Introduction
Prisons are a crucial part of the modern juridical system as they are portrayed to be the strict yet humane punishment for a wide range of crimes. These establishments are designed to induce a certain level of stress and remorse, and their portrayal in popular culture contributes to this image. However, imprisonment in its current form is a relatively new method of regulating society and preventing crime.
Michel Foucault (2019), one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, states that the modern state of the prison system relies heavily on discipline as its primary control mechanism. This perspective creates a discourse about the nature of incarceration and demands an analysis to evaluate its effectiveness. According to the author, this system, which is still used today, has flaws that make it inhumane and give false hope to those seeking rehabilitation. Therefore, imprisonment succeeds in mentally affecting and controlling the prisoners with discipline-related methods, which are used in other social structures but fails to reintroduce the prisoners into society successfully.
Discipline and Society
Educational System
Prisons are not the only example of an establishment that focuses on discipline and control. Education is an excellent example of a construct designed to condition citizens to obey the rules and avoid anything outside socially accepted norms. Thiel (2019) analyzes this system and concludes that the current test-based education only allows for a narrow range of interpretations. This limits the applicability of the creative approach, which may not prepare a student for real-life situations.
However, it guarantees that a particular set of subjects is conveyed to a future citizen even if this information is unusable. The necessity to process a significant amount of data in limited time slots and the strive to standardize the results lead to the need for a control mechanism. Discipline plays a crucial role in this process as it allows students to be organized into classes instead of using an individual approach. Therefore, while the system does not benefit the usability of gained knowledge, it provides an effective public structure for sharing information.
Healthcare System
As in education, other constructs that require mass control and well-designed systems rely on discipline. Healthcare also uses this tool to maximize the potential of healthcare work and prevent adverse effects (Dillard-Wright, 2019). The nurses use electronic devices to monitor the patient’s health and review the daily fluctuations of measurements. While this effectively increases the chances of quicker recovery, it still includes the elements of the Panopticon, described by Foucault (2019).
The omniscient approach to controlling patients involves a discussion of patient confidentiality in social establishments. Again, the method is used to manage groups of people and increase productivity even if the person may feel a lack of personal space or autonomy. Thus, the tools used in prisons are also prevalent in other systems like schools and hospitals.
The Goals of Imprisonment
The prison system heavily focuses on isolating the subjects to punish them for their crimes. Foucault (2019) states that the focus of achieving a criminal’s suffering has shifted from body to soul. He notices that this change was made to make the system more effective in reestablishing the norm as the central feature of the criminal’s worldview. This is the intention behind creating standardized schedules, uniforms, and meals.
Berger (2019, p. 281) supports this by accenting the protocolized regimen as an essential part of the limiting prison environment. The same ideas are presented in Frankl’s (2006) “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which describes the experience of living in a concentration camp. The author notices that the hardships of cold, physical violence, and hunger were not as detrimental as the all-reaching strive for emotional comfort. The book describes how only the ones who saved their will to live despite the spiritual and bodily exhaustion survived the incarceration. Therefore, the first goal of imprisonment is to affect the internal state of the criminal instead of damaging the body.
Reinstating the norm into the prisoner’s lifestyle is one of the main goals of punishment. According to Foucault (2019), the incarcerated should accept his wrongdoings and realign his moral compass according to the socially acceptable rules. Kelly (2019) analyzes this statement, adding that the described “norm” ranges depending on a particular culture. The same article researches how this system binarizes the rules. A prisoner may be guilty or innocent in the same circumstances in different communities. Thus, while the concept of “norm” does not have a grounded definition, it is central to the prison system and acts as an essential rehabilitation goal.
The most prominent goal of imprisonment is the social rehabilitation of the offender. The person serving a sentence should rethink their actions and return to the community as a valuable citizen who obeys the law and produces value (Armstrong, 2020; Zhang, 2020). Foucault (2019) states that the shift from bodily punishment to the current system was more of an economic choice than an ethical one.
The prisoner who learns to obey the norm and understands the importance of discipline may continue contributing to societal needs during and after incarceration. This point is also supported by manual labor and the option to receive advanced education (Alvehus, 2021; Asimaki, Koustourakis, and Nikolakakos, 2019). This technique allows for utilizing prisoners as minimal-wage workers and training new professionals in a controlled environment with the incentive to prepare them for release. As a result, rehabilitation is the critical element that should be the most essential factor in the prison system design.
As a result, the main idea behind modern imprisonment is to use discipline and the relevant framework of norms to rehabilitate citizens by controlling their internal state. In theory, this system benefits both the prisoners and the state that sponsors the establishments. It provides a humane and productive alternative to the older methods and may guarantee a new beginning for those who offended the law. However, it is crucial to understand how these techniques function in practice.
Incarceration and Consequences
Mental Effects
The presence of discipline as the essential factor of an imprisonment institution effectively changes the internal state of the punished person. In an article aimed to analyze modern prisons, Armstrong (2020) concludes that the current system creates perfect circumstances that heavily affect the internal state of a prisoner. The disciplinary measures that include a standardized regimen present a framework for behavioral reassignment. This achieves the goal of controlling the emotional and spiritual elements of the prisoner and suggests that the prison experience will be avoided in the future.
At the same time, this heavily regulated environment may be counterproductive regarding later rehabilitation since the criminal cannot readapt to social constructs outside of prison (Jouet, 2022). The same effects are observed in similar social constructs, such as military or education, which define a specific norm as a basis for all activity (Moran and Turner, 2022; Thiel, 2019). This may result in a long-lasting trauma that will be detrimental to any person, even the one who had the will to change their behavior. Thus, the effect of discipline is practical in management but may be harmful to the offenders’ psyche.
Isolation is one of the most effective tools available in modern prisons. This became especially notable after COVID-19 and the implementation of lockdown measures to decrease the infection rates. Sarasin (2020) and Yilong (2020) compared free people to prisoners who had to experience the influence of discipline in their daily lives and stated that this was detrimental to public mental health and productivity.
However, the prisoners described by Schliehe et al. (2022) underwent changes that limited already small chances of living a comparatively comfortable life even in penal institutions. Their mobility was impaired, and guards controlled communications to prevent the spread of the disease. At the same time, they experienced stress connected to living in enclosed spaces, which creates a risk of epidemic disasters. This resulted in a substantial increase in anxiety, lack of personal rooms, and promotion of ostracizing presumably prisoners (Schliehe et al., 2022). Therefore, isolation is a powerful tool that allows prison managers to enforce discipline and norms even among the ones who do not rely on communication as a need.
The general effect of imprisonment is ineffective in helping the person striving to achieve total rehabilitation. They are excessively controlled, and their mental state undergoes harmful changes that teach them to focus on the norm or blame the system that condoned their incarceration (Nylander and Bruhn, 2020). The superficially “humane” techniques of isolation and discipline fail to help eliminate the core psychological and societal reasons for crime and only succeed in creating involuntary management methods (Alvehus, 2021; Jouet, 2022). Thus, even though imprisonment achieves the goal of controlling, the current methods oppose the following rehabilitation.
Societal Rehabilitation Chances
The possibility of being reintroduced into society as an active and valuable member is a significant motivational factor. According to Asimaki, Koustourakis, and Nikolakakos (2019, p. 114), the chance to receive additional education in prison is a popular option for prisoners who see it as an opportunity to acquire new skills. This can be achieved by special courses or semi-professional jobs provided by the state. Implementing this system affects the possibility of choosing new career paths and grants new opportunities to people who do not have access to proper schools. Therefore, education and prison work are a big part of rehabilitation as they equip former criminals with demanded skills and productive goals.
In addition to professional skills, implementing prison education courses and manual labor promotes non-violent communication. Binda et al. (2020) analyzed the consequences of learning and working as a team in prison and concluded that it sufficiently decreased the number of rule violations and other incidents. The prisoners who participated in art programs were especially aware of the effect of this system as they showed a higher level of self-conscience and soft skills (Binda et al., 2020, p 251).
The opportunity to work in groups improved the sense of belonging and discipline outside the classroom as the penal institution became associated with a small society. The same phenomenon is noticeable in similar environments of military service, which explains why ex-military workers comprise a significant percentage of prison staff (Moran and Turner, 2022, p. 397). At the same time, the participants of Little and Warr’s (2022) article on the same topic noticed a better understanding of self-identity and personal choices that can prevent relapse. As a result, educational courses benefited the prisoners’ interpersonal communication techniques and allowed them to cooperate within the limits of social norms.
While educational and labor programs show great potential, their execution does not allow for effectiveness. As was stated in Thiel’s (2019) research on the education system in the UK, strict discipline limits the usability of learned information. It formalizes the grading system as the sole reflection of academic success. The same applies to manual work, especially in cases where the results risk being fabricated or biased, as the punishment for lack of discipline also applies to supervisors (Zhang, 2020, p. 678).
The reports do not include the reasons for insufficient prisoners’ interest in these opportunities and omit the underachieved goals if this may bring unwanted consequences to management staff. In these cases, formalities and norms that demand strict protocols and exact results defeat the purpose of the programs and diminish their positive effects. Therefore, the lack of a humane design decreases the effectiveness of education and labor. At the same time, the same human factor allows mistakes and misrepresents the results, which closes the most common pathway to rehabilitation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the modern prison system has a clear set of goals but fails to achieve the most important one. It punishes the person individually and manages many prisoners simultaneously using discipline-related methods. This technique is also presumably beneficial to the main aim of rehabilitation of the citizen, but the current design has flaws that limit the results. Focusing on transparent and standardized results forces the management to falsify reports and omit failures, which keeps the gaps unresolved and increases the possibility of relapse. Therefore, to properly fulfill its potential, the imprisonment system should be readjusted to accent the reintroduction opportunities instead of management solutions.
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