The criminal has violated a social code, and he needs to be reformed in order for the code to be repaired. Second, there is a transition from thinking of crime as an injury to the sovereign to thinking of crime as a violation of social norms. First, there is a transition from a focus on the body to a focus on the soul: reforming the soul instead of punishing the body. The transition from torture to prisons then entails a number of other transitions. Moreover, in prison, the aim is not to inflict pain on the criminal’s body in retribution for his acts, but to reform his entire personality in order to prevent crime in the future. In prison, the criminal is taken away from social view rather than publicly displayed. Beginning in the 1800s, these public spectacles came to be replaced by more “delicate” means of punishment, ultimately culminating in imprisonment. Up until the late 1700s, punishment for crimes was usually doled out by the sovereign of a country, such as a king, and came in the form of public torture or execution. The major transition Foucault describes, laid out in Parts One and Two of Discipline and Punish, is from punishment as a public spectacle to a private detention. But by looking at a history of punishment, Foucault also theorizes how power operates in society, especially how people are trained in “correct” behavior. Foucault focuses on Western societies, especially France and England. Discipline and Punish is first of all a history of changing attitudes toward and practices of punishing crime in the late 1700s through mid 1800s.
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