him or her. The question of morality, however, is finding the perfect punishment in compensation of the crime thatwas committed. With the Panopticon, rather than breaking them down physically by using tortures like thethumbscrew or whips, prisoners can be broken down mentally, which allows the reconstruction of their mentality. This entire theory is effective due to the natural desire that people in general have to conform tosociety’s pressures. After all, it is ingrained in the natural being of humans to know that in order to survive,everyone needs a place in society whether it is as the businessman or as a joker. The fear of complete
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