In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn, Shukhov, the main character, experiences many hardships while held prisoner in a Stalinist labor camp in 1951. The prisoners' intense labor in subzero temperatures is punishment that is hugely unjust and inhumane.
For example, on this particular day in the book, he is feeling sick and is threatened with three days in the hole. Piling unjust punishment onto people who are already prisoner of a long hard sentence is just savage employment of power by the Soviet officials. Though mistreatment of prisoners occurs in work camps and prisons all over, few people know how widespread it really is.
Foucault argues that in ways that are often subtle and thereby seemingly invisible such as control of information, individuals are under constant surveillance and regulation, leading to normalization and acceptance of such systems. This is where this idea of docile bodies comes in from his larger work Discipline and Punish.
Docility is a notion that highlights the point in which “the analyzable body and the body than can be manipulated” are connected, Foucault uses this to illustrate the means in which individual people within their bodies are at the mercy of institutional regulation. The body is focused on specifically by Foucault, as the sight of the aforementioned regulation, more specifically “as object and target of power” historically (Foucault 1975).
Foucault argues “A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved” bodies are confined spatially (i.e in a prison cell), partitioned as to divide people and to maintain “order and discipline.” (Foucault 1975).
People who take part in talk about dismantling and increasing freedom claim that it wouldn’t be a good idea like it’s been happening and isn’t turning out well even though it hasn’t been happening in the first place. Essentially these people are saying all we’ve ever been working towards the abolition of prison and the weakening of professional power and informalism aren’t really that good and we shouldn’t want them anyway like they’ve been tried and tested and they obviously haven’t been. We still use prisons as our main source of punishment and rely heavily on expert opinion in most matters of importance.
My understanding of what Cohen says about the bloody code is that he believes the modern system is just a much more sophisticated version of the bloody code. The shift in punishment is from body to mind; The bloody code was more or less simple the body suffers the crimes you yourself commit but now the mind is what we punish and control, this is so much more complex and harder to track and regulate and because of its sophistication and invisibility; entirely more dangerous and coercive but still just as barbaric.
The bloody code is seen as barbaric and entirely based on vengeance which today is seen as immoral and today these give way to informed and expert intervention. Foucault uses Beccaria to illustrate the fact that to torture or to punish someone publicly is to take on the role of the criminal but lack the passions of the crime.
Punishment today is sophisticated and hidden, punishment is not daunting in its spectacle and it’s ferocity instead by its inevitability, the increased likelihood of punishment is what we today use as a deterrent for crime not the intensity and violence of the punishment alone. The system we have now can still be seen as having irrational tendencies, prison overcrowding, and police brutality, which is why the need for secrecy is ever more apparent because prisons are not a nice place. We have a fine line between human rights and the need for the government to be tough on offenders.
Our modern system isn’t perfect morally or in any respect, but it can still be humanised which is one of the main differences between the bloody code. We understand today that to punish is shameful and we do it only in the hopes of reforming people, secrecy is there to protect people from the reality of the states hypocrisy of telling us not to kill by killing. Today’s punishment has experts to rationalise and justify itself whereas the bloody code only had vengeance in mind and vengeance essentially is its own rationale. Our system uses scientific principle and good intentions to justify the punishment and control of people.
“The body now serves an instrument or intermediary: if on intervenes upon it to imprison it, or to make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regard both as a right and as property. The body, according to this penalty, is caught up in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions. Physical pain, the pain of the body itself is no longer the constituent element of the penalty” Foucault
Things like deaths in custody are rationalised and subverted; they are seen as sad tales of bad communication or bad coordination (Mckelvey 1977). Mistakes are seen as bad people in a good system which takes all culpability away from the system we rely on. It’s as if we need these experts to reassure us every day that the government always works in our best interests even when it’s killing us, or locking us up, we need that reassurance. Foucault points out the necessity of a doctor present at executions to do the opposite of what they are tasked i.e. end life instead of saving it and this is all rationalised away as they are there to prevent the victim from feeling pain. Foucault is obviously parodying the bloody code where pain was the point of the death and now it’s painless and private and no longer a spectacle the taking of life is now justified.
“All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.”Jeremy Bentham
Talk about prison reform is always claiming it’s moving towards enlightenment but this is far from the truth. Benevolence when it comes from this system always goes wrong because they constantly have to weigh conscience and convenience they’re trapped in that constant hard place of trying to do the best and easiest thing which obviously is pretty bad coming from a system we trust so implicitly(Rothman 1971).
In conclusion how can you put faith in a system that tries to do good but only the easiest minimal amount it can afford, how can you support a system that weighs goodness? One of the lessons best taught by history (that is obviously relevant today and in relation to this topic) is that benevolence should never be trusted.
Cruelty and mistreatment is ingrained in punishment and with every act of human kindness for example the force feeding happening today in Guantanimo bay for those prisoners that have gone on hunger strike because of the poor treatment. They force feed them to sustain their lives so that they can suffer further not to mention the act of force feeding is also a form of torture.
Bibliography;
Bottoms, Anthony E. from Garlend, D and Young, P (1983)
Neglected Features of Contemporary Penal Systems, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, penguin (1859)
Cohen, Stanley (2002) Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of the mods and rockers,
Cohen, Stanley, from Garlend, D and Young, P (1983)
Social Control talk: Telling stories about correctional change,
Foucault, M (1975) Discipline and Punish
Reiner Robert Media made criminality,
