"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" Post hoc propter hoc: the purpose of the prison system is to do the following, in no particular order:
1. Disenfranchise minorities 2. Provide union jobs for ex-manufacturing workers 3. Terrorize those not in prison with the prospect of imprisonment 4. Insult gay people without seeming to 5. Provide evidence that there is justice
Joanna
^^^^^ CB; How about a Marx-with-quotation-marks interpretation: Prisons are part of the special repressive apparatus of the state power. The state is the main tool by which the ruling class rules over the ruled classes.
It is the main feature of the _direct_ coercive mechanism on the exploited class in capitalism ( pace the doubly free labor, wage-labor indirect coercive mechanism). Feudalism and ancient slave society didn't have prisons.