Abstract
In the 1972 interview from which the above epigraph is taken, Michel Foucault identifies the prison as an institution that produces the marginalization of which he speaks. Indeed, the final chapter of Discipline and Punish makes clear that the disciplinary function of the prison continually produces the very population of delinquent individuals it was ostensibly created to reform. Through this production, the prison both justifies its own existence and effectively reproduces existing normalizing power relations within society as a whole. In short, Foucault reveals the prison as a productive failure. From his perspective, part of the work of Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons (GIP) was to make visible the normalizing and therefore oppressive function of the prison—to cast light on it precisely as a productive failure—by allowing the voices of prisoners themselves to be heard; hence, therefore, its collection and publication of prisoner accounts of the conditions of their incarceration.
The problem is the following: to offer a critique of the system that explains the process by which contemporary society pushes a portion of the population to the margins.
—Michel Foucault, “Le grand enfermement”
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Notes
Foucault, “Préface” (1971), FDE1, no. 91, 1065.
Daniel Defert, “Quand l’information est une lutte” (1971), FGIP-AL, 72.
Ibid.
Ibid. The document describes sexuality as “doubly” repressed, given the absence of women and the prohibition of homosexual contact.
Foucault, “Non, ce n’est pas une enquête officielle …” (1971), FGIP-AL, 67. This interview originally occurred on “Format France” radio program of Radio-Canada, April 21, 1971.
Foucault, “(Manifeste du GIP)” (1971), FDE1, no. 86, 1043.
Other factors contributing to the undermining of the disciplinary function of prisons include the incarceration of increasing numbers of people with mental illness, the disproportionate incarceration of people of color, and the overall social harm of mass incarceration. A recent editorial provides a fine synopsis of these issues: New York Times editorial board, “End Mass Incarceration Now,” New York Times, May 24, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/end-mass-incarceration-now.html. More in-depth analysis may be found in Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada, eds. Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, and Allison C. Carey (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). While the volume in some ways effectively “expand[s] notions of ‘incarceration,’” it does not address the issue of age-related cognitive impairment and the resulting “incarceration” (i.e., institutionalization) of aging individuals (Preface, x).
Ibid., 36. The California prison system’s Developmental Disabilities Program screens inmates upon admission to the system and places them in one of the thirty-three state prisons, such as the California Men’s Colony, with programs in place that can address needs and provide care. See Bettina Hodel and Heriberto Sanchez, “The Special Needs Program for Inmate-Patients with Dementia (SNPID): A Psychosocial Program Provided in the Prison System,” Dementia, 12.5 (2013): 654–660, http://dem.sagepub.com/content/12/5/654.full.pdf+html. The SNPID is “based on the approach that agitation or socially inappropriate behavior in dementia can often be avoided or reduced by making changes in the physical environment, the social environment, and the activities offered to the person” (656).
Ibid., 36.
Ibid.; Timothy Williams, “Number of Older Inmates Grows, Stressing Prisons,” New York Times, January 26, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/us/older-prisoners-mean-rising-health-costs-study-finds.html.
Ibid., 36–38. New York, California, and Ohio have special dementia units. None are large enough to handle the number of inmates needing care.
Leonard Lawlor and Andrea Janae Sholtz, “Speaking Out for Others: Philosophical Activity in Deleuze and Foucault (and Heidegger),” forthcoming in Between Deleuze and Foucault, eds. Daniel W. Smith, Thomas Nail, and Nicolae Morar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
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© 2016 Dianna Taylor
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Taylor, D. (2016). Between Discipline and Caregiving: Changing Prison Population Demographics and Possibilities for Self-Transformation. In: Zurn, P., Dilts, A. (eds) Active Intolerance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137510679_8
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