Imprisonment emerged with capitalism’s need for disciplined manpower

Evidence

The criminal has always been bourgeois—like the retribution which consists in robbing him of his freedom. In the Middle Ages the children of princes were imprisoned when they represented a disagreeable claim to an inheritance. Criminals, on the other hand, were tortured to death in order to imbue the mass of the population with a respect for law and order, because the example of severity and cruelty is supposed to have an educative effect. The regular punishment of imprisonment presupposes a growing need for manpower. It reflects the bourgeois way of life as suffering. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 204

Categorization

• QUESTION: Historical claim that prison as punishment presupposes a growing need for manpower — worth checking against actual carceral history (Foucault argues roughly similarly in Discipline and Punish).
• XREF: connects to: Prison expresses bourgeois labor’s logic rather than rehabilitation’s aim — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 204; Prison disciplined workers for industrial capitalism — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 115; The prison disciplined convicts into an industrial labor force (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Prison disciplined workers for industrial capitalism #corroborates (0.95) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 115
• The prison disciplined convicts into an industrial labor force #corroborates (0.90)
• Penal labour reshapes convicts mechanistically into docile, regularized workers #exemplifies (0.82) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 370
• Mass incarceration functions as a management system for surplus labor. #expands (0.80) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 244
• The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus #expands (0.78)
• Imprisonment became the primary punishment because it suited capitalist bourgeois ideology, not superior merit. #complicates (0.72) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 107
• Capitalism recast tolerated popular customs as criminal property theft #expands (0.72) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 143
• Penal reform sought not less punishment but more universal, deeper social control #qualifies (0.72) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 136