In order to develop an understanding of Michel Foucault’s book, “Discipline and punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977:95)”, it is necessary to underline the Nietzschean ‘genealogical’ style in which Foucault writes about the historical developments of the forms of punishment. His method throughout the book is a description of the ‘history of the present’, (Garland, 1990:p136 (11)) meaning that investigating the historical conditions acted as a ‘stepping-stone’ to which brought about the ‘contemporary issue or institution’, (ibid.). With that said, an integral part to support this particular style is the explanation of two contrasting forms of punishment; one being the public execution of a regicide, and the other a regimented timetable of an institutional reformatory 80 years later in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This shows an apparent ‘beginning and end’ to forms of punishment. It thus explains the change in penal styles which were determinant by the discourse of historical conditions; from public acts of physical violence onto the body to the emergence of more covert punishment within prison. Foucault consequently set about to identify this developmental process through his ‘power- knowledge’ concept. This provided him with the main source of analytical framework that he required when explaining the transition from ‘modern society to the ‘classical’ society which preceded it’, (ibid: p135). It is relevant, then, to expand on Foucault’s running theory of power and knowledge to determine the development and types of punishment stated in ‘discipline and punish’, but also to establish the degree at which Foucault’s ideologies are of relevant application to the current penal system.

Segmentation

Foucault’s book can be separated into four segments; torture, punishment, discipline and prison. In short, it delivered an account of ‘the great transformation’ from ‘corporal’ to ‘carceral’ punishment’, (Cavadino, Dignan, 2007:p73) rendering a running trend from the history of torture of the physical form to explaining the present punishment of prison. However, the transition from torture to the latter was not immediate. Due to the change in the economy, (that of which was changing in the favour of, in Marxist terms, ‘the ruling classes’) Foucault suggested that the rise of the middle classes gave way to an increase in criminal behaviour resulting in Jurisdiction distributing punishments that fitted the crimes, aiming these at the working class. The ‘gentle punishments’ came in the form of ‘chain gangs’; a public display to all as a deterrent of criminal activity and one of which reflects the offence committed. Foucault quotes Beccaria in his book, which states;

“The penalty must be made to conform as closely as possible to the nature of the offence, so that fear of punishment diverts the mind from the road along which the prospect of an advantageous crime was leading in”, (Foucault, 1977:95:p 104 (Beccaria, 119)).

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