Pre-prison punishment aimed at spectators as public spectacle, not at reforming the punished.

Evidence

Prior to the appearance of punitive incarceration, such punishment was designed to have its most profound effect not so much on the person punished as on the crowd of spectators. Punishment was, in essence, public spectacle. Reformers such as John Howard in England and Benjamin Rush in Pennsylvania argued that punishment—if carried out in isolation, behind the walls of the prison—would cease to be revenge and would actually reform those who had broken the law. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 102

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrasts the public-spectacle logic of corporal punishment with the reform logic of the penitentiary, a key conceptual hinge.
• XREF: connects to: Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 295; Staged ceremony can substitute for added real punishment to deter others. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 16; The shift from spectacle to carceral punishment was a technical mutation, not a softening — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 393 (+5 more)

Related

• Punishment’s primary audience is the non-criminal public, not the offender (similarity 0.81)
• Spectatorship of punishment was already class-divided before the prison era (similarity 0.80)
• Staged ceremony can substitute for added real punishment to deter others. (similarity 0.79)
• Public punishment was abolished because it inflamed crowds rather than teaching them. (similarity 0.78)
• Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself #corroborates (0.60) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 295