{"id":1700,"date":"2021-01-07T09:05:49","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T14:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2021-04-27T15:43:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T19:43:26","slug":"miguel-beistegui-beyond-the-punitive-society-questions-and-distinctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/miguel-beistegui-beyond-the-punitive-society-questions-and-distinctions\/","title":{"rendered":"Miguel Beistegui | Beyond the Punitive Society?\u00a0 Questions and Distinctions."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Miguel Beistegui<\/a><\/h2>\n

On 6 March 2018, in a speech in Agen, President Macron declared wanting to bring to an end the \u201ctout-carc\u00e9ral<\/em>\u201d which characterises the French penal system.\u00a0 Would this mean the end of the punitive society?<\/p>\n

Rereading Foucault\u2019s 1972-73 lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France, as well as other related texts by him, for today\u2019s discussion, I kept asking myself: what could it mean<\/em> to abolish the punitive society?\u00a0 And in light of this question, I was immediately struck by the distinctions that Foucault invites us to make:<\/p>\n

First, we need to distinguish between the question of punishment, which has always existed (and in The Punitive Society<\/em> Foucault distinguishes further between historically different tactics of punishment: 1. exile, banishment, expulsion, confiscation of goods and properties; 2. compensation, debt, financial obligation; 3. Marking bodies, wounding, amputating, torturing; 4. incarcerating), and the very specific phenomenon of \u201cthe punitive society,\u201d by which Foucault means a society of which punishment, a rationality and varied practice of punishment, is a central<\/em> mechanism.<\/p>\n

Second, we need to distinguish between punishment and condemnation, which can, but need not coincide.\u00a0 Condemnation requires a legal procedure; but in the precise context of the punitive society, and for historical reasons one would need to clarify, punishment requires an intimate and as complete knowledge as possible of \u201cthe dangerous individual,\u201d of their habits, motives, instincts, tendencies, patterns of behaviour, etc.\u00a0 Now dangerous individuals are constantly being punished, for example through differentiated access to health care, or insurance, or credit, and through an increasingly elaborate system of credit scoring.\u00a0 Yet this danger is not criminal, or at least not always (the dangerous individual need not be an \u201cenemy\u201d of society).\u00a0 The danger is not even actual.\u00a0 It is merely potential.\u00a0 Increasingly, the future is what determines the present, what\u2019s possible and impossible.\u00a0 Not the crime, but the dangerous profile is what matters.\u00a0 Today\u2019s punitive society requires the notion of risk and risk management \u2013 of accidents and responsibility without cause, as well as systems of insurance (Foucault mentions this aspect of the question in his 1978 article on \u201cThe Concept of the \u2018Dangerous Individual\u2019 in 19th<\/sup> Century Psychiatry\u201d).\u00a0 Truth is no longer an event, but a statistical reality, chance.<\/p>\n

A further distinction needs to be added to the one I\u2019ve just referred to.\u00a0 More specifically, the distinction between punishment and condemnation should be translated into, or further developed in relation to, a distinction Foucault introduces briefly and in passing in the sixth and final lecture of the 1981 Louvain lectures, Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice<\/em>: \u201cpenalty,\u201d criminal anthropologists claimed at the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, does not have to be a punishment, but rather a mechanism for the defence of society (p. 223).\u00a0 It is concerned less with the juridical notion of responsibility and freedom, and more with establishing and countering the degree of \u201cdangerousness\u201d of certain categories of individuals.\u00a0 It is intimately bound up with the idea of risk, and the possibility of assessing it scientifically<\/em>.\u00a0 A different kind of truth is at work here, one that establishes (often biased) profiles related to \u201crisk factors.\u201d\u00a0 Today\u2019s punitive society is a risk-assessing, statistical society, and one that privileges micro-disciplines and adjustments over molar ones.\u00a0 Bodies and minds are targeted, educated, redressed, normalised, but as a result of a statistical score.\u00a0 This is the reason why, in addition to truth as \u201cordeal\u201d in the Middle Ages, truth as \u201cinvestigation\u201d (based on avowal and proof) in the classical age, and truth as \u201cexam\u201d in the age of discipline, and which corresponds with the emergence of the human sciences, we need to recognise the growing and central role played by a different kind of truth in the punitive society, one that is far more abstract, for generated by statistical norms, and at the same time more granular, and producing constant micro-adjustments.\u00a0 Increasingly, the algorithmic model is replacing the human and social sciences in establishing the norm.<\/p>\n

This, in turn, means that we need to raise the question of the prison within this expanded, risk-driven rationality of punishment, which is also a rationality of reward.\u00a0 How does the prison system continue to operate, and even exist, in this context and normative society?\u00a0 This is the point at which we would need to note the significant differences that exist between certain nations, such as the United States, defined by mass incarceration and long-term sentences, and other, more liberal (and mostly Scandinavian) societies, which privilege short sentences and open prisons.\u00a0 How do we explain the fact that, despite the indisputable evidence regarding the fact that incarceration does not work (it does not normalise, but marginalises), and, as Foucault notes in the 1972-73 lecture course, was recognised as a failure from the start, in the early 19th<\/sup> century, most western nations remain so attached to it?\u00a0 One can point to a lack of imagination and a form of laziness.\u00a0 More convincingly, one can point to the collusion of neoliberal capitalism and the rationality of punishment: the privatisation of prisons is a lucrative business, which affects also the treatment of migrants in the US.\u00a0 Finally, one can point to mass incarceration as the perpetuation and extension of the systemic racism \u2013 of slavery, colonialism, and anti-migration attitudes \u2013 that characterises the history of the US and various European countries.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, I\u2019d say that there is evidence that we have already moved beyond the punitive society as focused on the tactic of enfermement<\/em>, and towards a society of more efficient control and surveillance.\u00a0 At the same time, we can\u2019t ignore the differences between neoliberal and\/or systemically racist societies, which continue to incarcerate, and incarcerate more, despite the evidence of failure of such methods; and more liberal, social-democratic societies, which incarcerate less, and are increasingly turning to short sentences and open prisons as forms of rehabilitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Miguel Beistegui On 6 March 2018, in a speech in Agen, President Macron declared wanting to bring to an end the \u201ctout-carc\u00e9ral\u201d which characterises the French penal system.\u00a0 Would this mean the end of the punitive society? Rereading Foucault\u2019s… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-7-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}