ABSTRACT
Ever since the publication of Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1977), it has been virtually impossible to think about modern punishment without in some way focusing on Bentham’s Panopticon. For criminologists, it is fair to say that while Bentham was well enough known already as a founder of classical criminology, until then it had been the rational choice criminal rather than the disciplinary prison that was his trademark. Now the Panopticon appears as the quintessential expression of liberal penology. Working with the lightest possible touch on the body of the offender, it accorded well with liberal rejection of the coercive excess of the Absolutist state. As well, as Foucault argued, it was an institution that made subjects free in the sense that they would conform to the ways of a liberal polity without continued intervention by the state. However, we may well query whether the Panopticon should be considered the liberal penal apparatus par excellence.
