Key Arguments

• Foucault rejects the idea that imprisonment began as simple detention then acquired corrective functions: "One thing is clear: the prison was not at first a deprivation of liberty to which a technical function of correction was later added; it was from the outset a form of ‘legal detention’ entrusted with an additional corrective task, or an enterprise for reforming individuals that the deprivation of liberty allowed to function in the legal system."
• He stresses that from the codes of 1808 and 1810 onward, imprisonment was defined as a differentiated and purposeful mechanism: "imprisonment was never confused with mere deprivation of liberty. It was, or in any case had to be, a differentiated and finalized mechanism."
• Differentiation appears in the typology of institutions meant to correspond to types of inmates and ends: "the various types of prison – maison d’arrêt, maison de correction, maison centrale – ought in principle to correspond more or less to these differences and provide a punishment that would be not only graduated in intensity, but diversified in its ends."
• He quotes Real to show that the law explicitly assigns the prison a dual aim of reparation and amendment: "‘although the penalty fixed by the law has as its principal aim the reparation of the crime, it also desires the amendment of the guilty man’ (Real, 244)."
• The prison is defined as a ‘prison‑apparatus’ whose internal order must produce regeneration: "‘The order that must reign in the maison de force may contribute powerfully to the regeneration of the convicts; the vices of upbringing, the contagion of bad example, idleness … have given birth to crime. Well, let us try to close up all these sources of corruption; let the rules of a healthy morality be practised in the maisons de force; that, compelled to work, convicts may come in the end to like it; when they have reaped the reward, they will acquire the habit, the taste, the need for occupation; let them give each other the example of a laborious life; it will soon become a pure life; soon they will begin to know regret for the past, the first harbinger of a love of duty.’2"
• Summarizing Baltard’s term, Foucault characterizes prisons as ‘complete and austere institutions’ that must be exhaustive disciplinary apparatuses: "Baltard called them ‘complete and austere institutions’ (Baltard, 1829). In several respects, the prison must be an exhaustive disciplinary apparatus: it must assume responsibility for all aspects of the individual, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind; the prison, much more than the school, the workshop or the army, which always involved a certain specialization, is ‘omni-disciplinary’."
• He contends that the prison’s action must be uninterrupted and gapless, unlike partial institutions: "Moreover, the prison has neither exterior nor gap; it cannot be interrupted, except when its task is totally completed; its action on the individual must be uninterrupted: an unceasing discipline."
• Disciplinary power in prison is described as nearly absolute: "Lastly, it gives almost total power over the prisoners; it has its internal mechanisms of repression and punishment: a despotic discipline. It carries to their greatest intensity all the procedures to be found in the other disciplinary mechanisms."
• Lucas’s description, cited by Foucault, details the prison’s total educational control over time, space, body, and even thought: "‘In prison the government may dispose of the liberty of the person and of the time of the prisoner; from then on, one can imagine the power of the education which, not only in a day, but in the succession of days and even years, may regulate for man the time of waking and sleeping, of activity and rest, the number and duration of meals, the quality and ration of food, the nature and product of labour, the time of prayer, the use of speech and even, so to speak, that of thought, that education which, in the short, simple journeys from refectory to workshop, from workshop to the cell, regulates the movements of the body, and even in moments of rest, determines the use of time, the time-table, this education, which, in short, takes possession of man as a whole, of all the physical and moral faculties that are in him and of the time in which he is himself’ (Lucas, II, 123–4)."
• Foucault concludes that such a complete ‘reformatory’ institutes a new ‘recoding of existence’ distinct from both mere juridical deprivation of liberty and the earlier exemplary spectacle: "This complete ‘reformatory’ lays down a recoding of existence very different from the mere juridical deprivation of liberty and very different, too, from the simple mechanism of exempla imagined by the reformers at the time of the idéologues."

Source Quotes

And it is this double functioning that immediately gave it its solidity. One thing is clear: the prison was not at first a deprivation of liberty to which a technical function of correction was later added; it was from the outset a form of ‘legal detention’ entrusted with an additional corrective task, or an enterprise for reforming individuals that the deprivation of liberty allowed to function in the legal system. In short, penal imprisonment, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, covered both the deprivation of liberty and the technical transformation of individuals.

One thing is clear: the prison was not at first a deprivation of liberty to which a technical function of correction was later added; it was from the outset a form of ‘legal detention’ entrusted with an additional corrective task, or an enterprise for reforming individuals that the deprivation of liberty allowed to function in the legal system. In short, penal imprisonment, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, covered both the deprivation of liberty and the technical transformation of individuals. Let us remember a number of facts.

In the codes of 1808 and 1810, and the measures that immediately preceded or followed them, imprisonment was never confused with mere deprivation of liberty. It was, or in any case had to be, a differentiated and finalized mechanism. Differentiated because it had to have the same form, whether the prisoner had been sentenced or was merely accused, whether he was a minor offender or a criminal: the various types of prison – maison d’arrêt, maison de correction, maison centrale – ought in principle to correspond more or less to these differences and provide a punishment that would be not only graduated in intensity, but diversified in its ends.

It was, or in any case had to be, a differentiated and finalized mechanism. Differentiated because it had to have the same form, whether the prisoner had been sentenced or was merely accused, whether he was a minor offender or a criminal: the various types of prison – maison d’arrêt, maison de correction, maison centrale – ought in principle to correspond more or less to these differences and provide a punishment that would be not only graduated in intensity, but diversified in its ends. For the prison has a purpose, which is laid down at the outset: ‘The law inflicting penalties, some of which are more serious than others, cannot allow the individual condemned to light penalties to be imprisoned in the same place as the criminal condemned to more serious penalties … although the penalty fixed by the law has as its principal aim the reparation of the crime, it also desires the amendment of the guilty man’ (Real, 244).

Differentiated because it had to have the same form, whether the prisoner had been sentenced or was merely accused, whether he was a minor offender or a criminal: the various types of prison – maison d’arrêt, maison de correction, maison centrale – ought in principle to correspond more or less to these differences and provide a punishment that would be not only graduated in intensity, but diversified in its ends. For the prison has a purpose, which is laid down at the outset: ‘The law inflicting penalties, some of which are more serious than others, cannot allow the individual condemned to light penalties to be imprisoned in the same place as the criminal condemned to more serious penalties … although the penalty fixed by the law has as its principal aim the reparation of the crime, it also desires the amendment of the guilty man’ (Real, 244). And this transformation must be one of the internal effects of imprisonment.

Baltard called them ‘complete and austere institutions’ (Baltard, 1829). In several respects, the prison must be an exhaustive disciplinary apparatus: it must assume responsibility for all aspects of the individual, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind; the prison, much more than the school, the workshop or the army, which always involved a certain specialization, is ‘omni-disciplinary’. Moreover, the prison has neither exterior nor gap; it cannot be interrupted, except when its task is totally completed; its action on the individual must be uninterrupted: an unceasing discipline.

In several respects, the prison must be an exhaustive disciplinary apparatus: it must assume responsibility for all aspects of the individual, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind; the prison, much more than the school, the workshop or the army, which always involved a certain specialization, is ‘omni-disciplinary’. Moreover, the prison has neither exterior nor gap; it cannot be interrupted, except when its task is totally completed; its action on the individual must be uninterrupted: an unceasing discipline. Lastly, it gives almost total power over the prisoners; it has its internal mechanisms of repression and punishment: a despotic discipline.

Moreover, the prison has neither exterior nor gap; it cannot be interrupted, except when its task is totally completed; its action on the individual must be uninterrupted: an unceasing discipline. Lastly, it gives almost total power over the prisoners; it has its internal mechanisms of repression and punishment: a despotic discipline. It carries to their greatest intensity all the procedures to be found in the other disciplinary mechanisms.

It carries to their greatest intensity all the procedures to be found in the other disciplinary mechanisms. It must be the most powerful machinery for imposing a new form on the perverted individual; its mode of action is the constraint of a total education: ‘In prison the government may dispose of the liberty of the person and of the time of the prisoner; from then on, one can imagine the power of the education which, not only in a day, but in the succession of days and even years, may regulate for man the time of waking and sleeping, of activity and rest, the number and duration of meals, the quality and ration of food, the nature and product of labour, the time of prayer, the use of speech and even, so to speak, that of thought, that education which, in the short, simple journeys from refectory to workshop, from workshop to the cell, regulates the movements of the body, and even in moments of rest, determines the use of time, the time-table, this education, which, in short, takes possession of man as a whole, of all the physical and moral faculties that are in him and of the time in which he is himself’ (Lucas, II, 123–4). This complete ‘reformatory’ lays down a recoding of existence very different from the mere juridical deprivation of liberty and very different, too, from the simple mechanism of exempla imagined by the reformers at the time of the idéologues.

It must be the most powerful machinery for imposing a new form on the perverted individual; its mode of action is the constraint of a total education: ‘In prison the government may dispose of the liberty of the person and of the time of the prisoner; from then on, one can imagine the power of the education which, not only in a day, but in the succession of days and even years, may regulate for man the time of waking and sleeping, of activity and rest, the number and duration of meals, the quality and ration of food, the nature and product of labour, the time of prayer, the use of speech and even, so to speak, that of thought, that education which, in the short, simple journeys from refectory to workshop, from workshop to the cell, regulates the movements of the body, and even in moments of rest, determines the use of time, the time-table, this education, which, in short, takes possession of man as a whole, of all the physical and moral faculties that are in him and of the time in which he is himself’ (Lucas, II, 123–4). This complete ‘reformatory’ lays down a recoding of existence very different from the mere juridical deprivation of liberty and very different, too, from the simple mechanism of exempla imagined by the reformers at the time of the idéologues. 1.

Key Concepts

• the prison was not at first a deprivation of liberty to which a technical function of correction was later added; it was from the outset a form of ‘legal detention’ entrusted with an additional corrective task, or an enterprise for reforming individuals that the deprivation of liberty allowed to function in the legal system.
• penal imprisonment, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, covered both the deprivation of liberty and the technical transformation of individuals.
• it was, or in any case had to be, a differentiated and finalized mechanism.
• the various types of prison – maison d’arrêt, maison de correction, maison centrale – ought in principle to correspond more or less to these differences and provide a punishment that would be not only graduated in intensity, but diversified in its ends.
• although the penalty fixed by the law has as its principal aim the reparation of the crime, it also desires the amendment of the guilty man’ (Real, 244).
• the prison must be an exhaustive disciplinary apparatus: it must assume responsibility for all aspects of the individual, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind; the prison, much more than the school, the workshop or the army, which always involved a certain specialization, is ‘omni-disciplinary’.
• it cannot be interrupted, except when its task is totally completed; its action on the individual must be uninterrupted: an unceasing discipline.
• it gives almost total power over the prisoners; it has its internal mechanisms of repression and punishment: a despotic discipline.
• this education, which, in short, takes possession of man as a whole, of all the physical and moral faculties that are in him and of the time in which he is himself’ (Lucas, II, 123–4).
• This complete ‘reformatory’ lays down a recoding of existence very different from the mere juridical deprivation of liberty and very different, too, from the simple mechanism of exempla imagined by the reformers at the time of the idéologues.

Context

Middle of ‘Complete and austere institutions’, where Foucault clarifies that prison is structurally a disciplinary–corrective apparatus rather than simple detention, and characterizes it as an omni‑disciplinary, continuous, totalizing mechanism of ‘education’ and reform.