Foucault: Crime, Police, & Power | Philosophy Tube

on the 2nd of March 1757 robber Francois Damien who had attempted to assassinate King Louie the 15th of France was taken through the streets of Paris wearing nothing but a shirt and holding a torch of burning wax to the plaster graph where the flesh was torn from his chest arms thighs and calves with redhot pincers his right hand holding the knife with which he had committed the crime was burned with sulphur so the knife in his hand melted together and molten led boiling oil burning resin wax and sulphur was poured on his wounds his body was drawn and quartered by four horses and his limbs and body were burned and his ashes were thrown to the winds and I thought my weekend was bad French philosopher Michel Foucault says that the way a society treats and defines its criminals says a lot about the nature of power in that society punishment has changed a lot over the last 250 years it used to be very public and very gruesome like the execution of damia a spectacular reminder of the violence that made the boss the boss and it focused mainly on the body to branding flogging torture burning always of inflicting physical pain nowadays punishment takes place further from the public eye further from government control - with privately run prisons in operation the penal system that's law policing and surveillance has also expanded hugely you can't live in a remote fishing village like you don't know who the king is anymore there are no outlaws the law is everywhere and applies everywhere especially with surveillance which we'll be talking about in part - nowadays punishment ostensibly aims more of the mind than the body as well the story is that rather than inflicting punishment for punishments sake the function of punishment is to prevent crime or reformed criminals but despite that crime still happens and reoffending rates are pretty high in fact some people have even argued that going to prison makes it more likely that you'll reoffending are the odd things about the way the penal system functions - for instance it seems to prioritize certain types of crime a while ago in my country the UK a lot of companies were found to have been under paying their staff and they were forced to give them back pay and the companies were named and shamed as a private citizen try stealing that amount of money from a company and you won't just have to give it back you go to prison we worry a lot in my country about benefit fraud but corporate tax avoidance costs us far more every year your local drug dealer or sex worker probably worried about getting their doors kicked in and getting dragged away by the police but many of the people responsible for the 2008 financial crash ever saw the inside of a jail and where banks were forced to pay settlements and fines a lot of that money came from shareholders and was tax deductible in my country the police can stop and search you under certain circumstances but you're much more likely to get stopped and searched if you're a black or minority ethnic person and less than half of all stop and searches actually end in anyone being arrested so for a system that is supposed to prevent crime and reformed criminals fairly and justly the penal system sure has a funny way of going about it and yet whenever anyone points this out the supposed answer is always more police more prisons more of the same Foucault says that's because the penal system isn't supposed to prevent crime all reformed criminals or even dole out justice it exists to defend the power of the ruling class pause step away from the comments section before I give you the details and before you leave a comment you need to understand what this means when Foucault says the penal system exists to defend the power of the ruling class he is not saying that there's some shadowy conspiracy of bankers and politicians planning to use the penal system to take over the world right saying the penal system exists to defend the power of the ruling class is like saying the human eye is designed for taking in light the human eye was not designed it evolved but saying designed to take in light gets across the idea that it's very good at that job and pressure to do that job was instrumental in its development it's perfectly possible that many of the people in the penal system lawyers judges police officers really want to prevent crime and really want to do good and are lovely people that is completely consistent with what Foucault is saying you can be a police officer and read Foucault please do what he's asking though is when the penal system fails to achieve its stated goals who benefits from that failure it's also worth revisiting what philosophers and academics mean when they talk about class classes are ways of talking about groups of people who are in similar situations or have similar experiences especially in terms of their access to money and power if you're in the same class as someone else it does not mean that your experiences are identical it's a little bit like when we talk about the weather we know that not every air molecule in a weather front has the same temperature speed and direction those molecules act as individuals but we can model trends in groups of them and ask what we can learn by looking at those trends especially when we're talking about the penal system and who gets arrested and who gets stopped and searched never forget that things like race gender and ability can massively impact which class you fall into okay now we're ready to continue Foucault thinks that the function of the penal system is to recycle waste product into something useful or at least profitable that waste product is criminals but only criminals of certain kinds the ones not useful to the ruling classes that's why a lot of the injustice is that we mentioned earlier tend to get treated a bit more leniently if you're a job creator you are very useful to the ruling classes especially when power is explicitly capitalist as it is in the West because the law is set by the ruling classes they are very well represented in the administrators of the law the politicians the judges the lawyers the criminologists these people are often white often wealthy often highly educated not always just often remember weather fronts whereas the working classes those surplus to powers requirements are more often found among those on the receiving end of penal justice if you ever get the chance as I have just go and sit in a courtroom for a day and take a look at the differences between the kinds of people being accused of crimes generally and the people doing the accusing generally if Foucault is right then as technology makes more and more traditionally working-class jobs obsolete we would expect to see a rise is in the prison population and we have Foucault says all that happens because the penal system isn't supposed to be just or fair or even prevent crime it's supposed to make people useful to the ruling classes he writes prison and no doubt punishment in general is not intended to eliminate offenses but rather to distinguish them to distribute them to use them that it is not so much that they rendered docile those who are liable to transgress the law but that they tend to assimilate the transgression of the laws in a general tactics of subjection so now you know fucose general thesis that the penal system is a tool for defending the power of the ruling class but save your comments and your questions for part two because you need to know how that works you need to know the mechanism in part two we'll be talking about government surveillance prisons and forced labor if you enjoyed today's lesson I have a tip jar at PayPal me / philosophy tube think of it as me putting a hat round at the end of a lecture and actually if you could give a regular donation at patreon.com slash philosophy tube that helps me give away free education to people all over the world and as always don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 113,182

Rating: 4.952425 out of 5

Keywords: Foucault, Philosophy, Crime, Police, Power, Prison, Criminals, Surveillance, Violence, Execution, Punishment

Id: EFaxgB5TygE

Length: 9min 5sec (545 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2017

Reddit Comments

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This talks about Foucault's ideas in particular, but I like the analogy that is drawn to make people understand why the "cabal/conspiracy theory" way of looking at what people like Foucault, and in fact many anarchist thinkers say is completely misunderstanding them:

"Before I give you the details and before you leave a comment, you need to understand what this means. When Foucault says, 'The penal system exists to defend the power of the ruling class' he is not saying that there's some shadowy conspiracy of bankers and politicians planning to use the penal system to take over the world, right?

Saying, 'The penal system exists to defend the power of the ruling class' is like saying, 'The human eye is designed for taking in light.' The human eye was not designed: it evolved. But saying, "designed to take in light" gets across the idea that it's very good at that job and pressure to do that job was instrumental in its development.

It's perfectly possible that many of the people in the penal system - lawyers, judges, police officers - really want to prevent crime and really want to do good and are lovely people. That is completely consistent with what Foucault is saying: you can be a police officer and read Foucault. Please do! What he's asking though is, when the penal system fails to achieve its stated goals who benefits from that failure?"

[u/eighth_of]

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