His sufferings become none of our anxiety. What occurs behind, turns out to be so far off for the ones outside it, that they have no compassion for the man who endures in isolation or rests on cold jail floors. The currentprison system is the model for control of a whole society. Furthermore, due to various legal and scientific development in the society and their gradual interdependency on each other and the contingent power structure, it was the soul that began to be disciplined and punished rather than the body.Thus, came the inception of the prison system that we see today. Foucault argued in his book that contrary to the belief of historians and followers of the enlightenment narrative, the step and the process of transitioning the punishment from the body to soul was of any humanistic impulse or any sudden newfound realization for the mutilated, butchered body, but of juridical changes and the social relations that evolved with it. Looking very closely at the arguments laid down by Foucault allows us to understand what exactly was the purpose of this transition from one kind of punishment to another. Here the punishment takes place in isolation without any aggrandize. The second scenario he presents is of an institutional framework on a Paris reformatory some 80 years laterthe first incident. He creates a difference between the execution of the regicide in Paris in 1757 with grand rituals and in front of a crowd of spectators. The opening of the book sets up the problem that the readers will unravel through the course of the book by contouring the difference between the two very different styles of punishment. Foucault supported these claims with examples from these eras. Punishment on the body comes from a much much historical time and punishment on the soul coming from the current and modern episteme.

According to Foucault, each form of punishment is the reflection from a different episteme. It is about the transition from one form of punishment to the other. Foucault attempts to show why the form of punishment transitioned over the years? From being inflicted on the body to being inflicted on the soul. Divided into four parts: Torture, Punishment, Discipline, and Prison, the book is a complete amalgamation of French and English sources delving into the history of the prison.

Foucault jail