18th Century Penal Reform Movement as Agent of Change

For Foucault, the agent of historical change is the late 18^th century penal reform movement, comprised of a broad set of “reformers” representing different motivations but with a similar objective – to better leverage the power of punishment across the “body politic” to achieve much more efficient results .  Interestingly, their goal was not the reduction of crime, but to “constitute a new economy and a new technology of the power to punish.” (89)  But these disparate reform groups, that included the philosophes, the parlementaires, and other social reform members of the public, would not have driven historical change without several environmental events.  Key was the increasing problem of illegality – illegality of property (theft), illegality of rights (fraud, counterfeiting, tax evasion) – and the decreasing willingness of the public to accept it, coupled with the inability of the sovereign-based judicial system to stem it, they enabled reform movements to take root.

 

Similar to both Bloch and Braudel, Foucault assesses many other factors (i.e, mentalite) in his historical analysis of the transition of the penal system from the monarch based and public execution system, to a closed model focused on coercing or controlling the individual with different techniques and technologies.  His concept of “political anatomy” is almost scientific in how he describes the power of the mind (or soul) over the body; there is a sociological feel to his discussion of cause and effect of punishment techniques, tactics and prison on achieving desired results.  For example, he discusses the training of soldiers and the ability to not only control their actions but the efficiency of their actions – lessons that can be applied to the control of the population at large as well as a prison population.  His discussion of the usage of time and the increasingly more detailed partitioning of time in industry, and how this was a mechanism for instilling the virtue of “disciplinary time” was similar to E. P. Thompson’s discussion of time.  In both, the concept of controlling individuals time and instituting rigorous discipline (using churches, schools as supporting the message) to achieve greater coercion of and increased productivity by the “body politic”.