Introduction
The death sentence and how it infringes on people’s rights and regional values are topics of discussion in the United States and other countries today. People who support the death sentence do so because they think the accused should be killed for their crime. Others oppose the punishment because they believe that killing someone is immoral or that the culprit should spend the rest of their life in prison. Killing a wrongdoer does not make the wrongdoing go away or aid in the criminal’s rehabilitation (Greenspan 639). Punishment is intended to change a person’s moral values and attributes. Since humanity is primarily concerned with deterring, it must employ the most humane deterrents available to prevent crimes, and brutal punishments like the death sentence are not among them. Since assassinations still happen in the modern world, only a few assassins will think twice before acting if they are found guilty of murder and executed. From this standpoint, the death penalty has not produced very much. Discipline and Punish and Crime and Punishment books will be used in the essay to elaborate on cruel punishments.
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish by Michael Foucault focus on the modern criminal justice system. The book examines the social context of punishment and the implications of shifting power. Foucault starts his analysis by focusing on the eighteenth century, when society used the worst forms of punishment, such as public hanging and physical discipline. Torture was used to interrogate a suspect to force them to admit to crimes they did not commit. Punishment was a celebration of the death of those accused of committing crimes. The jail department organized the activity as a ceremony to restore the king’s power. Campaigners first demanded reforms in punishment in the nineteenth century. Research indicates that reformers were more concerned with altering the way power was exercised than with the welfare of the convicts receiving harsh punishment (Foucault). The goal was to increase the electricity system’s effectiveness—by introducing disciplinary measures designed to regulate behavior and reduce punishments. Timetables and military training exercises were two procedures implemented to direct people’s behavior.
Foucault contrasts the public executions in 1757 with the prison regulations in effect in 1837. The evolution of the criminal justice system over that period demonstrates how society is introduced to new rules of law and order. One of the most significant changes was removing torture as a method of interrogation, which caused the criminal’s body to vanish from view. The main change was the elimination of public executions where convicts were shown for cheering crowds (Foucault). People were guaranteed to avoid crime by locking up those who had committed crimes.
In contrast to simply punishing a person for their crime, today’s sentences attempt to alter the person’s behavior and help them become better citizens. Executions are carried out painlessly in Europe, damaging only the soul, not the body. The removal of pain from criminal punishment put an end to the spectacle. The development of new technology helped lessen the suffering the victim would experience in the event of execution for a criminal who has been given a death sentence (Foucault). To ensure the prisoner was executed without torture, tactics like the guillotine and the injection of poisonous medicines were used.
The punishment format was changed to safeguard the condemned criminal’s body from injury. Therefore, the introduced alterations addressed the soul and successful reintegration of criminals into the community. The definition of crimes also changed, and judgment is now rendered by looking at the offender’s instinct, enthusiasm, and reasons. In contrast to prior torture techniques, investigators and the jury now rely on scientific understanding to compile sufficient evidence to charge. The judge considers the accused person’s soul and the alleged offense in Europe. Making a final determination about the criminal’s destiny was challenging to decide. The judge had to rely on additional intelligence sources, such as medico-legal specialists, to reach a ruling (Foucault). By examining how modifications to the criminal justice system affected the political influence of various European leaders, the book establishes a connection between human sciences and the history of the penal code. The author notes that when it comes to political power, historians have never given much attention to the human body. Presidents in the past relied on intimidating people who might threaten their reign by torturing and openly executing their rivals to keep control.
The panoptic is at the center of Foucault’s book, exploring his observations of contemporary society and his idea of how punishment and discipline are ingrained. Foucault contrasts the old day’s execution and the present day’s schedule. Foucault uses the European plague of the 17th century to illustrate his analysis. The author ignores the actual plague’s description and concentrates on the actions taken to stop it. Text and reality, according to Foucault, are intertwined. The definition of discipline was formed through procedures that were made possible by government action (Foucault). Public order was lost due to the disease, but several people were publicly executed when it was restored.
When the plague struck Europe, people went beyond the bounds of what was expected. People who grew ill were labeled as abnormal, which became risky. The author concludes that manipulating individuals through observation and analysis is still practiced in contemporary culture. Governments and businesses worldwide keep a careful eye on people and categorize them based on their behaviors. Movement restrictions exist, and getting authorization to migrate from one nation to another requires an application (Foucault). Companies classify and oversee their employees. To penalize those who are not meeting expectations, they are expelled. Because they risk losing their jobs and means of subsistence, workers constantly live in terror of making mistakes.
Judgment was the first social norm that was adopted before discipline. It took a micro-penalty of time to create the penal code. Along with appropriate speech and behavior, the system included. Punishment was used to reprimand those who did not behave as was anticipated. Although non-observance was also significant, using bad behavior as punishment was comparable to how the courts did it. People were condemned and punished for acting in a way that did not conform to the law (Foucault). Different sentences with a corrective purpose were used for discipline. When someone misbehaves, they are reminded of the pending disciplinary actions.
A person’s behavior is categorized as either good or evil, and punishment uses two pleasure systems. The separation of hierarchy caused by social discipline also rewards good behavior and penalties for bad behavior. Following the awarding ranks, people are either awarded or punished. To understand how hierarchical groups are formed and how a group of people is divided into cells, Foucault concentrated his research on the power that allows the government to punish individuals. Understanding power structure requires knowledge of how people are divided (Foucault). People in positions of authority could watch a particular group of people’s behavior and compare it to the established standard average behavior. The technique assisted the authorities in instilling discipline through training and observation.
It was crucial to train people to fit into a specific disciplinary category, and authorities depended on observation as a technique to do this. How the people responded to the exercise was altered when the focus shifted from punishing to enforcing discipline. In addition to other forms of coercion, the government used them more frequently. By keeping an eye on people, the government could keep people under control by ensuring they always did what was expected of them without having to punish them. The new method of enforcing discipline became close surveillance (Foucault). When someone is being observed, their behavior often changes because they are always self-conscious. Leaders used this tactic to ensure their followers and consolidate their power. The method above illustrates the power of operation, which allows a person’s body to be controlled without physical harm or violence.
Foucault also emphasizes how premodern societies created written laws. Laws that were codified altered the position of judgment. The rule sets forth the anticipated behaviors for specific categories of individuals. Since then, the actions of troops, students, factory workers, and inmates have been evaluated concerning this law. In society, two basic norms are distinguished between normal and aberrant behavior. When an action went well, it was accepted as typical. A poor deed was considered unusual, and the offender received punishment (Foucault). Since then, individuals have been classified into ranks based on normalcy. The employment of this criterion, according to Foucault, is flawed since it influenced people’s reasoning in a predetermined way. People were not allowed to express their fundamental beliefs without fear of being labeled weird and punished.
Crime and Punishment
The book Crime and Punishment present the earliest modern, scientific viewpoints on crime. The 1764 book was the foundation for the classic criminological paradigm, which dominated attempts to understand crime for more than a century. Some people believe, that humans are rational beings who care about lessening their suffering and increasing their pleasure. The book opposes harsh punishment since it agrees that such measures do not work to reduce crime and should not be used. Penalties should be proportionate to how serious the offense was, not the other way around. Inflicting pain on the offender is not the intended result of punishment; rather, it is meant to deter future offenses and criminal activity. Dostoevsky concurs that retribution should be used to promote moral change.
The book does not quite approach crime and punishment as one might anticipate. The crime occurs in Part One, and the penalty is delivered in the Epilogue several pages later. The novel’s primary emphasis is not on these two events but on what transpires in the interim—a comprehensive investigation of a criminal’s mentality. Dostoevsky is more interested in how Raskolnikov is forced to deal with his agonizing guilt from murder than in dealing with the fallout from the murder itself. Dostoevsky suggests that actual punishment is significantly less horrifying than the tension and worry of attempting to dodge the penalty by placing little emphasis on Raskolnikov’s imprisonment (Dostoevsky). The writer believes that Raskolnikov will eventually confess or go insane because he knows that a criminal who is tortured by conscience must necessarily be tortured mentally. By performing skilled mind games on Raskolnikov, Foyder increases his belief that the nature of the human psyche predetermines the novel’s outcome.
The book shows the reader how the protagonist’s moral character develops over time as he suffers from guilt’s mental torment. Most people do not realize that there are other forms of punishment than physical violence, but Dostoevsky was aware of one that might help people change their moral values. The book shows that hurting a criminal mind can be just as effective as physically torturing them. Raskolnikov decides to confess to stop his mental torment and make an effort to start again. Raskolnikov spends the book’s last pages in Siberia, where he faces seven years of hard labor but emerges spiritually strengthened. His choices were a one-way trip to damnation or a new start in life gained through repentance. One does not need to be spanked or punished to learn from mistakes (Dostoevsky). It is feasible to draw a lesson from the human psyche’s tendency toward guilt. Spending seven years in Siberia did not raise Raskolnikov’s moral standards; instead, his guilty conscience helped him become a better person. A conscious intellect can always tell right from wrong.
Conclusion
The idea that individuals have the authority to determine who lives and dies and what punishment they deem appropriate for an individual is cruel. Because it goes against the laws of nature, humans have no right to claim power over that. People should not decide if anything or someone is worth living or not. The right to life belongs to everyone and everything on this planet. Foucault’s philosophy explains the relationship between discipline and punishment and how they impact power. The sentence includes causing physical harm to the body, whereas power governs it without damage. People were tortured and cruelly executed in front of the public in early societies. Individuals no longer suspected of committing a crime are no longer slain in public due to changes in the system. People who have been charged with a crime go through a disciplinary process to rehabilitate them through training and reintegrate them into society. As a result, humanity has adapted to a set of norms and laws that govern their discipline.
The concept of judgment is a crucial subject in Crime and Punishment, including the judgment of oneself and others, judgment by society, and judgment by religion. The novel challenges individuals to evaluate not just the people themselves but also their evaluations of one another. As people navigate this maze of judging, individuals and the characters are searching for justice, or, to put it simply, fairness. The book makes the case that jail is a crucial component of social justice because Raskolnikov learns how to become a nonviolent member of society while there. Love and friendship can operate in tandem with judgment to help bring justice, as shown by the characters who continue to support Raskolnikov even after his crime is made public. Thus, cruel punishment should not be some of the modes implicated in reverting a criminal.
Works Cited
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Gutenberg.Org, 2022.
Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” Internet Archive, 2022. Web.
Greenspan, Stephen. “Cruel and Unusual Punishment in the USA.”Public Integrity, vol 22, no. 6, 2020, pp. 637-639. Informa UK Limited.