The prison sorts prisoners by hidden dangerousness revealed in conduct

Evidence

The prison became a sort of permanent observatory that made it possible to distribute the varieties of vice or weakness. From 1797, the prisoners were divided into four classes: the first for those who were explicitly condemned to solitary confinement or who had committed serious offences in the prison; the second for those who were ‘well known as old offenders … whose depraved morality, dangerous character, irregular dispositions, or disorderly conduct’ became apparent during the time they were in prison; the third for those ‘whose character and circumstances, before and after conviction, led one to believe that they were not habitual offenders’; the fourth and last was a special section, a probationary class for those whose character was still not known, or who, if they were better known, did not deserve to be put in the preceding category (Teeters, 1935, 59). A whole corpus of individualizing knowledge was being organized that took as its field of reference not so much the crime committed (at least in isolation), but the potentiality of danger that lies hidden in an individual and which is manifested in his observed everyday conduct. The prison functions in this as an apparatus of knowledge. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 202

Categorization

• XREF: This directly connects to the reader’s core thesis about panoptic surveillance generating individualizing knowledge — the classified observation regime is the knowledge-production half of Bentham’s panopticon. — connects to: Invisible inspection can awe prisoners to silence without any physical restraint — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 288; Minor offenders were judged more vicious than major criminals by prison directors — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 375; Penitentiary technique judges the criminal’s affinity with crime, not the act itself — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 388 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: The four-class classification system by ‘potentiality of danger’ is strong supporting material for the sacrifice/grief machinery of social stratification themes.

Broader Connections

• Supermax confinement in practice catches arbitrarily designated prisoners, not only the most dangerous #complicates (0.85) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 270