NCJ Number
181537
Journal
Punishment & Society Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2000 Pages: 5-22
Date Published
January 2000
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article develops a theoretical model of digital rule, which is a form of monitoring from a distance and is possible given certain electronic technologies; the analysis concludes that this monitoring produces a related form of decisionmaking and particular forms of punishment.
Abstract
The sociological study of punishment should proceed within a wider notion of social regulation. Punishment and control often overlap in that penal techniques often involve preventive controls, and preventive techniques involve penal elements. Thus, Foucault argues that punishment has no essence and that punitive sanctions are part of a wider continuum of punishing and controlling techniques. Foucault's general approach to the concept of discipline remains useful, but his model of the technology of power requires updating due to certain moves within many criminal justice systems away from reliance on the disciplinary techniques that Foucault associates with modernity. Deleuze suggests a way of developing a theoretical adjunct to Foucault's model; this new control form is one of digital rule. Various emerging electronic technologies operate specifically through restrictions specified in terms of time and space. Formal control, exclusion, and punishment approaches continue to have a close relationship in a specific new way in this emerging form of rule. Electronic monitoring provides an electronic signal that amounts to prima facie evidence that an offender has either followed or violated a rule; the system receiving this signal automatically uses its own algorithm to decide on the action to take in response. This allows for almost instantaneous determination of infractions and sanction and for similarly rapid changes to the rules themselves. Therefore, novel forms of punishment and control, especially based on inclusion and exclusion, become apparent in the digital rule model. Notes and 65 references (Author abstract modified)