Key Arguments

• Foucault explicitly reframes the aim of reform: “The true objective of the reform movement, even in its most general formulations, was not so much to establish a new right to punish based on more equitable principles, as to set up a new ‘economy’ of the power to punish, to assure its better distribution… so that it should be distributed in homogeneous circuits capable of operating everywhere, in a continuous way, down to the finest grain of the social body.”
• He defines reform as a strategy of rearrangement aimed at efficiency and detail: “The reform of criminal law must be read as a strategy for the rearrangement of the power to punish, according to modalities that render it more regular, more effective, more constant and more detailed in its effects; in short, which increase its effects while diminishing its economic cost… and its political cost (by dissociating it from the arbitrariness of monarchical power).”
• He emphasizes dissociation from the system of venal offices and corruption: the new economy should diminish punishment’s “economic cost (that is to say, by dissociating it from the system of property, of buying and selling, of corruption in obtaining not only offices, but the decisions themselves)”.
• He adds that the new juridical theory reflects this power reorganization: “The new juridical theory of penality corresponds in fact to a new ‘political economy’ of the power to punish.”
• Foucault links this to his broader schema in which power must become coextensive with society: later in the passage he describes reform’s “primary objectives: to make of the punishment and repression of illegalities a regular function, coextensive with society; not to punish less, but to punish better… to insert the power to punish more deeply into the social body.”

Source Quotes

It was because he had brought the law into conflict with too many summary acts of justice (the jurisdictions of the provosts or police magistrates) or with administrative measures, that he paralysed normal justice, rendered it sometimes lenient and inconsistent, but sometimes over-hasty and severe.3 It was not so much, or not only, the privileges of justice, its arbitrariness, its archaic arrogance, its uncontrolled rights that were criticized; but rather the mixture of its weaknesses and excesses, its exaggerations and its loopholes, and above all the very principle of this mixture, the ‘super-power’ of the monarch. The true objective of the reform movement, even in its most general formulations, was not so much to establish a new right to punish based on more equitable principles, as to set up a new ‘economy’ of the power to punish, to assure its better distribution, so that it should be neither too concentrated at certain privileged points, nor too divided between opposing authorities; so that it should be distributed in homogeneous circuits capable of operating everywhere, in a continuous way, down to the finest grain of the social body.4 The reform of criminal law must be read as a strategy for the rearrangement of the power to punish, according to modalities that render it more regular, more effective, more constant and more detailed in its effects; in short, which increase its effects while diminishing its economic cost (that is to say, by dissociating it from the system of property, of buying and selling, of corruption in obtaining not only offices, but the decisions themselves) and its political cost (by dissociating it from the arbitrariness of monarchical power). The new juridical theory of penality corresponds in fact to a new ‘political economy’ of the power to punish.

The true objective of the reform movement, even in its most general formulations, was not so much to establish a new right to punish based on more equitable principles, as to set up a new ‘economy’ of the power to punish, to assure its better distribution, so that it should be neither too concentrated at certain privileged points, nor too divided between opposing authorities; so that it should be distributed in homogeneous circuits capable of operating everywhere, in a continuous way, down to the finest grain of the social body.4 The reform of criminal law must be read as a strategy for the rearrangement of the power to punish, according to modalities that render it more regular, more effective, more constant and more detailed in its effects; in short, which increase its effects while diminishing its economic cost (that is to say, by dissociating it from the system of property, of buying and selling, of corruption in obtaining not only offices, but the decisions themselves) and its political cost (by dissociating it from the arbitrariness of monarchical power). The new juridical theory of penality corresponds in fact to a new ‘political economy’ of the power to punish. This explains why the ‘reform’ did not have a single origin.

Key Concepts

• The true objective of the reform movement, even in its most general formulations, was not so much to establish a new right to punish based on more equitable principles, as to set up a new ‘economy’ of the power to punish
• so that it should be distributed in homogeneous circuits capable of operating everywhere, in a continuous way, down to the finest grain of the social body.
• The reform of criminal law must be read as a strategy for the rearrangement of the power to punish, according to modalities that render it more regular, more effective, more constant and more detailed in its effects;
• in short, which increase its effects while diminishing its economic cost
• The new juridical theory of penality corresponds in fact to a new ‘political economy’ of the power to punish.

Context

Still in ‘Generalized punishment’, Foucault draws the theoretical conclusion from the critique of monarchical super‑power, defining penal reform as a reconfiguration of punitive power’s distribution and functioning, rather than as a simple humanitarian or juridical improvement.