SOCIAL AND CRIMINAL CONTROL

Social and Criminal Control



Social and Criminal Control

Introduction

French philosopher Michel Foucault was one of the most influential social theorists of the last quarter of the 20th century. In his works, Foucault used the style and techniques of the historian, the sociologist, and the anthropologist to reveal how power operated in the wider society and in what he describes as “the system of penalty.” (Miller 1993) For Foucault, an imposed order affected every level of society, defining the character of general social institutions and organizations such as government, hospitals, asylums, and prisons.

Discussion

Foucault sought the explanation of modern life in its historical origins. He believed that the social world of the past was an ordered place and that traces of that order could still be found. Foucault's reason for starting his text with the details of this dismemberment was to show the lengths that the state went to eradicate not only the crime but also the body and soul of the criminal. (Milchman 2003) To punish any crime it was thought necessary to mutilate or destroy the body of the criminal. For lesser criminals, such as thieves, the hand with which they offended was removed. Others were branded in a prominent place with a symbol or letter indicating their crime or sin for all to see. The “marked” man or woman could not go unnoticed and would be barred from contact with others, and moved on. Later, the punishment for lesser crimes was to remove the “body” entirely by banishment, exile, (MacIntyre 1990)or transportation to the colonies or some other far-away place.

Modern prisons retain many of the features and serve most of the functions that Foucault describes. Nonetheless, as society has moved on, so too has the system of discipline and punishment. Foucault depicted in later works, for example, the development of technologies of the self, where, to cope with increasingly broad and less absolute definition of crimes and deviance, the power of the state would become more diffuse and more intrusive in its effort to control. (Isenberg 1991) New forms of control evolve to see inside the family through child care and social work agencies, to see inside the minds and relations between parents and their children by the extension of compulsory education, to observe relations between parents and adults through attempts to regulate sexuality, abusive relationships, and forms of disempowerment. Foucault described and predicted how the Gaze and its associated discourse were and would continue to be a core feature of modern society.

"The rulers of eighteenth-century England cherished the death sentence," proclaims Douglas Hay. (McGowen 2000) He notes that between 1688 and 1820, the number of capital statutes grew from "about 50 to over 200", almost all of which concerned offences against property. Hay writes that the reason for this was a "conspiracy" of the propertied ruling class to enforce a "radical division of property", but he has run into criticism for having a narrow view of the administration of the criminal ...