Jeremy Bentham Panopticon Crash Course

hello this is Margot from criminology web.com and in this video I'll talk about Jeremy Bentham and his ideas about the panopticon Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher and reformist who lived in the 18th and 19th century in England he developed many ideas that were quite radical for that time and one of these ideas was that of the panopticon the idea of the panopticon was actually first developed not by Jeremy Bentham but by his brother Samuel Bentham and then Jeremy Bentham further build on those ideas the panopticon is an institutional building where people are kept under inspection

whether it is a hospital a school public housing for poor people a factory or a mental health institution but the most famous application is that of a prison the essence of the panopticon is that of central inspection according to Bentham it would be ideal if the people who were kept in an institution so the inmates in the case of a prison were constantly being watched by the inspectors the thing is that that would be fairly impossible because one would need a very large number of inspectors of course so according to Bentham the next best thing

would be that the inmates feel like they're being constantly watched even if that is not the case in reality and so central in the idea of the panopticon is that the inmates feel like they're being constantly watched this feeling of being constantly watched is achieved in the panopticon through two interlinked elements the first element is that the inspector should be central he or she should have a central position in the prison the second element is the idea of seeing without being seen meaning that the inspector should be able to watch the inmates but not be

seen by them if the inmates would be able to see the inspector then they would know when he or she is watching them and when he or she is not watching them but if the inmates can't see the inspector then they don't really know whether he or she is watching them or not and according to Bentham that wood leads the inmates to believe that the inspector might be constantly watching them in other words the inspector needs to have a central position in the prison so that he can see the inmates but at the same time

the inmate should not be able to see him now in order to achieve that aim that inmates are under the impression that they might be constantly watched by the inspector Bentham plays a central importance on architecture more specifically he designed the panopticon prison to be circular a circular building with the inspector being in the middle of it would allow the inspector to easily see all of the cells all he would have to do is turn around occasionally to see the other half of the cells behind him in mentem design the cells of the inmates would

be along the circular walls and all of the cells would have windows in the outer wall in the middle of the circle is what Bentham calls the inspectors Lodge from that Lodge the inspector can see into each of the cells because the cells have an iron grading that the inspector can look through at the same time the inmates can't see the inspector because the inspectors Lodge has blinds in other words the inspector is central and can see without being seen in that position the inspector would be able to observe everything that goes on in the

prison in Bentham's words not a drop of forbidden liquor can be either drunk in the house or so much as introduced into it without being seen also the idea was that inmates couldn't communicate with each other and to enable that there were barriers between the cells that extended a few feet beyond the ayran greeting according to Bentham one of the advantages of the panopticon over other prisons was that it was relatively cheap only a small number of inspectors would be needed to watch all of the inmates plus the inmates would work while they were being

incarcerated which would bring in money of course other advantages of the panopticon prison over other prisons were for example that it would be relatively safe for the correctional officers and that infections would not be able to spread easily because people wouldn't have a lot of contact with each other in the prison in terms of Management Bentham said that he would do it by contract offering the management of the prison to the person who offered the best deal the manager would then be required to disclose and print all of the details about the management of the

prison Bentham's ideas about the panopticon were quite detailed covering the central concept all the way through to the details such as the size of the cells where exactly the staircase should be located and how meals will be distributed for example he added exact measures for the cells in the prison and for the inspectors Lodge but despite Bentham's lobbying for the prison the panopticon in the end was never built it was not so easy to put the idea of a central inspector who could watch the inmates without being seen by them into practice there are several

correctional facilities that come closest to the original panopticon design by having the circular shape and a central inspection tower those include for example the circular prison of Harlem in the Netherlands and the prison of Breda also in the Netherlands both of these prisons are now closed another example is the Presidium or de l'eau prison in Cuba which had five circular blocks Fidel and Raul Castro were once held here that prison is now also closed some of the criticisms on the panopticon are among others that like other works by Bentham it doesn't seem to be very

humane Bentham's approach is quite rational and mechanistic and does usually not view individuals very much as human beings interestingly though some people have argued that the way in which modern technology operates is similar to Bentham's panopticon ideas public places are watched by CCTV and so people who are in those places are seen without seeing similarly people's internet and computer use may be watched without them being able to see whether or not they're being watched so in a sense Bentham's panopticon may have become a reality even when the prison that he designed was never built for

more fascinating criminology and criminal justice stuff subscribe to this channel and turn on the alarm bell or go to criminology web.com and find new foes there every week