Hinder Communication In Prison Architecture

Prisons have evolved from populated center cities that were visible to the public, to isolated islands that are invisible from societies view. Each geographic location of a prison was chosen to relay a specific message. For example, center city prisons were not prisons that were surrounded by 30-foot walls enclosed by strict parameters. Rather, they were designed by architects to show off prisoners in cages to the public. They wanted to promote and advocate the discomfort, shame, and humiliation that prisoners had to go through to ultimately deter the public from committing crimes and ending up in the horrifying condition that they saw before them. However, as the prison population increased and became overcrowded, prisoners became hard to …show more content…
Prison guards were now able to monitor, surveil, and have access to a small population of prisoners in case of violent uproar. Moran highlights the benefits of this kind of architectural design. He says, “It is like containing fire…the fear of contagion is a key aspect of prison architecture in France: fear of physical contagion (disease), fear of moral contagion (vice), and fear of political contagion (revolt)” (Moran et al. 170). Although prison architecture did aim to immobilize prisoners and allow easy access and visibility, it also has another major effect: to control the minds and emotions of prisoners. The ability of prison guards to surveil every moment, every action, and every breath of a prisoner without the prisoners’ knowledge produces a power relationship; prisoners are helpless individuals who are not given any control over their life. A means by which the power structure between prisoners and prison guards is furthered is through the visibility and invisibility of prisoners produced through the prison architecture. We will now look at modern day prisons and how they are able to control the movement of prisoners- and most importantly, control their …show more content…
Ultimately, prison produces prisoners that are disciplined. As Foucault describes, “Discipline that is not associated with an institution or apparatus, it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments. Techniques, procedures, levels of applications. It is a physics, or anatomy of power- a technology” (Foucault 215). Foucault is saying that the aim of prison architecture is to produce prisoners that obey the rules, follow the norm, and as a result, are able to integrate into a normal society. We saw this to be true because by increasing the visibility of prisoners and increasing the invisibility of prison guards, we are allowing prison guards to expand their power over prisoners who fear the blind eye. Further, there is a parallel between normalized society outside of prison and society in prison that achieves to normalize a prisoner. Let’s think of a prison guard. In prison, their job is to monitor and maintain order to prevent riots and violence. Outside of prison, we have law enforcement who has the same goal: to maintain order in society to prevent danger. Generally, we assume that the law enforcement is always watching- whether it be our local police who monitor our speed limit or the National Security Agency who monitor our computers. Even if we do not see them watching, we tend to think that