ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the meaning of the concept of punishment and its relation to society, specifically exploring its ties with political economy. It narrates how different sociologists and criminologists have described the connection between certain aspects of the economic world and the use of given kinds of punishment – particularly imprisonment – characterized by their levels of punitiveness, as by their social function. The chapter discusses the relationship between the political economy and punishment that has been premised on the assumption of an economy built around the factory as its basic unit. The social function of the prison as an ancillary institution entrusted with remodelling the ideal worker is no longer a possibility, since 'those members of the underclass committed to state prisons no longer provided a coherent target for strategies of integration and normalization'. In fact, the labour requested in a post-Fordist society is radically different from what the previous prison/factory could deliver through the application of discipline.
