Capital Punishment

I just read an article from the New Yorker which perfectly illustrates the idea that we are still in the same pattern of punishment as we were long ago.

Although we'd like to believe that we are a civilized society that no longer tortures individuals for the crimes that they commit against us, we still sentence people to a life behind bars, or even worse to spend years on death row contemplating the execution that is eventually to come. If that isn't torture, then I don't know what else to call it.

Mr. Willingham has spent thirteen years in prison and was then executed by the state of Texas for allegedly murdering his 3 daughters by setting fire to their home. As the article states, this conviction is now highly questionable, leading us to ask the question, "What on earth is civilized or humane about imprisoning and then executing the father of 3 young girls who were just burned alive in their own home?" Not only did Willingham lose his children, he barely survived the fire himself, almost passing out inside in an effort to save their lives. As if that weren't enough, he spent the remaining years of his life "paying his debt to society" by recounting the loss of his children over and over in his mind. Torturous indeed.

Although the process of execution in our society has been sterilized from the messy public affair it once was, it still maintains the horrific end result. That is that a person who is accused of a horrific crime is the one who carries the burden of proving their innocence, and that without that proof their death is inevitable. Whether that death is clean and quick or messy and drawn out is not the issue, the matter that someone else holds it in their hands is the true point that likens this type of punishment to that which Foucault discusses throughout the first section of his book.

Discipline and Punish Part I

Foucault, Michel.  1975.  Discipline and Punish.  Penguin Books Ltd.

I must preface this by saying that this is the first time I've read any of Michel Foucault's work. While his use of language is incredibly poetic and beautiful, I must admit that it is incredibly difficult to digest. That said, here is my account of the first section of his book, Discipline and Punish.

In this portion of the book, Foucault juxtaposes the types of discipline and punishment that were practiced in the 18th century with those that emerged in the 19th century, some of which are still practiced today. He begins with a graphic account of torture that was inflicted upon a man accused of regicide in 1757 and goes on to describe the daily activities of prison life some eighty years later. Foucault's argument is that while we may believe one form of punishment to be more civilized than the other we are still exercising enormous amounts of control over those who we feel are deviants in our society. In fact we are showing even more control in scheduling out every aspect of their day year after year than we once did in inflicting upon them grave tortures in the public square.