Panopticon: Difference between revisions

The Panopticon is a type of building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century, also described as an 'inspection house'. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. Bentham conceived the basic design as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, poorhouses and madhouses, but he devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a Panopticon prison, and it is his prison which is generally understood by the term.

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."^[1]

"Morals reformed— health preserved — industry invigorated — instruction diffused — public burthens lightened — Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock — the gordian knot of the poor-law not cut, but untied — all by a simple idea in Architecture!"^[2]

In 1786-7, Bentham travelled to Krichev in White Russia to visit his brother, Samuel, who was engaged in managing various industrial and other projects for Prince Potemkin. It was (as Jeremy later repeatedly acknowledged) Samuel who conceived the basic idea of a circular building at the hub of a larger compound as a means of allowing a small number of managers to oversee the activities of a large and unskilled workforce.^[3] Jeremy began to develop this model, particularly as applicable to prisons, and outlined his ideas in a series of letters sent home to his father in England. He supplemented the supervisory principle with the idea of contract management; that is, an administration by contract as opposed to trust, where the director would have a pecuniary interest in lowering the average rate of mortality.

The Panopticon was intended to be cheaper than the prisons of his time, as it required fewer staff; "Allow me to construct a prison on this model," Bentham requested to a Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, "I will be the gaoler. You will see ... that the gaoler will have no salary — will cost nothing to the nation." As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched. According to Bentham's design, the prisoners would also be used as menial labour walking on wheels to spin looms or run a water wheel. This would decrease the cost of the prison and give a possible source of income.^[4]

While the design did not come to fruition during Bentham's time, it has been seen as an important development. For instance, the design was invoked by Michel Foucault (in Discipline and Punish) as metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise. Foucault proposes that not only prisons but all hierarchical structures like the army, schools, hospitals and factories have evolved through history to resemble Bentham's Panopticon. The notoriety of the design today (although not its lasting influence in architectural realities) stems from Foucault's famous analysis of it.

On his return to England from Russia, Bentham continued to work on the idea of a Panopticon prison, and commissioned drawings from an architect, Willey Reveley. In 1791, he published the material he had written as a book, although he in fact continued to refine his proposals for many years to come. He had by now decided that he wanted to see the prison built, and managed by himself, with Samuel's assistance. After unsuccessful attempts to interest the authorities in Ireland and revolutionary France, he started trying to persuade the prime minister, William Pitt, to revive an earlier plan for a National Penitentiary in England, and to build it as a Panopticon. He was eventually successful in winning over Pitt and his advisors, and in 1793 was paid £2000 for preliminary work on the project.

The intended site was that authorised for the earlier Penitentiary (under an Act of Parliament of 1779) at Battersea Rise; but the new proposals ran into technical legal problems, and the objections of the local landowner, Earl Spencer. Other sites were considered, including one at Hanging Wood, near Woolwich, but all proved unsatisfactory. Eventually Bentham turned to a site at Tothill Fields, near Westminster. Although this was common land, with no landowner, there were a number of parties with interests in it, including Earl Grosvenor, who owned a house on an adjacent site and objected to the idea of a prison overlooking it. Again, therefore, the scheme ground to a halt. At this point, however, a nearby site at Millbank, adjoining the Thames, was proposed, and this time things ran more smoothly. Using government money, Bentham bought the land in November 1799 for £12,000 on behalf of the Crown.

From his point of view, the site was far from ideal, being marshy, unhealthy, and too small. When he asked the government for more land and more money, the response was that he should build only a small-scale experimental prison - which he interpreted as meaning that there was little real commitment to the concept of the Panopticon as a cornerstone of penal reform. Negotiations continued, but in 1801 Pitt resigned from office, and in 1803 the new Addington administration decided not to proceed with the project. Bentham was devastated, saying 'They have murdered my best days'.

A few years later, however, the government revived the idea of a National Penitentiary, and in 1811-12 returned specifically to the idea of a Panopticon. Bentham, now aged 63, was still willing to be governor. However, as it became clear that there was still no real commitment to the proposal, he abandoned hope, and instead turned his attentions to extracting financial compensation for his years of fruitless effort. His initial claim was for the enormous sum of nearly £700,000, but he eventually settled for the more modest (but still considerable) sum of £23,000. An Act of Parliament in 1812 transferred his title in the site to the Crown.

Bentham remained bitter about the rejection of the Panopticon scheme for the rest of his life, and convinced that it had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite. It was largely because of his sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of 'sinister interest' - that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest - which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.

The National Penitentiary was built on the Millbank site, but to a design by William Williams owing little to the Panopticon, beyond the fact that the governor's quarters and administrative offices were placed at the centre of the complex. It opened in 1816.

The architecture incorporates a tower central to a circular building that is divided into cells, each cell extending the entire thickness of the building to allow inner and outer windows. The occupants of the cells are thus backlit, isolated from one another by walls, and subject to scrutiny both collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen. Toward this end, Bentham envisioned not only venetian blinds on the tower observation ports but also maze-like connections among tower rooms to avoid glints of light or noise that might betray the presence of an observer

— Ben and Marthalee Barton ^[5]

No true Panopticon prisons to Bentham's designs have ever been built. The closest are the buildings of the Presidio Modelo in Cuba. Although most prison designs have included elements of surveillance, the essential feature of Bentham's design was that the custodians should be able to view the prisoners at all times (including when they were in their cells), but that the prisoners should be unable to see the custodians, and so would never know when they were under surveillance. This objective was extremely difficult to achieve within the constraints of the available technology, which is why Bentham spent so many years reworking his plans. Subsequent nineteenth-century prison designs enabled the custodians to keep the doors of cells and the outsides of buildings under observation, but not to see the prisoners in their cells. Something close to a realisation of Bentham's vision only became possible through twentieth-century technological developments - notably CCTV - but these made the need for a specific architectural framework redundant.

The Panopticon is widely, but erroneously, believed to have influenced the design of Pentonville Prison in North London, Armagh Gaol in Northern Ireland, and Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. These, however, were Victorian examples of the Separate system, which was more about prisoner isolation than prisoner surveillance; in fact, the separate system makes surveillance quite difficult.

Many modern prisons are built in a "podular" design ^{[citation needed]}influenced by the Panopticon design, in intent and basic organization if not in exact form. As compared to traditional "cellblock" designs, in which rectangular buildings contain tiers of cells one atop the other in front of a walkway along which correctional officers patrol, modern prisons are often decentralized and contain triangular or trapezoidal-shaped housing units known as "pods" or "modules" designed to hold between 16 and 50 prisoners each. Cells are laid out in three or fewer tiers arrayed around either a central control station or a desk which affords a single correctional officer full view of all cells within either a 270° or 180° field of view (180° is considered a closer level of supervision).

Control of cell doors, CCTV monitors and communications are all conducted from the control station. The correctional officer, depending on the level of security and segregation, may be armed with nonlethal and lethal weapons. Increasingly, meals, laundry, commissary items and other goods and services are dispatched directly to the pods or individual cells. These design points, whatever their deliberate or incidental psychological and social effects, serve to maximize the number of prisoners that can be controlled and monitored by one individual, reducing staffing; as well as restricting prisoner movement throughout the prison as tightly as possible.

As noted above, none of these prisons - with the arguable exception of the Presidio Modelo - are true Panopticons. In some cases, the claims for any influence are very dubious indeed, and seem to be based on little more than the fact that (for example) the design is circular.

• Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
• Balassagyarmat Fegyház és Börtön (Prison) — Balassagyarmat, Hungary
• Carabanchel Prison — Madrid, Spain
• El Palacio de Justicia y Cárcel de Vigo (modern El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo) — Vigo, Spain
• Caseros Prison — Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Palacio de Lecumberri — Mexico City, Mexico
• Chi Hoa — Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
• Fleury-Mérogis Prison — Fleury-Mérogis, France.^[6]
• Huron Historic Gaol — Goderich, Ontario, Canada
• Insein Prison — Insein, Burma
• Kilmainham Gaol — Dublin, Ireland
• Koepelgevangenis (Arnhem) — Arnhem, Netherlands (Koepelgevangenis literally means dome-prison)
• Koepelgevangenis (Breda) — Breda, Netherlands
• Koepelgevangenis (Haarlem) — Haarlem, Netherlands
• Prisión Modelo — Barcelona, Spain
• Mount Eden Prisons — Auckland, New Zealand
• Okrąglak Areszt Śledczy w Toruniu — Toruń, Poland
• Old Provost — Grahamstown, South Africa
• Panóptico — Bogotá Prison (today the National Museum of Colombia)
• Pelican Bay State Prison — Del Norte County, California, United States
• Port Arthur, Tasmania Prison Colony — Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia
• Presidio Modelo — Isla de la Juventud‎, Cuba
• Corradino Correctional Facilities - Paola, Malta
• Round House — Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia
• Special Handling Unit — [1] Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec, Canada
• Stateville Correctional Center — Crest Hill, Illinois, United States
• Twin Towers Correctional Facility — Los Angeles, California, United States
• Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp - Berlin, Germany
• Lapas Sukamiskin - Bandung, Indonesia

The Panopticon has been suggested as an "open" hospital architecture: "Hospitals required knowledge of contacts, contagions, proximity and crowding ... at the same time to divide space and keep it open, assuring a surveillance which is both global and individualising", 1977 interview (preface to French edition of Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon").^{[citation needed]}

The Worcester State Hospital, constructed in the late 19th century, extensively employed panoptic structures to allow more efficient observation of the wards. It was considered a model facility at the time.

The only industrial building ever to be built on the Panopticon principle was the Round Mill in Belper, Derbyshire, England. Constructed in 1811 it fell into disuse by the beginning of the 20th century and was demolished in 1959.^[7]

Contemporary social critics often assert that technology has allowed for the deployment of panoptic structures invisibly throughout society. Surveillance by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in public spaces is an example of a technology that brings the gaze of a superior into the daily lives of the populace. Furthermore, a number of cities in the United Kingdom, including Middlesbrough, Bristol, Brighton and London have recently added loudspeakers to a number of their existing CCTV cameras. They can transmit the voice of a camera supervisor to issue audible messages to the public.^[8][9] Similarly, critical analyses of internet practice have suggested that the internet allows for a panopticon form of observation.^[10] ISPs are able to track users' activities, while user-generated content means that daily social activity may be recorded and broadcast online.^[11]

Shoshana Zuboff used the metaphor of the panopticon in her 1988 book In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power to describe how computer technology makes work more visible. In 1991 Mohammad Kowsar used the metaphor in the title of his book "The Critical Panopticon: Essays in the Theatre and Contemporary Aesthetics" (American University Studies Series Xxvi Theatre Arts). Earlier, Michel Foucault used the term more generally as a metaphor in describing Western society.

The use of photographic surveillance began in 1913 with the surreptitious taking of pictures from disguised locations of the suffragette inmates of Holloway Prison. The first use on record of camera surveillance in public space was that of the Metropolitan Police at Trafalgar Square in 1960. They used two temporary cameras to monitor crowds during the arrival of the Thai royal family and on Guy Fawkes Day. Between 1960 and 1996, the proliferation of the closed circuit system resulted in government spending on it accounting for more than three-quarters of the total crime prevention budget <citation needed> and a mass demonstration against camera surveillance in Brighton in May 1997. Over the next few years, face and license plate recognition was installed in key positions in London.^[12] With the recent 7/7 bombings, the effectiveness of the CCTV system has come under scrutiny, with emerging reports showing little or no deterrence of overall crime in London.^[13]

New York City has stated ambitions to create its very own 'ring of steel', very much similar to that surrounding London. It would surround 1.7 square miles (4.4 km²) of Lower Manhattan and cost $90 million. As of August 2007, the city had raised about $25 million.^[14] As in the case of the already-installed camera security system in London, its ostensible effectiveness is continually under question.

• In pop culture Lord of the Rings's the lidless eye of Sauron is commonly seen in the same respects to a panopticon.
• In Gabriel García Márquez's novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the Vicario brothers spend three years in the "panopticon of Riohacha" awaiting trial for the murder of Santiago Nasar.
• Angela Carter also includes a critique of the Panopticon prison system during the Siberian segment of Nights at the Circus.
• In her 2008 young adult novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart has the protagonist talk about reading an excerpt from Michel Foucault's book Discipline and Punish in which he "uses the idea of the panopticon as a metaphor for Western society and its emphasis on normalization and observation" (Lockhart 2008, p. 54). She goes on to bring up the panopticon again throughout the course of the book.
• Charles Stross's novel Glasshouse features a technology-enabled panopticon as the novel's primary location.
• The 2009 film "Law Abiding Citizen" uses the panopticon, both architecturally and conceptually, in a Foucauldian interpretation of the power struggle inherent in a system of constant observation.
• In JLA: Earth 2 and related works, the lunar headquarters of the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, analogous to the Watchtower of the Justice League of America, is called the Panopticon. The contrast of names implies that from the Panopticon, observation serves purposes of control and coercion, while surveillance is conducted from the Watchtower in order to aid and protect.
• In Silent Hill 4: The Room there is a game level called Water Prison World, that is centered around a nightmarish, deserted Panopticon.
• Sludge metal band ISIS named their third album Panopticon, the album's focus is on the proliferation of surveillance technologies throughout modern society and the government's role in that spread.
• Panopticon is the name of a US Anarchist Black Metal band, who has politically motivated lyrics and philosophical themes.
• In John XII Hawks' novels, The Fourth Realm Trilogy, the antagonists seek to create a "virtual panopticon" imprisoning and controlling the population by means of surveillance technology.

• Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
• Big Brother, a character from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Big Brother, the popular reality television series
• London's "ring of steel"
• Governmentality, and the Foucaultian idea of Biopower
• Information Awareness Office
• Mass surveillance
• Omniscience
• Right to privacy
• Totalitarianism
• The Transparent Society by David Brin also Kiln People
• The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks
• Video surveillance
• Panopticon (album) by Isis (band)
• Total institution
• Panopticism
• Eastern State Penitentiary, a later revolutionary prison design

• Panopticon — by Jeremy Bentham (online version)
• Special Issue on the Panopticon — Surveillance and Society
• Control and Surveillance from Computers In Society - on-line Course
• [2] John Bowring, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4 (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1843). This is the volume that contains Bentham's writings on the Panopticon.
• Simon Werrett "The Panopticon in the Garden" - essay on the Russian origins of the Panopticon