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Foucault’s ​Discipline and Punish​: An Exposition of its Argument

Cameron Stein

California State University, Long Beach

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Abstract

Michel Foucault is one of the most cited names in the humanities, and ​Discipline and

Punish​ one of his most cited works. However, many of its central concepts, though well known,

are misinterpreted, while others are neglected. My aim is to provide a more thorough and

comprehensive interpretation of ​Discipline and Punish​ than is customarily found in the literature.

In doing so I argue that ​Discipline & Punish​ is intended to spark an engagement with the present

by investigating the formation of mechanisms of power through history. Emphasis should be

placed not on a condemnation of the modern prison system. Rather, we should take Foucault’s

project as a guide for critical engagement with the mechanisms of power dispersed throughout

society.

Foucault’s project challenges traditional conceptions and understanding of power. Power

is often understood as a force or ability that represses the actions of another subject. However,

this merely characterizes an organization of power of the past, that has been transformed over

time. Foucault wants us to understand the contemporary modality of power by examining the

way it came about and how it is dispersed throughout civil society.

The previous modality of power exercised punishment through the Scaffold. In this rule,

power is centralized, located within the hands of the monarch and aristocracy. The citizens may

compose the state and the society, but they ultimately submit to the will of the Sovereign. Power

here is exercised in brilliant displays of spectacle or terror, backed by a threat of violence or

punishment. Of course, today these sorts of displays are either rare and infrequent, or absent

entirely. But we should not mistake this for a belief that power relations are gone, but have

transformed. In the modern world, power takes a new form, and is exercised differently. Whereas
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power is normally thought of as a centralized force that can be seized, and used to repress the

actions of subjects, power today is much more subtle, and behind the scenes. Power is dispersed

throughout society. It is a form of engagement between people, and seeks not merely to repress

certain actions, but to ​produce​ actions, thoughts, beliefs, truths, and so on within a subject.

1. Power - The Logic of the Scaffold and its Dissolution

Throughout his works, Foucault challenges and critiques traditional approaches to

philosophy, history, and social theory. ​Discipline and Punish​ is not merely Foucault’s history of

the prison; it is an account of the forces and powers that operate throughout the social body to

bring out new ideas, techniques, knowledges, and apparatuses of power. In ​Punishment and

​ usche and Kirchheimer employ Marxist theory and methodology to explain

Social Structure, R

the development of prisons in relation to social structure and economic development. Foucault

conducts a similar, but divergent project. Rather than examine prisons merely from the scope of

historical materialism, Foucault escapes these methodological confines by employing

Nietzschean genealogy to explore the role of power relations within the development of

punishment techniques. In doing so, he extends historical analysis beyond mere Marxist relations

of production to focus on relations of power.1

To examine prisons in this genealogical fashion, Foucault goes back in history until we

reach a point that criminal punishment practices appear barbaric, repulsive, and irrational. This

point we will refer to as the society of the Scaffold. From here, it is in Foucault’s interest to

frame the Scaffold not as an illogical and apolitical phenomenon, but to examine and understand

1
​Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings​,1972- 1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York:
Pantheon, 1980), p. 53.
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the techniques through their own rationality and logic. Foucault is not merely exercising the

principle of charity, as it is necessary to understand the rationality and political motivation

behind these methods in order to trace their later development and evolution into the modern

prison system. This brings us to the infamous opening chapter of ​Discipline and Punish​: the

execution of Damiens the regicide. The reader is shocked, disturbed, and repulsed at the graphic

and brutal details of his torture. This is precisely what Foucault intents to evoke from the reader,

and then call this sentiment into question. Why does it appear so horrific to us now, and how

could our modern system have come out of such apparent depravity of logic and morality?

Foucault wants to show that the practice of public displays of torture were not merely

mindless, barbaric acts of anger, but a technique of punishment with the purpose of upholding

the law and reaffirming sovereign control. Torture in itself was a legal ceremony and the public

execution a judicial and political ritual. This method of punishment was logically crafted and

executed, with the purpose of reinforcing the power of the sovereign. We will see throughout

Discipline & Punish that the methods of punishment employed over time are designed to

reinforce the dominant system of power.

Torture is not a “lawless rage”, but a rational tactic employed by rulers as legal

punishment. Torture is used to produce pain, but not just for pains sake. The pain that is

produced is quantifiable, and can be “calculated, compared, and hierarchized” ultimately

culminating in death. This measurement of quantity to an abstract concept like pain is necessary

to equate pain as a sort of currency to be paid in punishment. The sentencing is levied to fit the

crime, but with a universal mode of payment: pain. The pain is not just an accidental quality of

torture, it is an essential feature. The torture must be public, and viewed by the people as a
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spectacle. This spectacle serves to profess the “truth of the crime” while simultaneously instilling

terror and reaffirming the power of the law and sovereign.

Foucault explains that torture is productive to the extent that it produces “truth” of a

crime. Here, it seems that “truth” is not an epistemological concern, so much as it is a method of

justification to implement punishment. Foucault argues that formal accusations and evidence that

we hold dearly in our modern judicial system were often woefully absent in the era of the

scaffold. The torture itself was a ritual of producing truth of the crime, and gave the accused a

role in the ritual as well. The confession was an important element of the punishment, as it

produces truth from the body of the condemned.

Putting this power into the hands of the accused does allow the possibility they do not

confess, and the guilt is unproven. This would rob the justification of the torture itself. A modern

audience will surely object to this doctrine. Surely, almost every accused will now confess,

regardless of their actual criminal actions, because that’s just what torture does. Foucault notes

that the accused always entered in with an underlying assumption of being somewhat-guilty. To

this system, the suspect always deserved a certain degree of punishment, as evidenced by

suspicion. The judicial process didn’t seek a dualistic true or false, but a continuous graduation.

This method of gradual judgement will remain in punitive systems in different forms in the

modern prison.

The matter of a criminal confessing to a crime they were really innocent of, or vice versa,

was not detrimental to the practice of torture as interrogation and confession. While confession

was regarded as the highest priority evidence, it was not the only evidence considered, and full

investigations were carried out. However, in another sense, the confession did somewhat
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transcend other forms of evidence. While the torture is a method of investigation and

interrogation, it is notably described not as “obtaining” the truth of the crime, but “producing”

the truth. To what extent is “truth” in this figure a matter of epistemological certainty? It is not so

much that the events of a crime did not take place, or that the judicial system of the 17th century

was wholly unconcerned with the reality of a criminal action. An accused really did either

murder or not murder, steal or not steal. Rather, there is a unique juridical recognition of truth in

a confession as a sort of “most relevant truth”. “Desert” is an essential feature of punishment,

and a knowledge of a subjects deserving of punishment is a necessary condition, should a ruler

display this punishment to the public. The subjects of a sovereign will readily support an

execution, so long as they “know” the condemned deserved it. However, this desert is ultimately

subsumed by the right of Sovereign control, the control over life and death.

Torture was not only confined to the use of juridical process, but was even more effective

as a political ritual. The public display of torture was a method of displaying, professing, and

reinforcing the sovereign’s authority. Foucault invokes Hobbesian terms to demonstrate the

dominant configuration of power, of a sovereign holding authority through the law and the social

body, while also showing the limitations of its scope. The Hobbesian model will eventually fail

to account for the historical changes of power relations, and through this, Foucault presents his

own account of power .

A crime is seen as an attack not only on a victim, but to the “body” of the sovereign. The

torture, and pain inflicted, act as a payment in return to the sovereign. It is an attempt to restore

an imbalance on the economy of power. The king must be seen as always higher in power to the

criminal, and should a criminal challenge this power, he must be punished. The ritual is
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intentionally barbaric- it needs to show the king’s power as terrifying and violent. The criminal

ironically takes a backseat in this whole affair. In the public display, after the private torture and

confession, the criminal is a prop for the theatrical display of sovereign might. The key players

were now the audience, the subjects of the king.

The audience role in the spectacle of the scaffold was to reaffirm sovereign might, not

only by observing, but supporting and encouraging the execution. While the display was to show

the power of the king over his subjects, the power is only manifest through these subjects. They

must agree to the truth of the criminals desert, and to the authority of sovereign’s imposition of

force. The subjects would eventually come to oppose this practice, and challenge the justification

of torture. Foucault traces this sentiment to a culmination of economic and social factors, from

rise of capital, to an emerging literature of crime. The “truth of the crime” was no longer a

justification of blameworthiness, but of praiseworthiness. The criminal was now a heroic figure.

This is a problem that the state will struggle with throughout the development of the prison, and

will ultimately drive many of its most important features. We will return to this topic with the

discussion of delinquency.

The logic and rationality of these systems were essential to establishing and reaffirming

sovereign control over its subjects. An effective rule requires a sort of open participation on the

part of the sovereign. More specifically, punishment does not resemble or reflect our

contemporary understanding of justice because it is focused not on preserving wellbeing, or

general happiness, but by reaffirming the right of the Sovereign control of life and death (53).

Those familiar with Foucault may recognize that this concept does not leave the modern state, as

it becomes a primary focus of the state to exercise “biopower” over its citizens. Control over
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reproduction, health, life, and death is essential to the control of production and political

interests.

2. The Development of the Disciplines

Discipline and Punish​ attempts to investigate a multitude of questions, some with more

coherent, solidified answers than others. One such question comes about in the second part of the

book: ​Why do we have the prison instead of something else?​ In Foucault’s investigation, we see

that the prison is not something simply drafted up and built to respond to a problem of the

Scaffold. Instead, Foucault shows that the development of the prison cannot be traced through a

single line.

The Scaffold eventually comes into crisis. Executions required support and participation

on part of the citizens, who would eventually protest and riot at these executions. For whatever

reason, the citizens rejected the right of a sovereign to decide life and death. They rejected the

justice of inflicting pain and torture onto the condemned, in order to restore the body of the

sovereign. They rejected the logic of the scaffold and its prudential and moral value. Why? Not

out of a spiritual or moral awakening, but out of a multitude of forces and causes, building upon

each other, working simultaneously and sequentially, gradually and abruptly, overly and subtly.

Rusche and Kirchheimer had correctly attributed a cause to the development of capital and the

changes in crimes. The law began to serve the interests of capital, the aristocracy, and a newly

emerging middle class. Furthermore, the public began to associate criminals as common folk

heroes. Crimes were no longer merely an offense to the entire social body, and the justification

of torture lost its weight. Simultaneously, there emerged a reform movement through
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enlightenment philosophers, politicians, and writers. They spoke out against the injustice of the

Scaffold, not merely out of moral condemnation, but as a political strategy to divert power away

from the aristocracy, down to the new middle class. Humanitarian prose and activism not only

helped to change the moral sentiments of the public, but drove the changes in arrangement of

power for modern society.

The reformers did not envision our modern prison system, as the reader might be

expecting. This is exemplary of the disconnected and confusing style of Foucault's view of

history . We are presented with this repulsive model of torture, shown a historical response and

reform movement develop under it, and yet the model of the prison does not clearly manifest in

these reformers arguments. In fact, “the idea of penal imprisonment is explicitly criticized by

many reformers” (114). The contemporary model of the prison is opposed to everything the

reform movement aims to achieve: it’s a universal penalty and doesn’t address the specificity of

crimes. The point of punishment to the reformers was not so much to reform the criminals, but to

be used as an example to the viewing population. Punishment was not to instill terror, but to

educate the population, and the primary focus was the soul, rather than the body.

The ultimate aim of the reform was to develop a new “economy” of power, not to just

ease up the intensity of punishment. It was also not merely a product of the reformers. The

movement “did not have a single origin” (81). It was in the interest of many different lawyers,

parlementaires, and social groups to develop a new distribution of the power to punish. This may

serve to explain why historical change seems so jarring to us. We cannot merely consider the

most prominent forces of movement, as we see their ultimate goals are not reached. Investigating

the lower, smaller levels of power can help us realize why we have the prison, rather than
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something else. It is not an “invention” in our normal sense of the term. It seems to spring up

overnight, incorporating ideas and techniques in use long before the prison itself.

While it may appear like the prison seems to just spring up overnight, the techniques of

discipline had been long in development. This becomes Previously, the body was certainly an

object and important aspect of torture, however it’s role then was more instrumental to the

purposes of judicial punishment, than a focus of the exercise of power itself. “The classical age

discovered the body as object and target of power” (136). Foucault looks to Mettrie’s ​L’Homme

Machine​ to illustrates this. The book was built on extending Cartesian dualism to a materialist

conception of the soul, while simultaneously providing a theory of training for people. Perhaps

one of the first real attempts of studying and applying human sciences, this book, Foucault notes,

takes up an art of human ​dressage.​ This sort of training “joins the analysable body to the

manipulable body. A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved”

(136). This is an important step for the greater development and deployment of discipline, as it

sets the process apart from the brute force of the Scaffold. The disciplines develop in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not as mere punitive techniques but general formulas for

domination (137).

What about this synthesis of techniques that is so important to the development of the

prison? It is historically unprecedented. The disciplines were unique in their magnitude,

substance, and modality. The scale, or magnitude, of punishment has previously treated bodies in

mass. Under the disciplines, the individual is the center of attention. The substance, the body,

was no longer a subject of ritual engagement, but a subject of economic concern. The form of
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punishment had changed; no longer violent inflictions but supervision, and management of time

and space now constitute the actions of discipline on the subject.

What Foucault intends to show through this chapter is that “discipline is a history of

detail” (140). It engages in finely tuned observation and study. The prison is only one such

apparatus of discipline. In fact, Foucault notes Discipline and Punish is not a comprehensive

study of disciplinary apparatus, only an exploration of the prison, as well as some references to

military, educational, and industrial institutions. In a footnote, Foucault, notes that we can find

similar examples in colonization, slavery, and child rearing (314). The connections between

these topics do neatly or boldy present themselves. For example, Labor and production is

certainly related to slavery and industrial institutions, but only tangentially related to child

rearing or hospitals. It is certainly possible to unify these topics with the common theme of

oversight, observation, and surveillance. That topic certainly occurs in all of the topics found in

the book. Is this to say that the study would have appeared much the same had Foucault explored

slavery, or child rearing instead? Does Foucault recognize race and gender are prevalent forces

in these topics, or would a project around these topics be reduced to mere accessories to the

disciplinary apparatus? These potential projects might reveal similar relations of power

throughout history, but are not necessarily confined to a totalizing cause. This is the nature of

historical development to Foucault. We simply cannot account for every change in history to a

single source of causation.

3. How Discipline Works

What exactly are the Disciplines? Certainly, they are a method of punitive justice, but

they also extend into a realm that was previously alien to criminal justice. The focus is much less
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concerned with what laws have been transgressed, and instead seeks to learn about the criminal

themself, how they act, think, and behave. It is a form of power that implies “uninterrupted,

constant coercion, supervising the processes of the activity rather than its result and it is

exercised according to a codification that partitions as closely as possible time, space, and

movement” (137). Discipline is a form of power, and as a form of power it is a practice. It is a

practice that is both external and internal. It is a practice of control, subjectification, and

learning. Discipline is furthermore productive, bringing productivity, subjects, and knowledge as

its ends. Disciplines “produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The

individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production” (194).

Foucault argues that the modern disciplines operate through three discrete mechanisms:

Hierarchical observation, Normalizing Judgements, and the Examination. These are techniques

that operate on a subject, focus on and control the subjects mind and body. Perhaps one of the

most effective means of controlling someone is simply observing them. These this is directly

related to visual, physical arrangement of subjects, and general location of bodies. Hierarchical

observation joins with normalizing judgments together to form the examination of bodies.

Through this, individuals are subjectified, studied, measured, and compared to a norm. This

begins an inward self-correction that constitutes a disciplined individual.

In ​Discipline and Punish,​ Foucault introduces the idea of normalizing judgments as a

form of disciplinary power. Throughout the book, Foucault intends to show the way that the

disciplines form and shape an individual to produce a subject of control. The means and

instruments of discipline are exercised through hierarchical observation and normalizing

judgements and their combination as the examination. The examination as the combination of
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observation and normalized judgements functions as the most powerful disciplinary instrument,

and most clearly manifested in the form of the modern penitentiary. Normalizing judgments

provide not only a reference point for societal standards, but also an apparatus of self-discipline

and classification.

Normalizing judgments are the sort of comparative framework set all across a society.

They can categorize and label, or be used as a metric for examining and judging subjects. These

are often in the form of standards for conduct, like those set about in the military or in schools.

These sorts of standards appear as but can also take the form of psychological or even moral

assessment, developed by the human sciences. Normalization creates an ideal form of conduct or

mental state that is compared to a subject, to self-regulate, reflect, and modify conduct

accordingly.

No matter their exact form, normalizing judgments operate as a form of knowledge,

constructed with the function as a form of disciplinary power. Knowledge as power in this sense

means that this power is somewhat omnipresent. It simultaneously exists apart from any “true”

form of authority, or sovereign rule, yet is created and exercised by judges of normality. These

judges exist all across society, as teachers, doctors, social workers, and psychologists, and form

the basis of normality.

Judges of normality come into true power in the disciplinary society. While the prison is

the most prominent apparatus of disciplinary power, it is not the only institution exercising this

power. Disciplinary power is exercised all across society, within schools, hospitals, workplaces,

militaries, and psychiatric offices. These institutions exercise perpetual hierarchical observation,

and transport the disciplines across the social body through judges of normality. The school
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teacher grades the student, giving the standards for A-level work. The psychiatrist diagnoses a

mental disability, to be corrected with therapy or medication.

Extending these judgments, across the entirety of the social body seems at first to be

individualizing, perhaps even liberating, in the sense that each individual can recognize and

differentiate themselves uniquely, against their peers and neighbors. Foucault notes however that

this instead homogenizes members of the society, as they are now set against the same universal

standards, with the intent that each will orient to correcting themselves to this normal state. This

homogeneous society is homogenous insofar as the knowledge of normality is a product and

feature of the society itself.

4. The Aim of the Disciplines

We have examined the techniques by which the disciplines operate, but what is it exactly

they operate towards? To what end is disciplinary power exercised? It seems clear that

punishment itself can serve to deter certain people from certain actions, or crimes. While we

have cut off the kings head and moved into the era of disciplines, power can still operate in its

normal, repressive form. When Mao claims “political power comes out of the barrel of a gun”

he speaks of a true effect of the power of physical force. Certainly, violent threats are not the

most effective means of controlling every aspect of society. We see that the scaffold is not gone

because it is inhumane, but it is no longer as effective to meet the goals of a state. Discipline is

exercised for production. Not merely for the production of commodities and goods, but for social

production of subjects.

The barrel of a gun, and the scaffold like it, can get us only so far. We can force

individuals to be in one place, or conduct simple actions, but force does not bring out the best
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behaving, productive, and even moral subjects. We can see two responses to this problem.

Milton Friedman claimed in ​Capitalism and Freedom​ ““Given sufficient knowledge, it might be

that compulsion could be substituted for the incentive of reward, though I doubt that it could.

One can shuffle inanimate objects around; one can compel certain people to be at certain places

at certain times; but one can hardly compel individuals to put forward their best efforts“

(Friedman 1982). There is, however, a way that we can compel individuals to put their best

efforts forward, seemingly on their own accord. In the workplace, you can punish those that do

not arrive, or simply refuse to work, But you cannot easily punish or incentivise a worker to

perform the best of their abilities. To get efficient productivity, one needs a docile, useful body

that is continually approaching a standard of a “good worker”. This is the function of the

disciplines. To render a subject docile and useful, and instil in themselves an internalized power

relation aimed toward perpetual self correction to normalized standards.

To better understand the role of disciplines in the prison, we can see the role it takes

outside of criminal justice, in our normal daily life. When discussing power, Foucault intended

for us to reflect on our commonly held notions of power through the most graphic examples, like

that of a king ordering a public execution of a regicide. This should, as intended, conjure the

conception of power as a repressive force. A sort of power exercised by people of high social,

political, or economic status. It could be a dictator commanding his military to invade a

neighboring country, a judge sentencing a criminal to death, or even a parent grounding their

child. This repressive concept is not what Foucault sees as the most important, or even most

prevalent, form of power in normalizing power.

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To Foucault, power is not merely something held or brandished, only exercised. The

repressive form of power is that they are exercised in response to an action, or inaction, of the

repressed subject. The dictator invades when the neighboring country does not cooperate with

the regime, the criminal is condemned when they break a law, and the child is grounded for

misbehaving. What does it mean, then, if these subjects of repressive power had not acted in

these ways? Surely, the most powerful dictator is one that does as he pleases without firing a

single weapon. Likewise, the best parent is one with children that behave without being told.

This sort of power is brought about by discipline, which is in turn, driven by observation and

normalizing judgments. These normalizing judgements bring about “norms”, or standards. They

are constructive, forming “norms” that individuals are measured against.

Foucault’s analysis extends far beyond the prison. He remarks that these normalizing

judgments can be seen exercised in all disciplinary apparatuses, in the prison, military, hospital,

and schools. It is somewhat obvious how disciplinary power can operate in prisons and military,

as Foucault gives examples of the idea of the good soldier, or the psychiatric evaluations of

prisoners. The normalizing judgements and disciplinary methods found in hospitals and schools

are of particular interest to me. Exploring these topics should provide a better understanding of

the nitty-gritty “microphysics of power”, and further illuminate the disciplinary methods that are

found even beyond these institutions.

When Foucault speaks of discipline in the school, I imagine he means something along

the lines of the student/teacher relationship to some degree, but to a greater degree, the

relationship between student and upper-administration. In most public schools, students are

complete a number of assignments and and projects over a school year. Their performance is
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graded and these grades must average at minimum to C or higher. Failure to reach these

academic requirements means that the administration will hold back the student until they retake

their classes. These grades are measured by a degree away from an “ideal”, A-level, 100% work.

The good student is one that regularly receives high grades and does not need to be punished into

academic excellence. While grades are administered by the teacher through exams, ultimately

these grades are meant to be a reflection of the actual performance of the student, not of the

teachers opinions. From this perspective, the quality and value of the student is ultimately a

subject of their own individual control.

Through this perspective, some ties to Foucault’s disciplinary theory become clear. The

normalizing judgments placed on the student are not a hard-line distinctions. This normalizing

standard of student performance homogenizes the “society”, or the school. Every student is

measured by the same standards, and take the same tests as their peers. There is a also an

individualizing component within this homogenization, as each student can be ranked and

measured against one another. This homogenizing yet individualizing component is important to

Foucault’s analysis, reflecting his earlier claims of disciplinary power as a method employed by

all people, in even the lowest of social strata.

It’s not difficult to recognize the parallels between the prison examination and the

academic “exam”. Assignments and exams are the methods of observation and examination

employed by teachers and administration to identify and record the progress of students, and

determine their position against the normalizing academic standards. No student, ideally, earns

perfect scores perpetually without effort. It is expected that a student will fall short of this

standard in at least some way, and this grade will be presented to them without any
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accompanying punishment. To correct to a more perfect grade, the student themself must study

harder, or revise their methods, until they reach higher grades at their next examination. This sort

of self-regulating correction is characteristic of disciplinary power. The student is not forcefully

punished, but are self driven to correction. That is, until the end of their school year, in which

case if they have fallen behind the academic expectation, the school administers punishment to

hold the student back and start again. This is not to say that the disciplines ultimately serve under

the will of compulsion and forceful power, but that discipline is not the only form power takes in

the modern age. It is merely the most effective and widespread.

5. Normalization and the Disciplinary Society

Disciplines are not simply based on production, as a productive worker is just one of the

many sets of normative standards the disciplines can orient towards. The disciplinary

mechanisms extend throughout society. The disciplinary institutions, schools, hospitals,

barracks;proliferate and connect, forming a carceral archipelago. As these institutions exercise

disciplines, they produce knowledge of subjects, and impose normalizing judgments. They aren’t

a perfect cycle however, as there is still room for growth and development of norms and

sciences. Normativity is brought about by these forces, and are constituted by these forces.

Through the disciplines, knowledge of a subject allows for control, and the control of that subject

produces further knowledge.

In the chapter ​Complete and Austere institutions​ Foucault begins to pull threads and ideas

from each previous chapter, and shows how these techniques of discipline, changes in discourse,

and development of economic and judicial policies tie together to form the modern prison. In the

final chapters of ​Discipline & Punish,​ Foucault presents a sort of ideological critique to the
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supposed self-evident, egalitarian nature of the prison. Instead, Foucault argues that the prison

manifests with specific “goals”, to achieve certain ends, and its own self preservation.

It is all too easy to get carried away with Foucault’s ideological critique. Foucault is not

arguing that The prison was born out of a nefarious conspiracy of bourgeois and aristocratic

puppeteers, secretly crafting an apparatus to oppress the working class and reap economic

benefit. Instead the prison, much like the scaffold that preceded it, was constructed with a

rational aim, but not by any one person. It is born out of a multitude discourses, causes,

objectives, and forces, with central organizing force. The new prison is ​economically rational,

not in the sense that it produces money or wealth for any individual, but it is engaged with an

exchange of a sort of “punitive currency”. The prison is also ​productive​, not just in its attempts

to put prisoners to manual labor, but that the prison produces individuals out of the apparatus.

Detention becomes the standard punishment. Defying the aims of the reformers, the

judicial system has shifted to a one-size-fits-all method of punishment: the prison. Foucault

expects his audience to already recognize the failure and abhorrence of the modern prison. Even

though we have a clear objection to the prison, it seems like there aren’t any sensible

alternatives. The prison just seems self-evident, and necessarily better to have a flawed

institution rather than abolish the project entirely. Foucault notes multiple reasons for the

preservation of the prison. One such factor is that the prison appears to us as the most liberal,

egalitarian option of punishment. After all, our society holds liberty as a highest value, it’s a

good that “belongs to all in the same way and to which each individual is attached… by a

universal and constant feeling” (232). The loss of liberty is the perfect ‘egalitarian’ punishment,

compared to punishments like fines, which are much more severe to the poor and almost
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inconsequential to the rich. The prison is already wrapped up in this sort of terminology; crime is

seen as an injury, or theft, to society as a whole. Criminals are imprisoned in order to “pay one’s

debt” (233).

The prison was not ​merely an institution for the repayment of debts. From its inception,

the prison was designed for the purpose of reform and correction of criminal behavior. The

prison is “complete and austere” as it is designed to control every aspect of the prisoners life

(236). This was employed through different methods, from complete isolation, to experiments

with forced labor. No matter the method, the aim was to form prisoners into an ideal citizen. This

moved the prison to exceed function from mere detention. It employs disciplinary techniques to

create the ​penitentiary.​ The emergence of the penitentiary sufficiently established itself to the

judges and lawmakers as a self evident apparatus, with no question of dismantling it (248). It was

able to “entrap the whole of penal justice and imprison the judges themselves” (249). The

penitentiary is, in a sense, autonomous.

The penitentiary apparatus brings about a substitution (251). It receives a convicted

person from the courts, but must apply information of variables and background that were not

found in the conviction. The penitentiary apparatus substitutes the ​delinquent for the convicted

offender. The delinquent is different from the convict “by the fact that it is not so much his act as

his life that is relevant in characterizing him” (251). The penitentiary must examine the

delinquent from top to bottom, forming a biographical knowledge of their individual lives,

drawing out causes of the crime. Introducing the biographical establishes the “criminal” as

“existing before the crime, and even outside it” (252). The delinquent is also viewed as not being

the sole author of his acts, but driven to their offence by a whole network of instincts, drives,
 Stein 21

tendencies, and character (253). In short, a whole science of criminology emerges, producing

new categories of knowledge that distinguish the delinquent, and show deviations from norms.

Criminals are no longer defined by how they break the law, but how they differ from norms.

Foucault expands his analysis of the delinquents in the next chapter, and demonstrates that

delinquency, and in a sense criminality, arises ​with the prison. The prison is not a reactive

response to the problem of delinquency; it constitutes it.

In the early years of the penal system, the public display of criminals, usually a chain

gain, failed to induce their intended effects. Rather than warn a population of the threat of

imprisonment, the open display of convicts created a sentiment of comradery with criminals as

public heroes, and law enforcement as the enemy (257). Popular support of criminals

proliferated, and the prison had to adapt, and move criminals from the public eye. If prison is not

acting as a deterrent, it must hide the prisoners, and remain unseen. It’s not difficult to see the

similarities to the crisis of the scaffold. The modern state, much like the sovereign, eventually

failed to deter crime through representation. As a result, punishment had to shift to a focus on

action upon the individual criminal, rather than reinforcing the threat of the law through

spectacle display.

The prison, utilizing disciplinary power, is productive. The prison is not a form of

repressive power, and does not merely exists to prevent, or repress, crime. In fact, the prison is

an outright failure in this sense. From the moment of inception, the prison was recognized as

failing to reduce crime or reform criminals. Instead, we see that the prison increases recidivism,

and resentment towards law enforcement. One should begin to wonder why the prison exists at

all. Foucault’s answer is that the prison is ​not​ a failure, in the sense that it is achieving its
 Stein 22

function of producing precise functions, precisely because of its apparent immobility and self

evident nature. As shown in ​Complete and austere institutions​, the prison is “self-evident”, and

has a sort of clean fittingness with liberalism. The two systems are complementary, and sort of

evolve and develop alongside one another.

“Perhaps one should reverse the problem and ask oneself what is served by the failure of

the prison; what is the use of these different phenomena that are continually being criticized”

(272). Foucault presents an answer: the prison is not meant to eliminate offences, but to

distinguish them, distribute them, and use them; it is not a repressive “check” on illegalities. One

important factor that Foucault mentions is that we might get to eager to dismiss justice or the law

itself as serving one particular class. This is certainly part of his analysis, but it is also because

“the differential administration of illegalities through the mediation of penalty forms part of

those mechanism of domination” (272). What we should recognize here is that legal punishments

are just a part of the strategy to control illegalities.

Why would the prison system want to increase the production of criminals? Foucault’s

answer sounds surprisingly Marxist: producing criminals was strategically useful for driving and

reinforcing bourgeois domination. There were three important factors that arose between the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first was a newly arising political dimension of popular

illegalities. Practicing illegality was a resistance to the laws of the sovereign, and the public

began to recognize justice as biased, and class defined. The second factor was the development

of class struggles. The people began to see criminals as comrades, and turned this towards

political struggle to the state. The struggle was no longer against just tax farmers, financiers, or

kings agents, but against the law itself. Lastly, the new laws put into place people that would not
 Stein 23

have normally committed crimes into positions where they would begin to turn to illegal

activities. Those that would not have originally thought of themselves as criminals began to be

more sympathetic to criminality. These three factors converge in the nineteenth century to form a

new political outlook, to contribute to a “great fear” of criminal people (275). There is a change

from the view that crime is something that shows up in every social strata, inscribed in the hearts

of all men. Now, crime is exclusively seen as committed by a certain social class, and criminals

all comes from the lowest ranks of social order.

Now what is useful about delinquency? Associating crime with only the lower class

allows for the creation of, and subjectification, of the delinquent class. Throughout the first half

of the nineteenth century, the emerging middle classes became increasingly anxious and fearful

of the power of delinquency. But this is precisely what the prison reproduces. The delinquent is

perhaps one of the lowest concerns of political or economic danger. From this strategic view,

delinquency is good. The success of the prison is defining this delinquency (277).

Delinquency is useful for multiple purposes. Foucault outlines many aspects and

particulars of the function of delinquency, but it is ultimately understood as a tool of domination.

It is an instrument that allows for illegalities of dominant groups to remain unchecked (279). The

bourgeoisie benefit from illegal trading of prostitutions, arms, and drug trafficking. Prohibition

allows the existence of a field of illegal practices that can be utilized for profit (280). It is not

difficult to recognize the lasting effects of this today, and can apply to nearly every case of

prohibition. Delinquency is also a vehicle for surveillance. They acts as a means for authorities

to act as informants within a population. They can similarly insert illegalities into working-class

neighborhoods., and disrupt, destabilize, and destroy families, particularly of middle class
 Stein 24

activists. Delinquency, in short, is useful for creating and perpetuating domination of the

working class and strengthening the power of the bourgeoisie.

The conclusion Foucault is forming is striking, particularly because it feels unexpected

regarding the previous set up throughout ​Discipline & Punish.​ Throughout, Foucault outlines the

methods of disciplines, showing how power works from below, through individuals, and that

power acts productively rather than repressively. One of the notable aspects of Foucault’s project

is to separate the microphysics of power relations outside of the totalizing monolithic analysis of

capital. Yet, at the end we learn that the disciplines are not in function to reduce crime. Instead,

we learn that capital does perpetuate domination of lower classes through the prison. That is not

to say Foucault is inconsistent. The analysis is still not reducible to class relations and struggle,

but that ​one​ conclusion of this system is the domination and oppression of working class through

the criminal justice system.

The exact methods of domination and use of delinquency is not where Foucault’s

analysis should end. The point of most importance is not so much that delinquency is used as a

form of domination and control, but that delinquency is actually a product of power, and of

individualizing, subjectifying discipline. The delinquent is a categorical term, and development

of illegalities is a part of this creation of the delinquent. A person “becomes” a delinquent when

they are studies, measured, normalized, and categorized as such. The production of the

delinquent is the drawing of knowledge of individuals, and comparing, examining, and

contrasting them with a population. We, as the readers, are now equipped with tactics to

undermine this domination, and a method for understanding how other classes and power

relations may develop. With such a wide array of disciplinary apparati, it should follow that there
 Stein 25

are other things produced from different structures, for different functions. Furthermore,

knowing that delinquency was a product of the disciplinary process through the prison can allow

us to undermine the method of domination. Dispelling the notion that criminality is an aspect of

the working class rather than all humans is one such possible step. It is likely that ​Discipline &

Punish​ has more or less equal value as an analysis of social power relations as well as a sort of

quasi-prison-reform-manifesto.

6. The Purpose of ​Discipline and Punish

Foucault has now equipped the reader with a multitude of arguments that should raise

objections to the legitimacy of the prison. How has the prison, such an inefficient and crime

producing system been so resistant to reform? Foucault notes that the movement to reform the

prison itself was present from the beginning, and in this sense it is a ​feature of the prison itself.

The prison is not an “inert institution, shaken at intervals by reform movements” (235). The

prison is an ever-changing apparatus; designed from its inception to be self disciplining,

occupying an active field of investigation, study, and improvement. In other words, the prison

itself seems to be a subject of the disciplines. Prison reform movements are not a recognition of

failure, but a core function of the prison. Much like how the panopticon renders its prisoners to

automatic exercise of self correcting power, so too does the carceral apparatus to itself.

However, the reform and fine tuning of the prison are not oriented to the sort of

correction we expect. Foucault shows that reform movements of the 1940’s are word for word

identical to the proposals of the reformers in the 19th century (270). However, the prison is still

noted a complete failure, as it only reproduces crime. It must be noted that the prison is not a set

of different periods of success or failures of reform, but rather a single, simultaneous system of
 Stein 26

the juridical deprivation of liberty (271). “If the prison institution has survived for so long, with

such immobility, if the principle of penal detention has never seriously been questioned, it is no

doubt because this carceral system was deeply rooted and carried out certain very precise

functions” (271). Those functions, detailed in ​Illegalities and Delinquencies,​ are the production

of and reproduction of the delinquent class, the separation of illegalities from criminality, and the

continuous disciplining power of the carceral archipelago.

Now, we return to the question of why the prison has gone unquestioned. The prison has

certainly been critiqued, yet has remained the same. The prison, by its design, makes it appear

self-evident and necessary, despite functioning against its purpose. The prison produces crime

rather than reduces it. Why? Because its function is to reproduce the criminal justice system. To

produce crime gives function back to the criminal justice system in general. Keeping the criminal

justice system running allows for the strategic and productive deployment and disbursement of

illegalities.

Critique of the prison, it seems, should focus less on creating a more humane,

reformatory environment, but the abolition of prisons altogether. Of course, this is a fairly

unattractive position, and not one Foucault attempts to express in the text. Nevertheless, it’s not

difficult to understand why this book became such a tremendous force not only in the

philosophical community as an analysis of power, but to prison reform movements for opening a

new line of critique of criminal justice. Modern prison reform must assume that the unjust

practices within a prison, or the apparent failures of the justice system, are not born merely out of

direct control from a ruling class, but through a complex system of power relations, leaving no

true figurehead to be found. Furthermore, prison reform cannot orient towards merely correcting
 Stein 27

the “failures” or seemingly unintended products of the prison, because they are in actuality a part

of their purpose and design.

Foucault notes “If there is an overall political issue with the prison, it is not whether it is

to be corrective or not…The problem lies rather in the steep rise in the use of these mechanisms

of normalization and the wide-ranging powers which, through the proliferation of new

disciplines, they bring with them” (306). The text, although useful to the purposes of prison

reform movements, is concerned not with the prison itself, but discipline itself. We need to

understand the mechanisms of power, both past and present. This is necessary for future

engagement with these structures, figures, and effects in the modern world. Foucault wants our

engagement with history to not reveal the answers of how to solve problems, but to arm us to

address them ourselves. He notes in Volume II of ​History of Sexuality “There are times in life

when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive

differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all…

What is philosophy today… in what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to

what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already

known?” (Foucault 1990). We must think of ​Discipline and Punish as not our answer to our

questions of justice, prison, and penal reform, but as a guide to continually challenge and

question these institutions as they manifest today.

 Stein 28

References

Foucault, M. (1995). ​Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison​ (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New

York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, M. (1990). ​The History of Sexuality​ (Vol. II) (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage

Books.

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 (C.

Gordon, Ed.). New York: Pantheon.

Friedman, M. (2008). Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Poster, M. (1990). Foucault, Marxism and History: Mode of Production Versus Mode of

Information. Cambridge: Polity Press.