[lbo-talk] Marx without quotation marks

[Miles Jackson]

Voyou wrote:
> It may be a mistake to see this as a failure of the prison system,
> though - after all, Foucault was very interested in how systems achieve
> their wider function by not achieving their stated aims. The last part
> of Discipline and Punish is all about this - about how the carceral
> system produces delinquency, a break-down of social order that provides
> the pretext for continuing low-level intervention by the police. If this
> system of control is now moving from outside the prison into it, that's
> not necessarily a failure of the prison system, but rather a modulation
> of the way it functions.
>   
Let's put Foucault's point bluntly: the purpose of the prison system is 
to create criminals and expand various social practices and discourse to 
"control" criminality.  As far as I can see, the U. S. prison system is 
a wonderful case study that illustrates Foucault's point.

Miles