![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Imprisonment “was never really a punishment within the penal system” until the end of the eighteenth century (p. ![]() Historically, the punitive tactic of imprisonment, despite its appearance as an old punishment, is a late invention. Other criticisms against the institution include “prevent judicial power from checking and verifying the application of penalties,” “producing a veritable army of internal enemies,” and “encouraging delinquency” by offering conditions preferrable to that of workers (p. The institution’s property of “taking back into prison those who have left it” was not a hidden attribute of the institution that took long to discover (p. Practically, prisons were “dysfunctional from the start” (p. 237) and offered an analysis of disciplinary power.įoucault first justified the question of “Why prisons?” on practical, historical and theoretical grounds. In thirteen lectures, Foucault justified the question, explained how prisons became acceptable in Europe, illustrated the transformation from the acceptance of prisons to a punitive, or disciplinary, society (p. Why on earth are there prisons? An anachronistic question, one may reply, given that prisons have already been so prevalent and accepted in our society, but Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France in 1973, collected in The Punitive Society, convincingly demonstrate how warranted, rich and meaningful this question is. ![]()
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