Foucaults Discipline and Punishment Theory - Essay Example

Relative to calls for equal protection of laws has idealized the non-usurpation of pain infliction that questioned forms of punishment in stark contrast to ethical beliefs that crime can be prevented at its root cause. An alternative approach to reform and behavioral modification has given rise to the discussion of multi-disciplinary approach and theories to that prevent the incidence of criminal deviation. This approach has gained wider acceptance as a preventive means in stark contrast to the allowance a certain crime to happen before society takes action and incur varying degrees of physical punishment to the individual.

Several believed that a variety of factors is believed to enhance the incidence of the violence in mankind that tends specifically recruit others to form a stronger criminal group. Recognizing the increasing scope, intensity and sophistication of crimes brought about by globalization as a mattress for drug operations, trafficking of arms and humans and laundering, countries have acknowledged the true nature of crime prevention. Efficient criminal justice systems have set standards and protocols that require cooperation to counter international syndicates.

Certain preventive theories have equated crime prevention in the individual capacity to control and restrain urges; Foucault as an anthropologist has decried this philosophy with an apparent affront to discipline and punishment. He has equated prisons as a form of discipline that utilizes technological power. His argument against public spectacle of torture is equated with forms to entertain and satisfy the perverse need of the society to play God. Playing revenge against the convict or a felon has given law the authority to act as an extension of the sovereign's body who is allowed to inflict harm as payment for a felonious and criminal act.

Hence Foucault provides the unintended consequences that the convict's body is used either to gain sympathy or admiration that fulfills a crowd's curiosity. Totally radical against public executions, Foucault notes that such theatrics often leads to riots in support of the prisoner. Its political cost was often high and is interpreted as the antithesis to modern society.Stance against Violence Violence, is seen in Foucault's theory of power (1975) in a two-fold dimension. First, it recognizes that violence cannot be seen simply as a destructive force existing alone, since the damaging effects are considered as consequences of an attempt to analyze and understand the meaning and origins of people's identities and their attributes whether in groups and societies which are continuously invented and transformed.

Secondly, it sees the trans-humanist forces widen the boundaries of knowledge to create a non-progressive series of historically distinct patterns of human and social response. In relation to violence, it is then possible that policy options in the present will always be restricted to the confines of the prevailing repertoire of violence, and therefore that any system of response is in fact a reflection not so much of the will of the people who set it in place. In place here was remotely discussed in mort of Foucault's discourses as the unpredictable play of power.

Foucault's theoretical perspective offers a useful