Imprisonment’s rapid acceptance is poorly explained by the prestige of reform models alone

Evidence

How then could detention, so evidently bound up with an illegality that was denounced even in the power of the prince, become in so short a time one of the most general forms of legal punishment? … The explanation most usually given is the formation, during the classical age, of a number of great models of punitive imprisonment. Their prestige, which was all the greater in that the most recent examples came from England and above all from America, appears to have made it possible to overcome the double obstacle constituted by the age-old rules of law and the despotic functioning of imprisonment. … But it is precisely these models that, before providing a solution, themselves pose problems: the problem of their existence and the problem of their diffusion. How were they able to come into being and, above all, how did they become so generally accepted? For it is easy to show that, although they correspond on a number of points with the general principles of penal reform, they fail to do so on an even greater number; sometimes they are even quite incompatible. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 195

Categorization

• QUESTION: Foucault rejects the standard diffusion-of-models story as insufficient — worth chasing his alternative causal explanation in subsequent chapters.
• XREF: connects to: Modern universal imprisonment was not the reformers’ original design — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 187; Reform rhetoric bolsters prison permanence and cannot meet corporate-era challenges — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 266; Prison reform is an integral part of the prison’s functioning, not its antidote — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 359 (+2 more)

Related

• Modern universal imprisonment was not the reformers’ original design (similarity 0.90)
• Prison resists reform because it relays a broad network of disciplines and surveillances. (similarity 0.83)
• Reform has always been proposed as the remedy for the prison’s failure (similarity 0.82)
• Prison reform is an integral part of the prison’s functioning, not its antidote (similarity 0.82)
• Prison integrated correctional transformation into legal detention from the start (similarity 0.81)
• The rise of the prison institutionalized the power to punish (similarity 0.81)
• The prison’s failure, reform, and discipline form one simultaneous carceral system (similarity 0.81)
• The prison’s failures were denounced at its very inception (similarity 0.81)
• The prison’s disciplinary excess over legal detention was present from its birth (similarity 0.80)
• The public spectacle of punishment gave way to enclosed hierarchized detention within decades. (similarity 0.80)
• The rise of imprisonment was historically novel, not a natural succession. (similarity 0.79)
• The prison was originally embraced as a humane replacement for capital and corporal punishment. (similarity 0.79)
• The penitentiary was framed as a progressive reform of its era. (similarity 0.79)
• Penal reform sought not less punishment but more universal, deeper social control (similarity 0.79)
• Penal reform arose from a policy shift, not new humanitarian feeling (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Prison reform is an integral part of the prison’s functioning, not its antidote #contradicts (0.83) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 359
• Even inequality-aversion models fail to explain punishment that is costly to the punisher #corroborates (0.82) — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 66
• Reform rhetoric bolsters prison permanence and cannot meet corporate-era challenges #complicates (0.78) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 266
• Prison reform rhetoric reinforces the prison’s permanence. #complicates (0.78)