Classifying the delinquent as a pathological subject is inseparable from politically isolating delinquency

Evidence

For the observation that prison fails to eliminate crime, one should perhaps substitute the hypothesis that prison has succeeded extremely well in producing delinquency, a specific type, a politically or economically less dangerous – and, on occasion, usable – form of illegality; in producing delinquents, in an apparently marginal, but in fact centrally supervised milieu; in producing the delinquent as a pathologized subject. The success of the prison, in the struggles around the law and illegalities, has been to specify a ‘delinquency’. We have seen how the carceral system substituted the ‘delinquent’ for the offender, and also superimposed upon juridical practice a whole horizon of possible knowledge. Now this process that constitutes delinquency as an object of knowledge is one with the political operation that dissociates illegalities and isolates delinquency from them. The prison is the hinge of these two mechanisms; it enables them to reinforce one another perpetually, to objectify the delinquency behind the offence, to solidify delinquency in the movement of illegalities. So successful has the prison been that, after a century and a half of ‘failures’, the prison still exists, producing the same results, and there is the greatest reluctance to dispense with it. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 426

Categorization

• XREF: The subject-as-object-of-knowledge mechanism mirrors the panopticon: knowledge production (classifying the delinquent) is one with political control (isolating him) — same double mechanism the reader is tracing in Oceania’s telescreens, where surveillance produces both knowledge and docility. — connects to: Police, prison, and delinquency form a self-reinforcing circuit producing delinquents — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 432; Fabricating delinquency gave criminal justice authority through a scientific horizon of truth — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 391

Related

• Police, prison, and delinquency form a self-reinforcing circuit producing delinquents (similarity 0.91)
• Fabricating delinquency gave criminal justice authority through a scientific horizon of truth (similarity 0.91)
• The prison and the delinquent are mutually produced in a single technological ensemble (similarity 0.89)
• The prison’s apparent failure is actually its designed success at producing delinquency (similarity 0.88)
• The penitentiary apparatus substitutes the delinquent for the offender. (similarity 0.85)
• Punishment doubled into an object relation producing the criminal as a known individual (similarity 0.82)
• Prisons function as schools of crime and organized delinquency (similarity 0.82)
• Enclosing delinquency in a supervised group neutralizes broader popular illegality (similarity 0.82)
• Penal codes keep stable while the substance judged shifts from crime to offender (similarity 0.80)
• The carceral regime extracts knowledge that converts punishment into a productive operation. (similarity 0.80)
• Penitentiary technique judges the criminal’s affinity with crime, not the act itself (similarity 0.80)
• Prisoner behavior control generated a continuous individualizing knowledge (similarity 0.80)
• The rise of the prison institutionalized the power to punish (similarity 0.79)
• Police recruited delinquents as informers by promising them indulgence (similarity 0.79)
• Penal justice entrapped itself by entering relations of knowledge. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Police, prison, and delinquency form a self-reinforcing circuit producing delinquents #expands (0.90) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 432
• Fabricating delinquency gave criminal justice authority through a scientific horizon of truth #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 391