Panoptic Prisons

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Recommended: Prison Effects in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Panoptic Prisons
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Between 1991 and midyear 2007, parents held in state and federal prisons increased by 79% (357,300 parents). Children of incarcerated parents increased by 80% (761,000 children).” Children with parents in prison are more likely to commit a crime and end up in the prison system themselves. Often, they watch their parents go through a cycle of entry, exit, and reentry into and out of the prisons, and have to watch them suffer from prisons that do not serve to rehabilitate the prisoners. Prison brutality, corruption, and escape are illustrated in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption,” as well as a flawed panoptic structure. The movie starts out with the sentencing of innocent Andy …show more content…

When prisoners are released back into the “outside,” they have a hard time adjusting to smaller freedoms, such as what it is like to be able to go to the bathroom without asking permission, as demonstrated by Red. Small differences in lifestyles between the outside world and in the prison causes many prisoners to feel like an outsider when they leave the judiciary system. This in turn, leads them to recommit crimes in order to go back “home” to prison. In some extreme cases, they are even led to commit suicide, like Brooks did after his release. They feel as though they have been uprooted from their home and thrown into a society that they know nothing about. The altered version of the Panopticon allows for these flaws in the system to develop, and for corruption to flourish in these environments. Foucault describes that the Panopticon is “polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners” (380). This means that when the Panopticon in its entirety is carried out in a perfect situation, it will successfully reform prisoners. With all of the differences that are shown in Shawshank, representing other prisons, it does not serve the prisoners, but it belittles them and breaks them down. The goal of panopticism is also to better the society that it functions in, but because the pieces are not all there, it only allows for more

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