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🪵 The Threshold

Sentence individualization and exhaustive codification require each other in the economy of punishment

Properties2
tagsja-picks, deepthinking, contrarian_or_surprising, trade, singleton, xref, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@foucault_discipline_1975, loc. 159

3 min read

Sentence individualization and exhaustive codification require each other in the economy of punishment

Evidence

One sees the emergence at the same time of the need for a parallel classification of crimes and punishments, the need for an individualization of sentences, in accordance with the particular characteristics of each criminal. This individualization was to weigh very heavily throughout the history of modern penal law; it is rooted precisely here: in terms of the theory of law and according to the requirements of everyday practice, it is no doubt in radical opposition to the principle of codification; but from the standpoint of the economy of the power to punish, and of the techniques by which one wishes to circulate throughout the social body precisely calibrated signs of punishment, with neither excesses nor loopholes, with neither a useless ‘expenditure’ of power nor with timidity, it becomes evident that the codification of the offences-punishments system and the modulation of the criminal-punishment dyad go side by side, each requiring the other. Individualization appears as the ultimate aim of a precisely adapted code. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 159

Categorization

  • DEEPTHINKING: The apparent contradiction — a universal code versus individualized sentences — is resolved at the level of the power to punish’s economy. This is a paradigm-shifting distinction between legal theory and power technique: the two goals are not opposed but mutually sustaining within a calibrated power economy.
  • XREF: connects to: Systems of punishment correlate strictly with systems of production — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 71; Punishment doubled into an object relation producing the criminal as a known individual — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 163; Coercive punishment requires a power that encloses the punished individual completely — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 208 (+2 more)

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