Frameworks of Inquiry in the Sociology of Punishment
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The publication of Foucault's Discipline and Punish has changed the way we think about punishment and penal institutions. The effect of this book has been to stimulate a sudden and very welcome take-off in the sociology of punishment, but it has also imposed a particular direction which should be recognized as such. Discipline and Punish proposes a new way of thinking about punishment, which tries to reorient penological thought away from its conventional assumptions towards a new set of analytical terms. It offers not so much a theory of punishment as a mode of theorizing about punishment. It suggests rules for study, methods of analysis, and ways of seeing, all of which add up to a definite style of thought which has been widely influential. Foucault's rules for the interpretation of punishment are set out clearly near the beginning of Discipline and Punish, as he is about to commence his investigation of modem penal practice. They are sustained throughout all of the analyses which follow, and, in Foucault's handling of them, they help produce some of the most trenchant and illuminating analyses of punishment ever written. These rules of study are, however, perspectival, as Foucault himself acknowledges. They produce an interpretation from a particular viewpoint—“from the point of view of power”—and, as Discipline and Punish says quite clearly, other interpretations and other perspectives are also possible and may be equally illuminating. The problem is that the success of Discipline and Punish has tended to make its perspective seem definitive and its controversial and unorthodox ideas have come to define a new orthodoxy. We now think of punishment as power, and not just in terms of power. A consequence of this may be to mistake a deliberately partial account (in both senses of “partial”) for a general one which cannot really stand on its own. Foucault's insistence is that punishment be interpreted in terms of power. It is to be thought of as a set of power/knowledge techniques situated in a field of political forces—as a set of mechanisms for administering the bodies of individuals and, through them, the body politic. The history of punishment is to be understood as “a chapter of political anatomy”; as an expanding technology for gaining knowledge of, and power over, individuals, so as to subject their bodies, minds and actions to an imposed pattern of control. Penal policy is, in a profound sense, a political strategy of control. This doesn't amount to a theory of punishment because Foucault makes it clear that the nature of penal practices, as well as the strategies for their deployment are historically variable—in fact they tend to become more knowledgeable, more powerful and more rational over time. Nonetheless we are told how to theorize this developing object: we should “regard punishment as a political tactic”, focus upon its “positive effects”; conceive of it as a “technology of power”. Working within these rules, Discipline and Punish presents us with a description of punishment as “administrative practice”, “a technique of improvement”, a means for the “control and transformation of behavior”, and ultimately as a set of “disciplinary mechanisms”. Now if one stares hard at this framework, and refuses to be distracted by its new terms and its hypercritical tone, the characterization of punishment that emerges is fairly straightforward, and is developed around a single interpretive theme. Foucault is insisting upon what one might call the Benthamite orientation of modem punishment. He is characterizing penal institutions, practices and discourses as so many instruments for the administration, direction and ordering of individual conduct. This notion of punishment, stripped of its irrational features and oriented exclusively towards behavior-control, is precisely that which is set out by Jeremy Bentham in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. But there is a twist. Whereas Bentham set out his rationalistic control framework as an ideal to aim for, and deplored the ritualistic, nonutilitarian actualities of punishment, Foucault proceeds as if Benthamism is in fact a deep description of the actual nature of modem penal institutions. Bentham's vision is taken to be a reflection of the very nature of things-we live in a Benthamite world-and Foucault's rules press us to study it accordingly. Now Foucault is never explicit about this suggestion that Bentham's dream has become a reality, though he plays with the idea by using the Panopticon image to characterize the nature of modem society. But underlying this overblown figurative device there is a much more serious utilization of Bentham's approach as the key to understanding punishment. We are invited to approach the study of penal institutions on the assumption that everything that occurs there is fundamentally oriented to the enhancement of control and the maximization of regulative power. Everything from the practice of leniency to the creation of a recidivist delinquent class is to be seen as functional for control. The possibility of nonutilitarian procedures, irrational commitments or dysfunctional elements is thus precluded in advance. If such phenomena do seem to occur they simply force us to look elsewhere for their function—to keep searching until we uncover their hidden utility for power.
Source Publication
Classics of Criminology
Source Editors/Authors
Joseph E. Jacoby, Theresa A. Severance, Alan S. Bruce
Publication Date
2012
Edition
4
Recommended Citation
Garland, David W., "Frameworks of Inquiry in the Sociology of Punishment" (2012). Faculty Chapters. 673.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/673
