Key Arguments

• Foucault notes that early in the nineteenth century imprisonment quickly appeared as the only conceivable penalty, banishing reformers’ other proposals: "it appeared so bound up and at such a deep level with the very functioning of society that it banished into oblivion all the other punishments that the eighteenth-century reformers had imagined. It seemed to have no alternative, as if carried along by the very movement of history."
• This ‘self‑evidence’ persists despite the recognized failure and dangers of prison: "We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot ‘see’ how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without."
• The first basis is the simple form of deprivation of liberty in a society that values liberty equally for all: "This ‘self-evident’ character of the prison, which we find so difficult to abandon, is based first of all on the simple form of ‘deprivation of liberty’. How could prison not be the penalty par excellence in a society in which liberty is a good that belongs to all in the same way and to which each individual is attached, as Duport put it, by a ‘universal and constant’ feeling?"
• Because liberty is presumed identical for all, its loss appears egalitarian, unlike monetary fines: "Its loss has therefore the same value for all; unlike the fine, it is an ‘egalitarian’ punishment. The prison is the clearest, simplest, most equitable of penalties."
• A second juridico‑economic element is the measurability of detention in homogeneous time, analogous to wages: "Moreover, it makes it possible to quantify the penalty exactly according to the variable of time. There is a wages-form of imprisonment that constitutes, in industrial societies, its economic ‘self-evidence’ – and enables it to appear as a reparation."
• Imprisonment in time units symbolizes reparation of an injury to society; hence the pervasive notion of ‘paying one’s debt’: "By levying on the time of the prisoner, the prison seems to express in concrete terms the idea that the offence has injured, beyond the victim, society as a whole. There is an economico-moral self-evidence of a penality that metes out punishments in days, months and years and draws up quantitative equivalences between offences and durations. Hence the expression, so frequently heard, so consistent with the functioning of punishments, though contrary to the strict theory of penal law, that one is in prison in order to ‘pay one’s debt’."
• Foucault generalizes that prison appears ‘natural’ in the same way time‑based exchange does in modern societies: "The prison is ‘natural’, just as the use of time to measure exchanges is ‘natural’ in our society."
• The second, technico‑disciplinary basis is the prison’s continuity with other disciplinary institutions, which makes its corrective role seem obvious: "But the self-evidence of the prison is also based on its role, supposed or demanded, as an apparatus for transforming individuals. How could the prison not be immediately accepted when, by locking up, retraining and rendering docile, it merely reproduces, with a little more emphasis, all the mechanisms that are to be found in the social body? The prison is like a rather disciplined barracks, a strict school, a dark workshop, but not qualitatively different."
• He concludes that this double foundation made prison seem the most civilized form of penalty and gave it structural solidity: "This double foundation – juridico-economic on the one hand, technico-disciplinary on the other – made the prison seem the most immediate and civilized form of all penalties. And it is this double functioning that immediately gave it its solidity."

Source Quotes

In the first years of the nineteenth century, people were still aware of its novelty; and yet it appeared so bound up and at such a deep level with the very functioning of society that it banished into oblivion all the other punishments that the eighteenth-century reformers had imagined. It seemed to have no alternative, as if carried along by the very movement of history: ‘It is not chance, it is not the whim of the legislator that have made imprisonment the base and almost the entire edifice of our present penal scale: it is the progress of ideas and the improvement in morals’ (Van Meenan, 529–30). And, although, in a little over a century, this self-evident character has become transformed, it has not disappeared.

And, although, in a little over a century, this self-evident character has become transformed, it has not disappeared. We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot ‘see’ how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without. This ‘self-evident’ character of the prison, which we find so difficult to abandon, is based first of all on the simple form of ‘deprivation of liberty’.

It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without. This ‘self-evident’ character of the prison, which we find so difficult to abandon, is based first of all on the simple form of ‘deprivation of liberty’. How could prison not be the penalty par excellence in a society in which liberty is a good that belongs to all in the same way and to which each individual is attached, as Duport put it, by a ‘universal and constant’ feeling?

How could prison not be the penalty par excellence in a society in which liberty is a good that belongs to all in the same way and to which each individual is attached, as Duport put it, by a ‘universal and constant’ feeling? Its loss has therefore the same value for all; unlike the fine, it is an ‘egalitarian’ punishment. The prison is the clearest, simplest, most equitable of penalties. Moreover, it makes it possible to quantify the penalty exactly according to the variable of time.

The prison is the clearest, simplest, most equitable of penalties. Moreover, it makes it possible to quantify the penalty exactly according to the variable of time. There is a wages-form of imprisonment that constitutes, in industrial societies, its economic ‘self-evidence’ – and enables it to appear as a reparation. By levying on the time of the prisoner, the prison seems to express in concrete terms the idea that the offence has injured, beyond the victim, society as a whole.

By levying on the time of the prisoner, the prison seems to express in concrete terms the idea that the offence has injured, beyond the victim, society as a whole. There is an economico-moral self-evidence of a penality that metes out punishments in days, months and years and draws up quantitative equivalences between offences and durations. Hence the expression, so frequently heard, so consistent with the functioning of punishments, though contrary to the strict theory of penal law, that one is in prison in order to ‘pay one’s debt’.

There is an economico-moral self-evidence of a penality that metes out punishments in days, months and years and draws up quantitative equivalences between offences and durations. Hence the expression, so frequently heard, so consistent with the functioning of punishments, though contrary to the strict theory of penal law, that one is in prison in order to ‘pay one’s debt’. The prison is ‘natural’, just as the use of time to measure exchanges is ‘natural’ in our society.1 But the self-evidence of the prison is also based on its role, supposed or demanded, as an apparatus for transforming individuals. How could the prison not be immediately accepted when, by locking up, retraining and rendering docile, it merely reproduces, with a little more emphasis, all the mechanisms that are to be found in the social body?

The prison is ‘natural’, just as the use of time to measure exchanges is ‘natural’ in our society.1 But the self-evidence of the prison is also based on its role, supposed or demanded, as an apparatus for transforming individuals. How could the prison not be immediately accepted when, by locking up, retraining and rendering docile, it merely reproduces, with a little more emphasis, all the mechanisms that are to be found in the social body? The prison is like a rather disciplined barracks, a strict school, a dark workshop, but not qualitatively different. This double foundation – juridico-economic on the one hand, technico-disciplinary on the other – made the prison seem the most immediate and civilized form of all penalties.

The prison is like a rather disciplined barracks, a strict school, a dark workshop, but not qualitatively different. This double foundation – juridico-economic on the one hand, technico-disciplinary on the other – made the prison seem the most immediate and civilized form of all penalties. 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.

Key Concepts

• It seemed to have no alternative, as if carried along by the very movement of history: ‘It is not chance, it is not the whim of the legislator that have made imprisonment the base and almost the entire edifice of our present penal scale: it is the progress of ideas and the improvement in morals’ (Van Meenan, 529–30).
• We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot ‘see’ how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without.
• This ‘self-evident’ character of the prison, which we find so difficult to abandon, is based first of all on the simple form of ‘deprivation of liberty’.
• Its loss has therefore the same value for all; unlike the fine, it is an ‘egalitarian’ punishment. The prison is the clearest, simplest, most equitable of penalties.
• Moreover, it makes it possible to quantify the penalty exactly according to the variable of time. There is a wages-form of imprisonment that constitutes, in industrial societies, its economic ‘self-evidence’ – and enables it to appear as a reparation.
• There is an economico-moral self-evidence of a penality that metes out punishments in days, months and years and draws up quantitative equivalences between offences and durations.
• Hence the expression, so frequently heard, so consistent with the functioning of punishments, though contrary to the strict theory of penal law, that one is in prison in order to ‘pay one’s debt’. The prison is ‘natural’, just as the use of time to measure exchanges is ‘natural’ in our society.1
• How could the prison not be immediately accepted when, by locking up, retraining and rendering docile, it merely reproduces, with a little more emphasis, all the mechanisms that are to be found in the social body? The prison is like a rather disciplined barracks, a strict school, a dark workshop, but not qualitatively different.
• This double foundation – juridico-economic on the one hand, technico-disciplinary on the other – made the prison seem the most immediate and civilized form of all penalties. And it is this double functioning that immediately gave it its solidity.

Context

Still in the first half of ‘Complete and austere institutions’, where Foucault explains why imprisonment so rapidly became, and remains, the apparently natural and irreplaceable form of punishment in modern, liberty‑ and time‑based societies.