The shift from spectacle to carceral punishment was a technical mutation, not a softening

Evidence

From the point of view of the law, detention may be a mere deprivation of liberty. But the imprisonment that performs this function has always involved a technical project. The transition from the public execution, with its spectacular rituals, its art mingled with the ceremony of pain, to the penalties of prisons buried in architectural masses and guarded by the secrecy of administrations, is not a transition to an undifferentiated, abstract, confused penality; it is the transition from one art of punishing to another, no less skilful one. It is a technical mutation. From this transition spring a symptom and a symbol: the replacement, in 1837, of the chain-gang by the police carriage. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 393

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines modern penalty as a ‘technical project’ — a skilled art of punishment that replaces but does not abandon the art of the scaffold.
• XREF: connects to: Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 374; Pre-prison punishment aimed at spectators as public spectacle, not at reforming the punished. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 102; Penal reform shifted punishment from the act to the offender’s character — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 160 (+3 more)

Related

• Penal detention replaced public execution as a calculated technique for altering behavior. (similarity 0.86)
• The rise of the prison institutionalized the power to punish (similarity 0.82)
• Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime (similarity 0.81)
• The public spectacle of punishment gave way to enclosed hierarchized detention within decades. (similarity 0.80)
• Penal codes keep stable while the substance judged shifts from crime to offender (similarity 0.80)
• Prison integrated correctional transformation into legal detention from the start (similarity 0.80)
• The penitentiary apparatus substitutes the delinquent for the offender. (similarity 0.80)
• Modern universal imprisonment was not the reformers’ original design (similarity 0.79)
• Penal reform shifted punishment from the act to the offender’s character (similarity 0.79)
• The reformed penalty shifted its target from the body to subtler suffering (similarity 0.79)
• The prison’s failure, reform, and discipline form one simultaneous carceral system (similarity 0.79)
• The prison was originally embraced as a humane replacement for capital and corporal punishment. (similarity 0.78)
• Reform has always been proposed as the remedy for the prison’s failure (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 374
• Punishment’s deterrent power migrated from visible spectacle to certainty of apprehension #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 45
• Penal reform shifted punishment from the act to the offender’s character #expands (0.82) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 160
• Pre-prison punishment aimed at spectators as public spectacle, not at reforming the punished. #contradicts (0.80) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 102
• Penitentiary technique judges the criminal’s affinity with crime, not the act itself #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 388
• The reformed penalty shifted its target from the body to subtler suffering #contradicts (0.78) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 43