What is Reddit's opinion of Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

>where some people are beyond rehabilitation.

Funny to say someone else is being willfully ignorant after repeatedly ignoring what the conversation is actually about. I'm not arguing with you about the validity of the death penalty right now. I'm arguing about PUBLIC executions.

You are wrong. And you're a bad person.

>have any articles or studies discussing the negative societal ramifications of public executions?

LoL are you fucking joking? Yes there really really are.

https://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-Prison-Michel-Foucault/dp/0679752552

This isn't the root cause; it still has to be explained why "the logs" think that mental health treatment is shameful in the first place.

The true reason is that Indian parents come from a culture in which "mental health" has not yet replaced brute coercion as the primary tool of social control and discipline. To people who don't understand how modern regimes of discipline work more effectively than traditional ones, it all just looks like indulgent pampering in response to vice.

Have you read Foucault's Discipline and Punish? He makes a good case that the purpose of prisons to isn't to stop crime, but to create a criminal class that can be treated as the "other", encouraging people to identify more with the state.

Don't worry about it; the goal here is not to discipline and punish people who post those questions but rather to help users get useful answers, cut down our own workload, and discourage low-effort posting.

Then you could visit /r/meditation .

Also, have you read Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison? It is quite an interesting read, i thought you might enjoy it.

Thanks for this AMA and for sharing your thoughts, appreciate it a lot.

I wish the best for you. :)

I anticipate most comments will provide sources following your line of thinking, so I'm going to diverge from orthodoxy and give a slight counter-argument in the form of a "Foucauldian" interpretation of your question.

Disclaimer: I'm not a philosopher by training, so others should feel free to make comments/suggestions.

First, it is important to understand that Michel Foucault is a very special kind of social theorist, a "historian of ideas" who takes a very different approach to the social sciences. He is mainly focused on addressing the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. This is a philosophical interpretation that takes a critical stance toward the system of punishment we currently have, including any assumptions that it is more "humane" than ever before.

Michel Foucault's critical style of academics is mainly exhibited in his work <em>Discipline and Punish</em> written in 1975, in which he directly talks about the role of torture, public executions, and the "spectacle of the scaffold" being common among traditional societies. Historically, attitudes toward punishment were related to general attitudes to the body and death. Torture was embedded in legal practice because it revealed the truth and showed the workings of power though the body of the condemned. This truth-power relation remains at the heart of all mechanisms of punishment, and is even found in different forms in contemporary penal practices. It was only during the Enlightenment when people began to condemn the "atrocity" of public executions.

The reason why a punishment like public execution was replaced by a "humane" version is very important. A key element in the public execution was the people or audience present, despite the role of the people being ambiguous. Criminals often had to be protected from the crowd or crowds often tried to free prisoners. Therefore, the prisoner's body could become a source of retribution or empathy, redefining the role of power between the king, the crowd, and the prisoner. In general, Foucault is unimpressed by interpretations of penal reform as a shift away from torture motivated by a love of one's fellow man.

Next, Foucault discusses Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, a building with a tower at the center from which it is possible to see each cell in which a prisoner or schoolboy is incarcerated. Visibility is a trap, and each individual is seen but cannot communicate with the warders or other prisoners. Hence, the crowd is abolished. The panopticon induces a sense of permanent visibility that ensures the functioning of power. Jeremy Bentham even decreed that power should be visible yet unverifiable. The prisoner can always see the tower but never knows from where or when he is being observed.

For Foucault, the panopticon represents the way in which discipline and punishment work in modern society. It is a diagram of power in action because by looking at the plan of the panopticon, one realizes how the processes of observation and examination operate. It is a transfer from punishment of the flesh to punishment of the soul, where the prisoner now must constantly regulate their behavior for fear that they are always being watched. The panopticon allows for the possibility that their behavior is being observed, and hence self-moderation of behavior is imposed, and power is constantly internalized by prisoners thereby creating "docile bodies". To Foucault, this new system was no more humane than the old system of punishment. This is the key point of the counter-argument.

In practical terms, Foucault wants to argue that we have developed no viable alternatives: theoretically, the discourse of punishment in which we operate centers on imprisonment. Foucault argues that we have reached the stage where we can only talk about what to do with the prison, and not how to do without it. However, the point about Foucault's work is to remind us that the real purpose is not to inspire rebellion against the modern disciplinary system, but to promote understanding of its components and operation. It is also meant to make us question what we think we known about punishment and what our assumptions are regarding fairness, justice, and power.

http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-Prison-Michel-Foucault/dp/0679752552/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1443900498&amp;sr=1-1

Hi! I’d like to recommend a book on the topic. It’s short and extremely interesting! Discipline and Punish, by Foucault.

Disciple & Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679752552/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabc_6kdSFbEQN6J6A?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1

Please read Michel Foucault then we speak more in depth..

https://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-Prison-Michel-Foucault/dp/0679752552

If you're interested in the topic of penalty, you should check out Foucault's <em>Discipline and Punish</em>; it's incredibly lucid on the topic of the penal & carceral systems.

Foucault was right.

Robert, your post speaks for itself. If you want to actually help people, then I'm not kidding about reading up on structural violence. If you aren't afraid of a civil discussion, meet with the chair of the SJSU Anthro department, buy him lunch and ask him to look at your post and explain what's wrong with it.

I don't live in the area or I would come talk to you, I'd even walk along on one of your marches to watch you upset the dirty homeless you seem so scared of.

I don't care that you never threw a punch. Congrats on meeting the very bottom criteria for not being a terrible human, you still went out and harassed homeless and made judgments about people based on their appearance.

There is so much wrong with your post, man. Please, I'm begging you, please meet with the chair of the Anthro department and also a therapist to help you work through your ideas about power and responsibility. I'm in therapy too man, I don't mean it as an insult, but I do mean to say that you need a professional to help you understand what your actions are and why they are not okay.

Please at the very least read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault and Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer. You are contributing to the tension between the haves and havenots in downtown SJ, and you have no right to do so. You are hurting more than helping, and you are doing so in an arrogant and uninformed way.

If you want to pretend to be doing the right thing, than at least read up on what it is that you are contributing to. Foucault will be a great resource for you.