Bentham and Foucault's Panopticon

Well to first start off, the first section is hard to read because all of the stupid S’s looks like L’s! Took a while to fluidly get through it! But all in all a big difference between Bentham and Foucault’s description of the Panopticon is the purpose it served and what it stood for, an institution compared to a mode of control. Jeremy Bentham saw the Panopticon as a containment center for more than just prisoners. The purpose for the specific design was to maintain good behavior and order among all who reside within the confinement by having an all seeing, all watching, at all times personal monitoring the residents. Bentham states, “the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the person’s who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose of the establishment have been attained” pg. 3.  This circular building where there are a few watching the many, would provide for an ideal environment to house criminals or those who cannot behave in a consistently ideal and manageable way.  The way Michael Foucault saw the Panopticon was not only as an establishment, but its representation of power. It would, “induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” Pg. 201. The The ability to have a constant surveillance over a group of people would cause them to, by nature, behave in a certain way. When you think about your day to day activities it is easy to identify the way you behave behind closed doors, and how differently it compares to how you behave in public or while being watched. I know for myself personally if I know I am being watched, for example at work, while my manager is around I am on top of my game at all time, but when my manager is not around I am more laid back, while still performing my job dutifully I am given the ability to be in control of my own behavior without the judgment or discretion of a higher power. This is the concept that is being described, the ability to change a person’s behavior by placing the pressure of constant watch, as well as not knowing when and who is watching them. He describes the Panopticon as “a royal menagerie; the animal is replaced by man, individual distribution by specific grouping and the king by the machinery of a furtive power.” Pg. 203. This set up that Bentham created induces an ideal situation for any containment center, one which behaves perfectly and without flaw, because of the power structure that the inmates are threatened with. The inmates are a spectacle, and unbeknownst to them their demeanor and behavior is being controlled by someone they don’t even know or see.