Discipline and Punish
Notes
1. The Body of the Condemned
- Foucault started by discussing two different styles of punishment - Damiens the Regicide and Faucher's young prisoners in Paris.
- Two processes: (1) disappearance of punishment as a spectacle (**amende honorable**, prisoners in public work). (2) A slackening of the hold on the body.
- The way to evaluate the effectiveness of punishment changed: inevitability vs. visible intensity.
- Blame is redistributed between conviction vs. execution.
- The role of a doctor in execution is interesting - welfare and alleviator of pain. This describes the double process: the disappearance of the spectacle and the elimination of pain.
- The more monstrous the crime, the criminal must not see or be seen.
- French Revolution endowed the guillotine with a great theatrical ritual. Eventually, the guillotine was placed inside prison walls.
- Discussion on the objective of punishment - if not on the body, it must be on the soul. Punish intention rather than action. Establish the causal relationship between the two.
- Insanity and judgment - creating subsidiary judicial power for experts, doctors, etc.
Quotes
It is ugly to be punishable, but there is no glory in punishing.—Foucault, The body of the condemned
Suplement details
1958 Ruling
It refers to the creation in 1958 of the Code of penal procedure, i.e., the set of rules that organize the process of punishing an offense. The text cited by Foucault is not a "ruling", but, as written in the original French text of Surveiller et punir -, a circular: Circular of the Garde des Sceaux, Article C345 of the Instruction générale pour l'application du code de procédure pénale.
I cannot find the exact text of the circular, but when Foucault was writing his book, the investigating judge (juge d'instruction) could order a psychiatric examination that included the following questions (Rivière-Perrier and Simon, 1976):
- Does the examination reveal any mental or psychic abnormalities in the subject? If so, describe them and specify to which conditions they are related.
- Is the offence with which the subject is charged related to such abnormalities or not?
- Is the subject in a dangerous condition?
- Is the subject eligible for criminal sanction?
- Is the subject curable or rehabilitatable?
- Was the subject in a state of insanity within the meaning of Article 64 of the Penal Code at the time of the offence?
Article 64 requires to specify whether the crime was committed in a state of insanity.
Rivière-Perrier and Simon note that there was no fixed set of questions, which could be vague or extremely precise. However, the circular C345 provided a general model. From what I see the standard questions have not changed much but two have been added (see the Senate report of 2021 on psychiatric evaluation).
Source
Riviere-Perrier, Danielle, and Marie-Agnès Simon. ‘Réflexions sur une expérience d’expertise en criminologie’. Bulletin de psychologie 29, no. 322 (1976): 485–89. https://www.persee.fr/doc/bupsy_0007-4403_1976_num_29_322_10729
Interesting branches
- amende honorable
- Tristlewood.
- French code of 1791.