Penal codes keep stable while the substance judged shifts from crime to offender

Evidence

By this I do not mean that one has suddenly set about punishing other crimes. No doubt the definition of offences, the hierarchy of their seriousness, the margins of indulgence, what was tolerated in fact and what was legally permitted – all this has considerably changed over the last 200 years; many crimes have ceased to be so because they were bound up with a certain exercise of religious authority or a particular type of economic activity; blasphemy has lost its status as a crime; smuggling and domestic larceny some of their seriousness. But these displacements are perhaps not the most important fact: the division between the permitted and the forbidden has preserved a certain constancy from one century to another. On the other hand, ‘crime’, the object with which penal practice is concerned, has profoundly altered: the quality, the nature, in a sense the substance of which the punishable element is made, rather than its formal definition. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 58

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s panopticon analysis: institutions can preserve outward form while shifting their true object of control. — connects to: Penal reform shifted punishment from the act to the offender’s character — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 160; Punishment doubled into an object relation producing the criminal as a known individual — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 163; Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 374 (+1 more)

Related

• Penal reform shifted punishment from the act to the offender’s character (similarity 0.89)
• Penal reform succeeded by managing illegalities differentially, not eliminating them (similarity 0.85)
• Penal reform aimed to increase punishment’s effects while lowering its costs. (similarity 0.85)
• Penal power shifted from judging acts to interrogating the criminal’s identity. (similarity 0.84)
• Penal reform arose from a policy shift, not new humanitarian feeling (similarity 0.84)
• The respectful ‘humanity’ of the criminal became the target of correction (similarity 0.84)
• Modern penal practice replaced the act-question with the identity-question (similarity 0.83)
• Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime (similarity 0.83)
• Penal reform sought not less punishment but more universal, deeper social control (similarity 0.82)
• Late-nineteenth-century penal reforms shifted punishment from the offense to the offender (similarity 0.82)
• The penitentiary apparatus substitutes the delinquent for the offender. (similarity 0.82)
• Punishment’s severity must aim at future prevention, not past harm (similarity 0.82)
• Punishment doubled into an object relation producing the criminal as a known individual (similarity 0.81)
• Reform-era punishment was future-directed, aimed at prevention (similarity 0.81)
• The rise of the prison institutionalized the power to punish (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Penal reform shifted punishment from the act to the offender’s character #corroborates (0.90) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 160
• Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 374
• Punishment doubled into an object relation producing the criminal as a known individual #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 163