Key Arguments

• Foucault notes that in under twenty years "the principle so clearly formulated in the Constituent Assembly, of specific, appropriate, effective penalties, constituting, in each case, a lesson for all, became the law of detention for every offence of any importance, except those requiring the death penalty."
• He summarizes the shift: "The theatre of punishment of which the eighteenth century dreamed and which would have acted essentially on the minds of the general public was replaced by the great uniform machinery of the prisons, whose network of immense buildings was to extend across France and Europe."
• He suggests that even this brief chronology might be too long, calling the change a "conjuring trick" and arguing "it occurred almost instantaneously", signifying a discontinuous and abrupt transformation.
• In Le Peletier’s bill, the principle of establishing "‘exact relations between the nature of the offence and the nature of the punishment’" is affirmed, but the actual severe penalties are reduced to three graded forms of detention (cachot, gêne, imprisonment proper), revealing a collapse of the promised diversity into a single penal form.
• A deputy (Chabroud) criticizes this uniformity with the ironic remark that every imaginable offence—from betraying one’s country to parricide—results in prison, "One might as well see a physician who has the same remedy for all ills", underscoring the perceived betrayal of the reformist ideal.
• Foucault shows this is not uniquely French: Catherine II’s and Beccaria‑inspired codes in Russia, Tuscany, and Austria proclaim that each penalty should derive from the "particular nature" of each crime, yet in practice they all make imprisonment, modulated mainly by duration (and sometimes branding or irons), the virtually uniform penalty across a wide range of crimes.

Source Quotes

A less extravagant, but more obstinate economy continued to build them throughout the nineteenth century. In under twenty years, in any case, the principle so clearly formulated in the Constituent Assembly, of specific, appropriate, effective penalties, constituting, in each case, a lesson for all, became the law of detention for every offence of any importance, except those requiring the death penalty. The theatre of punishment of which the eighteenth century dreamed and which would have acted essentially on the minds of the general public was replaced by the great uniform machinery of the prisons, whose network of immense buildings was to extend across France and Europe.

In under twenty years, in any case, the principle so clearly formulated in the Constituent Assembly, of specific, appropriate, effective penalties, constituting, in each case, a lesson for all, became the law of detention for every offence of any importance, except those requiring the death penalty. The theatre of punishment of which the eighteenth century dreamed and which would have acted essentially on the minds of the general public was replaced by the great uniform machinery of the prisons, whose network of immense buildings was to extend across France and Europe. But twenty years is perhaps too long a chronology for this conjuring trick.

One has only to look at the bill for the criminal code presented in the Constituent Assembly by Le Peletier. The principle stated at the outset is the need for ‘exact relations between the nature of the offence and the nature of the punishment’: physical pain should be inflicted on those who commit crimes of violence, hard labour on the idle, shame on those with degraded souls. But the severe penalties actually proposed are three forms of detention: the ‘cachot’, in which the penalty of imprisonment is augmented by various measures (solitude, a deprivation of light, restrictions on food); the ‘gêne’, in which these ancillary measures are attenuated, and lastly imprisonment proper, which is reduced to simple confinement.

The diversity, so solemnly promised, is reduced in the end to this grey, uniform penalty. Indeed, at the time, there were deputies who expressed surprise that, instead of establishing a natural relation between offences and penalties, a quite different plan had been adopted: ‘So that if I have betrayed my country, I go to prison; if I have killed my father, I go to prison; every imaginable offence is punished in the same uniform way. One might as well see a physician who has the same remedy for all ills’ (Chabroud, 618). This prompt substitution was not confined to France.

Key Concepts

• In under twenty years, in any case, the principle so clearly formulated in the Constituent Assembly, of specific, appropriate, effective penalties, constituting, in each case, a lesson for all, became the law of detention for every offence of any importance, except those requiring the death penalty.
• The theatre of punishment of which the eighteenth century dreamed and which would have acted essentially on the minds of the general public was replaced by the great uniform machinery of the prisons, whose network of immense buildings was to extend across France and Europe.
• The principle stated at the outset is the need for ‘exact relations between the nature of the offence and the nature of the punishment’
• ‘So that if I have betrayed my country, I go to prison; if I have killed my father, I go to prison; every imaginable offence is punished in the same uniform way. One might as well see a physician who has the same remedy for all ills’ (Chabroud, 618).

Context

Foucault juxtaposes the rhetoric of the Constituent Assembly and reformist codes with the actual penal forms they institute, highlighting the swift and nearly total substitution of analogical, varied punishments by generalized imprisonment in France, Russia, Tuscany, and Austria.