Key Arguments

• Foucault defines the social injury caused by crime as its capacity to initiate disorders, not primarily its material damage: "the injury that a crime inflicts upon the social body is the disorder that it introduces into it: the scandal that it gives rise to, the example that it gives, the incitement to repeat it if it is not punished, the possibility of becoming widespread that it bears within it."
• He states the new objective: "In order to be useful, punishment must have as its objective the consequences of the crime, that is to say, the series of disorders that it is capable of initiating."
• He quotes Filangieri to fix the principle: "‘The proportion between the penalty and the quality of the offence is determined by the influence that the violation of the pact has on the social order’ (Filangieri, 214)."
• He stresses that the influence of crime is not proportional to its horror: "But this influence of a crime is not necessarily in direct proportion to its horror; a crime that horrifies the conscience is often of less effect than an offence that everyone tolerates and feels quite ready to imitate."
• He contrasts the scarcity of great crimes with the danger of ordinary ones: "There is a scarcity of great crimes; on the other hand, there is the danger that everyday offences may multiply."
• He explicitly rejects an equivalence of horror between crime and punishment: "So one must not seek a qualitative relation between the crime and its punishment, an equivalence of horror: ‘Can the cries of a wretch in torment bring back from the depths of a past that cannot return an action that has already been committed?’ (Beccaria, 87)."
• He formulates the shift in temporal orientation: "One must calculate a penalty in terms not of the crime, but of its possible repetition. One must take into account not the past offence, but the future disorder. Things must be so arranged that the malefactor can have neither any desire to repeat his offence, nor any possibility of having imitators."
• He summarizes the new quantitative principle of example: "One must punish exactly enough to prevent repetition."

Source Quotes

It would be useful to the extent that it could make reparation for ‘the harm done to society’ (Pastoret, II, 21). Now, if one sets aside the strictly material damage – which even when it is irreparable as in the case of a murder is of little account in relation to society as a whole – the injury that a crime inflicts upon the social body is the disorder that it introduces into it: the scandal that it gives rise to, the example that it gives, the incitement to repeat it if it is not punished, the possibility of becoming widespread that it bears within it. In order to be useful, punishment must have as its objective the consequences of the crime, that is to say, the series of disorders that it is capable of initiating: ‘The proportion between the penalty and the quality of the offence is determined by the influence that the violation of the pact has on the social order’ (Filangieri, 214).

Now, if one sets aside the strictly material damage – which even when it is irreparable as in the case of a murder is of little account in relation to society as a whole – the injury that a crime inflicts upon the social body is the disorder that it introduces into it: the scandal that it gives rise to, the example that it gives, the incitement to repeat it if it is not punished, the possibility of becoming widespread that it bears within it. In order to be useful, punishment must have as its objective the consequences of the crime, that is to say, the series of disorders that it is capable of initiating: ‘The proportion between the penalty and the quality of the offence is determined by the influence that the violation of the pact has on the social order’ (Filangieri, 214). But this influence of a crime is not necessarily in direct proportion to its horror; a crime that horrifies the conscience is often of less effect than an offence that everyone tolerates and feels quite ready to imitate.

(Beccaria, 87). One must calculate a penalty in terms not of the crime, but of its possible repetition. One must take into account not the past offence, but the future disorder. Things must be so arranged that the malefactor can have neither any desire to repeat his offence, nor any possibility of having imitators.8 Punishment, then, will be an art of effects; rather than opposing the enormity of the penalty to the enormity of the crime, one must adjust to one another the two series that follow from the crime: its own effects and those of the penalty.

One must take into account not the past offence, but the future disorder. Things must be so arranged that the malefactor can have neither any desire to repeat his offence, nor any possibility of having imitators.8 Punishment, then, will be an art of effects; rather than opposing the enormity of the penalty to the enormity of the crime, one must adjust to one another the two series that follow from the crime: its own effects and those of the penalty. A crime without a dynasty does not call for punishment; any more than, according to another version of the same fable, a society on the verge of dissolution and disappearance would have the right to erect scaffolds.

But the difference was that the prevention that was expected as an effect of the punishment and its spectacle – and therefore of its excess – tended now to become the principle of its economy and the measure of its just proportions. One must punish exactly enough to prevent repetition. There is, then, a shift in the mechanics of example: in a penality employing public torture and execution, example was the answer to the crime; it had, by a sort of twin manifestation, to show the crime and at the same time to show the sovereign power that mastered it; in a penality calculated according to its own effects, example must refer back to the crime, but in the most discreet way possible and with the greatest possible economy indicate the intervention of power; ideally, too, it should prevent any subsequent reappearance of either.

Key Concepts

• the injury that a crime inflicts upon the social body is the disorder that it introduces into it: the scandal that it gives rise to, the example that it gives, the incitement to repeat it if it is not punished, the possibility of becoming widespread that it bears within it.
• In order to be useful, punishment must have as its objective the consequences of the crime, that is to say, the series of disorders that it is capable of initiating:
• ‘The proportion between the penalty and the quality of the offence is determined by the influence that the violation of the pact has on the social order’ (Filangieri, 214).
• One must calculate a penalty in terms not of the crime, but of its possible repetition. One must take into account not the past offence, but the future disorder.
• Things must be so arranged that the malefactor can have neither any desire to repeat his offence, nor any possibility of having imitators.
• One must punish exactly enough to prevent repetition.

Context

Middle of the passage, where Foucault moves from the ‘ultimate crime’ fable to a general statement of the preventive, future‑oriented calculus of punishment that becomes central in the reformers’ ‘political economy’ of the penal system.