In the first part of his book, Foucault presents a stark retelling of the grotesque and horrific public execution of Damiens the regicide in 1757, which is followed by a contrasting account of the documented prison rules inmates are subjected to in 1837.

As Foucault takes the reader on a journey through the past in order to better understand the conditions of the present, his audience is challenged to resist the temptation to perpetuate the penal path we chose to take centuries ago in hopes that the human sciences will become the agent of change necessary to actualize what we could become in the future.

Foucault’s work has been criticized for its obscurity and specialized language however, his unique use of prose is also one of his purposive stylistic techniques to illustrate how discourses, like institutions, are complex structures in which individuals can become easily trapped and confined without the knowledge needed to find their escape. The book is divided into four parts that convey how society’s response to crime evolved from torture to punishment to discipline and, ultimately, to the creation of the prison. As Foucault states, “This book is intended to be a correlative history of the modern soul and of a new power to judge a genealogy of the present scientifico-legal complex from which the power to punish derives its bases, justifications and rules, from which it extends and by which it masks its exorbitant singularity” (p. French philosopher, Michel Foucault’s book, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, is a radical reevaluation of our more mainstream assumptions regarding the role of penal institutions and their foundational purposes in advanced, sophisticated societies, where freedom and liberty are cherished. However, as corrections continue to undergo numerous reforms, scholars and policymakers might do well to revisit, critically reflect upon, and reexamine the socio-historical origins of the prison and its close relationship to power structures operating in the wider society. The ideological aims underpinning penal practice can be either myopically focused or quite diverse as they reflect the varying goals of retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. For hundreds of years, criminologists and penologists alike have investigated the various functions and designs, as well as the policies and practices that regulate the effectiveness of prisons as correctional institutions.

Foucault crime and punishment