On Discipline and Punish

At the beginning of Discipline and Punish, Foucault gives the two different forms of punishment (one being a unfathomably gruesome torture and execution and the other being a daily schedule for prisoners in penitentiary) as examples of what he later discusses to be a change from punishment of the body to punishment of the soul. My initial reaction, however, was that the transition in punishment seemed to me to be from a "temporary" or "direct" punishment to a more "permanent" or "indirect" one. Punishment involving an explicit inflicting of physical pain can be regarded as temporary punishment and it is temporary in the sense that the greatest severity of punishment to the criminal is only in the moment that they are being dealt the punishment. This punishment, in relation to modern punishment, is short and direct; the criminal is tortured and beaten for a period of time lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a few days and is let go. This is in contrast to the many months or years a criminal today would spend in prison, but under relative physical comfort. The question therein lies in whether these two types of punishment are more or less or equivalent.

In answering this question, it might be useful to address the issue of "directness" in the two forms of punishment. In solely physical punishment, essentially only the transgressing individuals clearly involved in the crime are punished. The punishment, being that it is only a process of inflicting pain upon the body, lasts only as long as it take for the punishment to be dealt. Besides the possibility of the punishment leading to a permanent physical disability, there are no future implications that the punishment addresses apart from the criminal not committing another crime out of fear of a harsher sentence dealt upon their body should they transgress again. So long as the person is still alive afterward, the punishment is contained to that single person and that single period. This penal system can be reduced to a single question of physical endurance, of how much of a beating one can take. It does not address the possibility of curing a criminal, as Foucalt later discusses, as punishment can be regarded as a sort of "gamble". A criminal, for example, might continue to commit crime so long as they are able to accurately judge in advance the severity of the punishment they would receive if they are caught in committing the crime. Yet, this can also be said of the modern form of punishment (i.e how many years am I going to get if I do this? How much is the fine going to be if I do that?). It can be argued, however, that the modern penal system attempts to "cure" the criminal of their criminality, limiting the gamble to the initial transgression. I digress; this is altogether a separate issue.

To return to the issue of the directness of punishment: The modern tradition of punishment is much more indirect in