Foucault takes the panopticon as a symbol of social organization on a much vaster scale. Anyone in a cell would expect that a guard in the tower might be watching them at any time, and so they never disobeyed, for fear of being caught. One of the main symbols of this process, and of the new regime of punishment, is something called the 'panopticon.' The Panopticon was a design for a prison that had a tall central tower and cells arranged in a circle around it. People learn to act in these institutions because they might be observed or examined at any moment. A barracks trains soldiers by giving everyone a function within a hierarchy, just as schools train students by giving everyone a grade and a place in the classroom. These institutions confine their members, give them a proper place or role, and constantly examine them or subject them to observation so that they start to act properly. Part Three of Discipline and Punish looks at how a number of institutions, including but not only the prison, were re-designed in the early 1800s with the aim of training people into correct behavior, just like the prison aims for reform more than retribution.

The criminal has violated a social code, and he needs to be reformed in order for the code to be repaired.

Second, there is a transition from thinking of crime as an injury to the sovereign to thinking of crime as a violation of social norms. First, there is a transition from a focus on the body to a focus on the soul: reforming the soul instead of punishing the body. The transition from torture to prisons then entails a number of other transitions. Moreover, in prison, the aim is not to inflict pain on the criminal’s body in retribution for his acts, but to reform his entire personality in order to prevent crime in the future. In prison, the criminal is taken away from social view rather than publicly displayed. Beginning in the 1800s, these public spectacles came to be replaced by more “delicate” means of punishment, ultimately culminating in imprisonment.

Up until the late 1700s, punishment for crimes was usually doled out by the sovereign of a country, such as a king, and came in the form of public torture or execution. The major transition Foucault describes, laid out in Parts One and Two of Discipline and Punish, is from punishment as a public spectacle to a private detention.

But by looking at a history of punishment, Foucault also theorizes how power operates in society, especially how people are trained in “correct” behavior. Foucault focuses on Western societies, especially France and England. Discipline and Punish is first of all a history of changing attitudes toward and practices of punishing crime in the late 1700s through mid 1800s.

Foucault crime and punishment