In order to fully understand if prisons are effective or not we must look into what the purpose of prisons are and how they came to be. In modern 21st century the 3 main reasons for prisons are: 1. To punish those who have been found guilty of breaking the law, 2. to rehabilitate those in prison so that they are less likely to commit crimes in the future and 3. to deter those people who consider breaking the law, from actually committing a crime. The purpose of prisons was not always the same.
In the earliest days of English and French colonial settlement all crimes were deemed deserving of punishment. The Demonic perspective is the oldest known perspective and deviance was considered to be anything that threatened the church. When someone …show more content…
As well as a supporter of Beccaria, he came up with the panoptical concept for prisons in 1791. Bentham’s panopticon is a prison in which the jailer or a guard can view all the inmates in their cells without being seen himself. Ideally, inmates would be watched at all times. Bentham believed that constant surveillance would both punish and reform inmates. It would also make them efficient workers. Each person would behave in a way that he or she thought acceptable to the prison guard simply because the guard might be watching. Prisoners would also work hard at whatever task they were set, to avoid punishment. Therefore, he believed that they would gradually become better citizens, because they would be more aware of others and learn and have practice in behaving in socially acceptable ways. Furthermore, the solitary situation of each prisoner would help the inmate consider his or her wrongdoing and repent. Although unfortunately no panopticons were actually built, there were many prisons built modeling his ideas. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1977) argues that today 's society is very much like Bentham 's panopticon, since citizens are under constant surveillance. Like prisoners in the panopticon prison who self-police their own behavior because the guard may be watching, we too discipline ourselves, keeping society ordered and
In the earliest days of English and French colonial settlement all crimes were deemed deserving of punishment. The Demonic perspective is the oldest known perspective and deviance was considered to be anything that threatened the church. When someone …show more content…
As well as a supporter of Beccaria, he came up with the panoptical concept for prisons in 1791. Bentham’s panopticon is a prison in which the jailer or a guard can view all the inmates in their cells without being seen himself. Ideally, inmates would be watched at all times. Bentham believed that constant surveillance would both punish and reform inmates. It would also make them efficient workers. Each person would behave in a way that he or she thought acceptable to the prison guard simply because the guard might be watching. Prisoners would also work hard at whatever task they were set, to avoid punishment. Therefore, he believed that they would gradually become better citizens, because they would be more aware of others and learn and have practice in behaving in socially acceptable ways. Furthermore, the solitary situation of each prisoner would help the inmate consider his or her wrongdoing and repent. Although unfortunately no panopticons were actually built, there were many prisons built modeling his ideas. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1977) argues that today 's society is very much like Bentham 's panopticon, since citizens are under constant surveillance. Like prisoners in the panopticon prison who self-police their own behavior because the guard may be watching, we too discipline ourselves, keeping society ordered and