It's a historical text, following the emergence of prisons over time and looking at conceptions of power and punishment over quite a long period, but it has often been received as a contemporary commentary. Foucault once said (in Remarks on Marx) that if he has so irritated contemporary authors with a historical text, then it must have contemporary relevance.

It's also remarkably readable for saying that it's a poststructuralist classic. It's also (horror of horrors!) properly referenced and argued, and actually sticks to the subject.

Somebody should insist on reading the whole thing to David Blunkett.


A great insight into crime and its punishment   March 14, 2002
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

Foucalt argues eloquently the idea that prisons merely perpetuate violence, that the chain of events in a criminals life may sometimes create someone who is even worse. That we behave in ways according to who is watching us. Written in a way in which you have to concentrate but extremely intresting peice of writing.


A fascinating genealogy of practices in modern society   May 13, 2000
 18 out of 20 found this review helpful

In this insightful study, Foucault provides a meticulous account on the normalising practices employed by modern society. Using the example of the emergence of the prison Foucault shows how modern society is obsessed by a need to systematise, generalise, examine, and more generally subjectifying the individual by means of disciplinary techniques.

I can highly recommend this book, probably one of the best I have ever read.

Commenting on the review by the reader from the US (13 March 2000), Foucault is not actually writing a history of the prison, but is rather taking a genealogical approach. This suggests that we need to rethink the traditional notion of events being ordered along a continuum of chronological time.