Foucault: Crime, Police, & Power | Philosophy Tube
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ค. 2017
- Part 1/2 - What is prison for? How has crime and punishment changed in the last 250 years? Philosopher Michel Foucault says the penal system - that's law, courts, police, surveillance - exists to protect the power of the ruling class, but what does that mean?
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Transcript of this Episode: tinyurl.com/gvp7gcx
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon
www.fcsh.unl.pt/docentes/rmont...
London Campaign Against Police & State Violence: londonagainstpoliceviolence.w...
Stop Watch: another guide to Stop & Search www.stop-watch.org/
PBS Idea Channel: What is Violence? • What Is Violence?
Stats on Race and Criminal Justice: www.irr.org.uk/research/statis...
Image of Foucualt: by Exeter Centre for Advanced International Studies Research Priorities, Fair use, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
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As a former prisoner who knew nothing about this prior to my year long incarceration, let me relate what I saw. The vast majority of "jobs" are ones that the state would have to hire a non-incarcerated person to perform instead of the forced labor right there in the institution. Jobs like growing/cooking/serving the food, cutting the grass, and janitorial services. That's why you can basically double the prison population without procuring additional funding from the taxpayers--the prisoners needs are systematically provided by the other inmates... so, you might be thinking, like I used to before I actually went there, "Even if they assign you a job, it's not like they can make you actually do it. You could just stay in your cell all day and refuse, right?" Not exactly. First you're gonna get written up, charged with a crime, then you're likely to go to the "segregated unit" (solitary confinement) until your crime has been adjudicated (by 3 prison officials, not your peers). This is Illinois, btw. The penalty is 30 additional days added to your sentence for a job refusal. Wash, rinse, REPEAT.
...How insidious is that?? In theory, they could transform a year long sentence to a life sentence because you wont be their slave (Well, technically, not a slave, I suppose. I got compensated $20 a month from the state for my "job," and my job was one of the best jobs in the entire joint as far as pay is concerned).
There is no doubt that our penal system is definitely not a "justice system"- it seeks only to punish, not to reshape or rechannel the immense potential of each human person. I am sorry about your story. Your testimony has so much richness and there is so much our society could learn from listening and imagining experiences like yours!
There is no question that you were a slave.
That just sounds like slavery with extra steps!
Im glad you're out, I pray daily that people like you can find stable work and not be forced back into crime due to a lack of income, perpetuating a cycle you arent responsible for. All the best from Australia mate.
@@ashaandrew6407 Thanks for all the kick ass Australian music y'all are pumping out these days. I can't get enough.
to be fair, the alternative is you sitting down and being a net drain for the tax payers. out of curiosity, why were you in jail?
Even with all of the production value recently, the “And I thought my weekend was bad” is still the best bit in the whole PhilosophyTube canon
I really liked the "the human eye is designed to see light" metaphor. Great video, Olly!
I think the term "designed" is being abused here. Natural selection and mutation are definitely what I'd call a design forces, but that language doesn't necessarily mean there's a designer.
Additionally these kinds of explanations don't distinguish between things that arose as side effects or by chance. The eye is very good at helping me finish sudoku's, but I'd hardly say it was designed to help people finish sudokus. You can't always identify selection pressures by simply looking at the end results.
+tarbucktransom Isn't that exactly what Olly said? The whole point there was that the argument isn't talking about it being literally designed that way, just using that language to refer to the function that it serves. I think it's supposed to be like how Bean views the military chain of command in Ender's Shadow. If people are rewarded for their ability to follow orders and looked over for showing ingenuity by taking risks then they'll just keep promoting people like themselves and ignoring those with greater potential because if no mistake is ever acceptable then nobody with any power will ever be able to risk trying anything new. One could say (using this context) that the system was designed to suppress creativity not because that was the intention of the actual literal designers but because that's the function that it performs.
I agree that it could/should be worded better but like it or not science educators (amongst others) use that terminology all the time to talk about how/why something survived some form of evolutionary process because it's simpler, so it's become part of our language. At least Olly nipped it in the bud.
Yes!
Who says the human eye unrolled?-unrolled out of or from what?
Explaining Foucault in such simple terms is a difficult and some would say dangerous task. Thank you for this video.
Do you mean dangerous as in it might cause people do misunderstand Foucault or dangerous as in it could get Olly in trouble somehow?
Oh no, I didn't mean it literally. I was thinking about the academics who might make some angry remarks about how concept x or y was forgotten or wasn't very neatly defined. But I think he's right in attempting it. Foucault himself didn't bother too much, but his thoughts deserve to be translated to the masses.
Its ok I'm just a dummy haha
Alex, I'm sure you're not! I wasn't clear about what I meant either :)
Olly having an intelligent discussion and I'm over here laughing at "Penile system"
i absolutely love the smash cut away from the gag at ~1:00 with no explanation. much better than if it had been slowed down to go "haha ok now to be serious"!!!
[comment withheld until part 2.]
Ethan S [witty retort withheld until part 2]
[blatant rant withheld until part 2]
[calm and reasoned defence withheld until part 2]
[buys popcorn for next video]
[inexplicable overreaction taking your comment out of context, blaming SJWs wìtheld until next week]
So glad you're discussing Foucault! This is taking me back to my Women's Studies classes.
Hah, awesome!
Capricae let me guess, you've never actually read a word of what Foucault has written, and the only things you know about him is what you've seen on an inflammatory right wing video?
Your explanation of the distinction between how power structures work and conspiracy theories about secret cabals is really succinct, cogent, and instructive in our current moment.
Hear see or read "secret cabal", think paranoid loony
Discipline and Punish made me an Anarchist.
I don't know if you can say you missed the point. Anything anybody says about Foucault seems contestable. But isn't Foucault's whole conception of power relies on its omnipresence? On the fact that the government is not the source of power, even more, that it is one of the lesser power emenators? I mean, not to deny that government as a concept is shit in a lot of ways, but wouldn't deriving anarchism from Foucault be a major oversight?
@@gamerbro7721 They didn't say Foucault advocated anarchism, they said that they became anarchist because of Foucault. You can definitely get something out of a text without agreeing with all of it. I don't know enough about Foucault to weigh in on what he thought, but I would also point out that anarchism is against all forms of authority, not just anti-government.
This was a good video! Haven't seen it yet but I want to be the first to say it!!!
It's always so cool to see content creators you like on other channels of content creators you like
Xidnaf heyo WATTUP
watch before saying it
Oh cool, Xidnaf is a fan of Philosophy Tube. Hey, you make great stuff.
Wew, Xidnaf watches what I watch! Oh yeah, and Seth Apex, I think you're in the wrong comment thread; we're all neo-Marxist pseudo-intellectuals here.
Great video man, keep it up. As someone from a minority who has actually experienced the alleged 'due process' of the legal justice system I can say from first hand experience that not only is all of this true in some facts it's actually even worse than Foucault predicted or anticipated.
If you remembver anything, remember the eye metaphore. It perfectly explains why there are no conspiracies - there cannot be, because centralism doesn't work - but still every institution or organization in the world works as if it was run by a conspiracy.
The laws of evolution do not just apply to biological creatures, but to everything that self-replicates and competes about limited ressources.
can't wait for part two !
It was a great video indeed. Looking forward for the second part
I'm brazilian and the way you teach filosofy is the best i've found on youtube! pls dont stop! ps: i discovered your channel 3 days ago and i'm loving it!
the weather fronts metaphor is very useful. i may have to borrow it for future conversations of societal trends.
You explain everything much clearer than my lecturer thank you! English is not my first language, and I had real real real difficulty in understanding his work.
Best intro ever!
Good job, Olly
Thanks for the eye / molecule metaphors! That was neat.
Tough to translate this to a Norwegian context. Our recidivism is really low and is doing a pretty good job at forsaking punishment in favour of rehabilitation. Perhaps our criminologists (that are influential to policy) have read Focoult and our system was designed and gained these traits after his writings. I know Focoult was immensely popular for a while a Norwegian universities, especially in criminology, social anthropology and sociology.
You're awesome, Olly. Keep up the good work!
ah, Foucault. Now you have to get into my realm, mwah ha ha. Perhaps the only major 20th century philosopher, who is a historian first. Look forward to the next one. I had an entire chapter of my thesis using his govermentality theories, so I hope you cover the whole difference between corporial/physical power vs surveillance/disciplinary power next. it's a hugely influential ideology in the history field
Literally love your work.
can't wait till part 2
Well done! I'm already excited for Part 2!
Which i assume you will also touch on Foucalt's adaptation of Bentham's idea of Panopticon, and how prisons are used as a facility to neutralise the values of those outliers (prisoners), thus bridging the gaps with the social norms (ruling class), and therefore further strengthens the power and norms of the ruling class.
Thank you for reaching out to clear up a very common miscommunication which halts a lot of important conversations around issues of social justice! Being inclusive, even to groups or individuals who may be associated with bias or intentional misinterpretation, is almost always time well spent - even when it doesn't feel so great!
I remember reading this at university. Great summary
Good video though. Your videos are super helpful to my degree!
Hey! I really appreciate your efforts to make your videos accessible - would you consider putting adding audio to your content warning? I listen to videos without watching them a lot, so I didn't /see/ the warning - not a big deal for me in this case, but it occurred to me that any visually impaired people who enjoy your videos will not be warned!
Eilidh Keegan *clutches pearls*
Can't believe this hasn't been addressed yet: he is so cute here. golly.
Amazing video!
That was a brilliant explanation! I am a law student and I'm definitely reading Foucault after this
Absaloutely love the Alan Partridge intro mate! (Sorry I don't know your name) I enjoyed covering Foucault and power during a sports coaching seminar. Thanks for the content!
my second semester studying philosophy i was frustrated because I didn't understand fichte or hegel but nietzsche and foucault inspired me to continue with philosophy. unfortunately however I haven't read too much by foucault, I still appreciate hearing about his philosophy (later I had a teacher who actually made nietzsche one of my least favorite philosophers so there's that...)
the beginning is GREAT
Thank you for the free content, Abigail. It's fabulous that Foucault is but a mouse click away.
good breakdown on the meaning of that quote
Love seeing Mary Shelley's Last Man in the background there Abigail - fabulous book, lesser read and lesser known.
Thank you for this vidéo (and special thanks to the person who put french subtitles !)
God what a great channel so happy I found this, thanks mate!
Great video!
wow just 2 years ago Ollie was young
This has been so much clearer of an explanation than my professors ever managed in passing.
Woah, mind blown, that makes so much sense. I've never thought about it like that before.
good intro and series.
Olly! Could you do more videos about Anarchism? Your introduction to it was very good!
Nicely explained.
Damnit! I was going to make a great comment about capitalism, Olly! Now I have to wait until part 2.
Keep up the good work! You're one of my favorite youtubers, and I really like that you apply your knowledge of philosophy to the problems of today's society.
A lot of philosophy teachers would stay out of politics altogether (Or worse, stay completely neutral).
Much respect.
An important comparison is between the crime rates and policing policies. Stop and Frisk tends to collect countless weapons whereas the rate of murder, aggravated assaults and robberies is high!
After all these years, still such a great video! Really helped me understanding the concept and I have to write my BA Thesis on this :D
Your explanation of the ruling class was brilliant, do you have any sources for it? If I could cite your video, I would, but I fear, that wouldn’t be academic enough :D
He got that from Socrates, who said something along the lines of ‘society should be judged by its criminals’
I'll receive your penal justice any day
Rag man is that a penis joke?
Yes it is my friend. Not even philosphytube is safe from penis jokes.
Really looking forward to the 2nd (and possibly more) vid on Foucault's assessment of the penal system. I hope follow-up(s?) will address Foucault's explanation for why, as the ruling class monopolize the top layer of the system, the working class and poverty class, while compromising most of the objects of the system (the prisoners), the working class also overwhelmingly occupies the mid-level, i.e., the police, security, lower level administration, etc.
Thanks! Intriguing subject. Hope you can address the above concerns.
This video was great, gave me some super useful ways of articulating some of my frustrations with the criminal justice system.
Relevant to the topic of class power, I caught the film Buster's Mal Heart last night. Really interesting movie that above anything else, got across the despair of someone who finds himself and his family trapped by "the system". Jonah, the main character, is losing his mind working all-night shifts at a hotel to save up and buy his family some land so they can live outside the system. Shit gets weird along the way, but the way the film captured this desperate and impossible struggle to simply excuse yourself from the way things are is quite heart-rending. ***not that it's glorifying this point of view
looking forward to pt2!!
Great video! Very important topic in todays society!
This is so relevant right now...
Focoult's "Discipline and Punish" is an excellent read and one of his most accessible books. I highly recommend it.
Perfect for my Jurisprudence 2 class at law school!(in terms of basics ofc)
4:08 Your hailing has successfully interpellated me as a video-commenting subject.
never stop doing what you do
Pretty fascinating.
i wish i was at the receiving end of your penal justice
thank you
Preach brother! Preach! 👏🏾🙋🏾
I loved this explanation. Just time stamping for myself 4:53
Ugh, another great metaphor (weather, trends, demographic) 5:59
Sit in a courtroom for a day? I've sat in one for over twenty years, on the bench, and at both counsel tables. I've even been in the jury box. Anybody who thinks this system isn't supporting the interests of the owning classes BEFORE it reaches for any kind of "justice" is kidding themselves. Public justice is the sizzle. Protection of the propertied class is the steak. But I don't know how you get around that. Money rules, always has, always will as far as I can see (which, admittedly, isn't very far.) How do you even start to get the influence of money out of the courtroom?
Damn another book on my shopping list
I can just about forget that I'm looking at Abigail and then she smiles. Got damn projected dysphoria, you're interfering with my philosophy class!
My questions so far: What actions does Foucault think should be done? Is it intrinsically bad to have people punished for not being useful to the ruling class? Even in a theoretical society where authority is distributed and "everyone" is the ruling class (What might be called extreme democracy)? Or maybe Foucault is just stating facts/defining complex ideas without giving a value judgement at all and its up to every individual to form their own value judgments and responses? I'm really excited about the next episodes!
So, Foucault was wholly critical from my understanding and he never put forward any kind of societal model of his own. Maybe he thought that you simply cannot eliminate power. He debated Noam Chomsky once and there he stated that he was skeptical towards even an anarcho-communist society in terms of getting rid of what he uncovered.
Foucault doesn't really provide alternatives and is very reluctant to reveal his political beliefs. This can be useful in showing flaws in conventional criticism. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault doesn't argue that everyone should 'liberate' their sexuality in the classic sense because everyone then just internalises a new social norm in the same way people of the past internalised the norms of traditional morality.
"The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism." Foucault also said:
"Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: "Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform." That's ministerial cabinet talk."
Despite what he says here about the necessity of reform, my understanding (such as it is) is that MF thought that there was a danger (or perhaps an inevitability) that attempts to transform societies would result in the reconstitution of that which such reforms or revolutions were intended to counter. And so, to put it very crudely, that we would be better off if we all became philosophers, that the best that we can do is make humble attempts at understanding the world and ourselves a little better, assuming that said understanding is not taken to be something passive and disconnected.
Scientist will say we need more science, businessmen will say that we need more goods and services and, unsurprisingly, philosophers tend to follow the same pattern.
Sages have been saying much the same thing in very different ways for millennia, consider Blaise Pascal's: 'Endeavor to think well, for that is the only morality.'
Or, more recently, philosophy tube's: 'tuition fees have gone up, you peasants can't afford an education so i'll give you a piece of my mind.'
To me that sounds much less like everyone should be philosophers and much more like freedom of speech is essential to a free society and nothing should ever be held sacred in such a way that it is beyond criticism. Sounds like he would be a fan of Russell Brand telling everyone they abstain from voting because voting only supports the current system but never offering an alternate system to replace it (though he'd probably argue that the revolution Russell was calling for was itself exclusionary in nature and would likely maintain the unbalance of power that Brand was fighting serving only to change which people control it).
I think his alternative to revolution was more to promote and maintain transparency in institutions of power and criticize them wherever possible regardless of how valid any given criticism is. I haven't studied him too deeply but he seemed to take the stance that any and all such criticisms should be welcome and open, so it's really only be the people in power who would need some philosophical chops so they could back up their methodologies and adapt them when a valid criticism is raised. Some people would have to be adept enough at critical thinking to recognize when an idea is soundly defeated, but lots of professions require that level of reasoning skillz.
In a way it seems like the internet and social media have made huge strides towards realizing this idea, though it also serves to show how little public outcry really has on affecting meaningful change in various institutions of power.
amazing
Just read Book I of Plato's Republic today before watching this... Thanks!
Derek Anderson why? I have read it, enlighten me because i don't understand the context?
Which translation did you read?
Derek Anderson i dont know what translation, it is not clear in the book, but why should I read Plato first?
"why should I read Plato first?"
It's your life dude, you do whatever you want.
What particular piece of work by Foucault do you recommend for starters? Is he generally easy to read, or does he write in purple prose like Hegel?
I'd say "Discipline and Punish" is moderate - not too tough, but not a breeze either
good performance
So true! In any number of studies - it's been proven that harsher penalties do NOT have any serious impact what-so-ever on deterring people from committing the crimes they are associated with! Cuz the simple of fact of the matter is, when people commit crimes, with premeditation, they do so with the assumption that they will inevitably get away with it and will never have to worry about those said penalties. Not to mention the fact that 'classical" or negative conditioning - is far less effective at prompting prescribed behavior as well as maintaining that on a consistent basis, when compared to the implementation of positive-conditioning! Punishment is not inextricably liked with justice per'se, punishment can be a part of attaining justice and yet transversely - are not the same thing. You can have punishment without achieving the solicited/intended ethical-goal of justice - (which is whatever a society wishes that to look like), but you can have punishment as a part of a justice system. The US prison-industrial-complex truly is the "New Jim Crow," it's grown for thirty yrs almost even though violent crimes dropped way down over the same time period! This truly illuminates the true reason for why it exists and is grown, it is merely extracting some sort of profit from what the corporate-state/neoliberal-elites consider unused/surplus labor which they themselves have created due to their own neo-liberal corporatist policies like deindustrialization.
THANK YOU FOR MAKING SENSE! THANK YOU. I thought I was going mad after a few of Peterson's videos. Can someone educate me on what Peterson is getting at? I am either too stupid to understand why so many people could relate to him, or he is a mass hypnotist.
Olly pls discuss Noam chomsky in your vids. It would complement this series well. Cheers.
The intro! lol hilarious hahaha
I agree 100% with what u said abt the penile system functioning oddly but what does that have to do with crime?
MOAR
Last time I was this early I had to think of a clever philosophy joke.
But you Kant do it anymore?
The Garunixking
pls no
I'm coming for that toothbrush PTube.
that intro joke just shot me point blank
Hello, this is the first time I'm writing a long treatise, since I had several questions regarding this video and would want anyone or maybe you, Ollie (if you could make the time), to please answer and make it clearer for me. It's something that tormented me through the night, when I kept thinking about them, but couldn't find an answer for it. I'm interested in starting with Foucault, but before that you all happen to be the only teacher I have for now.
Thanks for the video. Waiting for the second one to come by.
2:24 - While re-offending claims are pretty high, do we keep a record of how many offenders are actually reformed and do we compare the results of it?
2:41 - I might be a bit iffy here, and correct if I'm wrong, but companies are generally separate entities distinct from its owners, and the owners of the company are supposedly shareholders, so if a company is found to be guilty of crime, they can be forced to fine, since they are a separate entity (in company terms, actually a separate person), but since, it's non-living, an idea, then how can you convict a specific person, or know which person, or shareholder, was at fault? For example, even if the director had taken a decision, he might have discussed it with the shareholders in AGMs, and so, all the shareholders have to be taken into prison, but some may not have been involved in the scam, some may have just been put into it due to major voting etc., that is, it's difficult to triangulate a single person out of all to convict.
ALSO, I agree that it benefits the ruling class, but here, I think, in actual terms, it benefits the class that create value, or helps the economy of a country, and that, it happened to be the ruling class, is a complete accident (with the creation of the idea of money and with the accumulation of money in the hands of few). If on the other hand, labour was economically more useful than money, then maybe the working class would have been the ruling class, and the lazy money-hoarders would have been convicted. So technically, convictions are made to keep the economic health of the country and to safe it from crashing. This also lines with the fact that companies are not convicted, since, companies hold the economy together and create jobs and help it from crashing.
3:30 - If that is true, and it just might be, then according to Foucault, the black or minority person do not serve the need of the ruling class and hence, they are disposed. On the other hand, if we look at it from the same perspective, women are given far less duration of prison sentences than men, and so technically, that means, that either women are beneficial to the ruling class, or they are part of it and are putting their brains to prevent the same treatment meted out to women. That could either mean that women are in power, which dismantles the theories of patriarchy in some spots, or it fortifies patriarchy by saying that women are needed for reproduction, which on the other hand is unfair, because it seems to protect them. Could anyone explain that?
*This could also fall in line with the economic health of countries previously mentioned, but here, it takes into consideration the population health. Since women are the ones who produce babies, they are kept safe and their prison sentences are reduced for that matter, so in a way they could be beneficial to the ruling class. A speculation on my part is, if women are given the sole reproductive rights, we will see a spike in the prison population of women since their need for reproduction will lower if more and more start to opt out of reproduction (this is just a speculation from what Foucault says). This doesn't change the fact that women are still at a benefit and that they are more powerful in keeping other people of the same sex away from prison, due to their natural benefit to reproduce.
7:40 - The statistics presented here should, I think, factor in the massive changes in law that had taken place since the publication of the book, the population rise, the socio-economic changes, and also, if we do not factor all of these, we cannot pile up a statistics without actually looking into whether an individual had, in fact, committed a crime or not, something which the bare statistics cannot prove without ample court records and evidences. It may be that the individual had in fact been proven guilty of crime.
Hey olly, great video. I'm just curious about the graph you showed at 7:40. Does this show the absolute number of prisoners? If so, I think a graph showing the size of the general population over time, and maybe a graph showing net migration over time, are necessary. I'd like to know the size of the prison population relative to the general population. I know that the size of the general population has increased due to people living longer and immigration. I think this information will support your argument.
P.S.
I'm not trying to accuse you of misunderstanding the numbers or deceiving your audience. It's just that; well you know there's an election on and all the politician are throwing statistics around as if they are truths (I'm in fact checker mode). I wanted to scrutinize your statistics to make them stronger.
Again, I loved the video and I'm grateful for everything you do.
ooh I hope he references "13th" in his upcoming video (:
"with which he had committed the parricide", iirc
You should complement this by making a video about Deleuze's societies of control.
Foucault's 'Discipline and Punish' was relevant when it was published in 1975 and--sadly--is relevant still. I feel his main point is to underscore how insidious the surveillance society is. In fact, the original French title is 'Surveiller et punir', but having read it, the alteration of the title for the English translation is reasonable.
This video contains... huh okay... OH shit we're just jumping right into it huh? Not even gonna buy us a proverbial dinner first? Damn.
How would this view describe a penal system with an unusually low recidivism rate? Is Norway's prison system *failing* to correctly serve the ruling class, or does the country have a ruling class with unusual needs?
Felix Troendle hey interesting.. but wouldn't it be in the interest of the ruling class to redirect "criminals" to work for them instead of just having them locked up?
Isn't that what the US does? Have privatised institutions which practically enslave prisoners as sources of cheap menial labour? :P
But yea interesting thought. If "the way a society treats and defines its criminals says a lot about the nature of power within that society"...then perhaps the low recidivism rates say something about Norway, and its needs. For example, low recidivism rates can be used as an incentive to vote for a particular government. Or perhaps it is more economically profitable to _not_ imprison, but to reintegrate offenders. Don't know - but its interesting!
Chloe Fisher. It's much more economically viable to have former prisoners return to society to work, pay tax, and not commit more crimes than it is to have them imprisoned and draining public resources.
Not to get preachy, but most people who commit crimes haven't done so because it's the thing they would most like to do out of everything one could potentially do. In extremely broad and simplified terms I'd say crime is nearly always a symptom of another, unspecified, problem. Addressing the symptom without considering the cause will never actually solve anything, and may even make the underlying problem worse.
Like covering a cancerous mole with make up
WlatPziupp One thing I would say, is that in countries such as America in which the capitalists have outsourced much of their work and created a society in which so many are unemployed, actually the prison system would serve to keep the majority working classes under control. If more of these people were employed by capitalists they would demand better conditions and job security.
now I'm just here to watch him
Excellent use of performative utterance. I'm sure it kept a few trolls at bay.
And I thought my weekend was bad...
Wow, this was a chilling video.
As a law student, i'd love to be able to defend the penal system, to argue against Foucault. But equally, as a law student, i'm not sure i can.
Sure, there are there are small things which i could argue against - for example, corporations (or rather, their Directors) CAN be held criminally liable for breaches such as underpaying staff. However, usually individuals who have been wronged would prefer to sue under civil law, because monetary compensation is often more desirable to them than punitive measures. And of course, police powers are somewhat discretionary, and will be impacted on by the biases of the individual exercising them. I think much of the overrepresentation of many racial groups in prisons is down to the racism of individuals - the system itself is (usually) blind.
But. From what i've seen - the criminal justice system spends far more money on keeping particular people in prison than keeping them out of it. Regardless of the arguments above, the penal system is unjust and ineffective. What i've learnt in studying law is that it's not a mechanism for justice, rather an algorithm which can be manipulated, fed selected inputs to generate desirable outputs. This means however that, within limits, a good legal practitioner CAN manipulate the algorithm for good and just purposes. That's why i'm still studying, and hope to one day practice. Or even better - to be able to change the algorithm itself.
Anyway - i look forward to part 2. Thanks Olly!
'I think much of the overrepresentation of many racial groups in prisons is down to the racism of individuals - the system itself is (usually) blind.'
Have you heard Baltimore cop Michael Wood being interviewed? He seemed to be adamant that he was color blind and yet he describes taking part in all sorts of questionable things, many of which were both ingrained in the inner workings of law enforcement/the judicial system and which placed, sometimes, crushing burdens on very specific ethnic groups in very specific neighborhoods.
In fact, I think Wood said that it was partly his 'color blindness' - his sense of his own neutrality that blinded him - that prevented him from seeing his questionable role for what it was.
Hmm that is interesting, i hadn't heard about that no. But i guess thats why I added in the (usually).
I am an Australian, with a particular interest in the overrepresentation of our Aboriginal peoples in the penal system. We're looking at stats of 3% of a population comprising 30% of the adult and 50% of the juvenile prison population.
Now you can pretty clearly say that the biases of individuals contribute to this, by comparing the sentences given to Aboriginal people to those given (for the same crimes) to non-Aboriginal people. So not only are there higher rates of arrests, but also of convictions, and harsher punitive measures, and this can be attributable to individual police, judges, juries etc. But you could also point to a deeper, systematic institutionalised racism which (ab)uses the legal mechanism. For example, the Northern Territory Emergency Response (now embodied in the 'Stronger Futures' policy) suspended the Racial Discrimination Act to enforce laws which abused the social justice and human rights only of Aboriginal peoples within the state, an action with bipartisan support. It is, of course, an unjust action, and one which barely works to reduce the crime it targets (and actually raises suicide rates). But it is a functional political tool, and you can trace its renewal quite clearly against certain election periods.
I guess in my mind i still trace this back to corrupt individuals. The law is an unthinking, unfeeling algorithm - i'd rather condemn a person than a concept. But I realise now that this isn't an argument against Foucault's - rather something which may support it. After all, here we have an example of people of a certain class dictating what "justice" should be in order to serve their own purposes.
The cop I mentioned said that he was given the task of patrolling an affluent neighborhood and I think that there was a quota for arrests which he wasn’t able to meet because it was a quiet area. So he poached arrests (mainly drug related) from a poor neighborhood nearby; in this instance he seemed to be doing what the 'mechanism' was asking him to do rather than using or abusing it, and the mechanism commended him for it. Most of his examples seemed to follow this pattern. Then again, presumably the quota policy was installed by the department that he worked for and presumably decisions to implement such rules are open to devious political manipulation etc. Which would mean, I suppose, that the above anecdote would support your point.
This is a simplification but social reality can be said to involve a "dialectic between internalizing the external and externalizing the internal." And so (because of this looping effect) its difficult, I think, to disentangle structure/mechanism from agency/the biases of individuals.
Perhaps the suspension of the racial discrimination act is a functional political tool because politicians are not upstanding enough to resist the temptation to use policy in this way but if none are sufficiently upstanding then perhaps it makes sense to question whether the democratic/policy making mechanism itself is working as well as we might like.
'I'd rather condemn a person than a concept.'
It's certainly much more satisfying yelling at people than yelling at concepts.
I'm not best placed to appraise law or policy making, given that I’m not speaking from experience. I don't necessarily disagree with anything in your reply and it certainly begs more questions than I could possibly answer.
Anyway, if anyone wants to hear what the former cop has to say, search: #670 - Michael A. Wood, Jr. It's a long and rambling interview but Wood seemed like a sharp, stand up kind of guy.
"PAUSE, STEP AWAY FROM THE COMMENTS SECTION" -- Massive highlight
It seems like the phrases "designed to" and "exists to" are attempts to reach the more accurate words "optimised to".
Optimisation is not necessarily an intentionally directed process (natural selection optimises survival traits - animals that run from predation optimise towards faster running speeds by losing slower members to predatory attrition).
So you create a justice system, because every society needs one. That justice system doesn't always work correctly, so (in the interest of justice) the system also works to correct miscarriages of justice. But some miscarriages of justice aren't corrected because the system isn't infallible (that's why you're making corrections after all). Over time, a pattern may emerge in which failings are corrected and which ones aren't.
That process is political - the people performing the corrections cannot help but be informed by their political biases. Since the exercise of political power is performed by the ruling class (regardless of the way in which that class is constructed), the skewedness of these corrections would reflect their biases. Over time the system would be optimised to meet the demands of those biases.
And so the penal system is optimised to defend the power of the ruling classes, *even if that is not the intent of the system*. Given a sufficient duration of operation, any system of justice must necessarily reflect both the inherent constructive and destructive values that guide that society (although reading a deeper meaning into those values may require assuming the existence of a hegemony which is not necessarily a given).
So how long am I supposed to keep it paused for? I've been waiting for days.
If you're still waiting, now should be okay.
I agree with the overall treatment of this topic. I however am thinking about two things said early on. that there has been a change from public to private, and these body punishment. at least in the usa, there have been much more public displays of the penal system, but it is edited through video media...prison reality shows, a show called COPS, when a pig kills someone here and its caught on video it gets widely shown even in the capitalist news ei public execution, but its not planned just episodic (no grand show just a expendable prole in the way of the machine). as far as bodily punishment in the usa most of us workers use drugs, alcohol etc. i think withdrawal is a bodily torture prisons are known for by our class. some thoughts
The power we have to face is not an imaginary conspiracy, its the real system of power we take for granted. If it were just a conspiracy theory.