PRISONS

 

Foucault challenges the idea that prisons exist because we've become more humane. Instead, he argues they're just a more subtle way to control people. He asks if it's surprising that prisons look like factories, schools, or hospitals, since they all resemble prisons. “Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions, to define, classify, control, and regulate people”(Foucault).This shows how control spreads throughout society, not just in prisons, but in any place that trains people to work and obey. At the center of this is the idea that discipline makes people, it's a method of power that treats people as objects. In capitalism, workers are turned into objects, shaped to fit into the work process. The prison system does something similar by disciplining those who don't fit in. But the control goes even further. Foucault points out that visibility is a trap and when people are watched, whether by a boss or a camera, they start to watch themselves. The effects of being watched last long after the actual watching stops, making people obedient. Capitalism benefits from having a controlled lower class and a group that makes people accept control. This leads us to a confused state of thought about the purpose of the prison system whether it is providing for justice, or is it existing to divide and control. Foucault uses the metaphor that the soul is the prison of the body to explain how control goes beyond physical walls. Even our inner selves become a place of punishment, filled with rules and self-monitoring. In The Spectacle of the Scaffold, Foucault reminds us that even gentle punishments still have cruel aspects, forced labour or even imprisonment has never functioned without a certain additional element of punishment, a trace of ‘torture’ enveloped by the non corporal nature of the system. This means that even subtle forms of punishment, such as financial hardship, isolation, or emotional damage, can still harm people deeply. We need to receive this thought into our thinking by not just considering all these prisons but also the way of thinking that turns people into objects, the watching that prevents resistance, and the systems that treat people differently instead of giving them justice.