Topic 4- Surveillance and Punishment Flashcards
Surveillance
The monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population or crime control
Foucault
The birth of the prison
Sovereign power
-Pre 1800
-Monarch has absolute power
-Punishment was brutal and public
Disciplinary power
-1800 onwards
-Surveillance was the most effective way
-Punishment was in prisons with the aim of rehabilitation
The panopticon
Where each criminal had their own cell visible to guards in a central watch tower
The guards weren’t visible to the prisoner
Criticisms of Foucault
-Accused of wrongly assuming that expressive aspects of punishments disappear in modern society
-He exaggerates the extent of control
-He overestimated the power of surveillance to change behaviour
Actuarial Justice and risk management
Feely and Simon 1994
-Focus on groups not individuals
-Interested in prevention as well as rehabilitating
-Use of calculation of risk
David Lyon
Treat people differently based upon their level of risk
Synoptic surveillance
Thomas Mathiesen
-Where everyone watches everybody
Thompson 2000
Argues that powerful groups such as politicians fear media surveillance
Functionalist perspective on punishment
Primarily expressive
-Societies shared values reaffirmed and its members come to feel a sense of moral unity
-Durkheim identifies 2 types of justice corresponding
=Retribution
=Restitutive
Marxist perspective on punishment
-Maintain the existing order
-It was a means of defending ruling class property against the lower classes
Weberian approach to punishment
-Punishment is based on impersonal rules and regulations set by complex officials
Criticism of the Weberian approach
-Extent to which the rules and regulations are really fair
The era of mass incarceration
David Garland
-1972-200,00 inmates in state and federal prison
-Today-1.5 million and 700,000 in local jails
