Jeremy Bentham is one of the foremost characters in the reform of corrections and rehabilitation of prisoners. He designed the famous panopticon style prison consisting of several cell blocks interconnected by a main administrative block. His design never really caught on in Europe, several prototype prisons were built, but only in America were any panopticon like prisons built. He was an advocate for prisoners rights, their education and health.

Bentham defined the term “utilitarianism” meaning that everything should try to get “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. He brought about change in British law trying to make them more humane, and compassionate. His views, though compassionate, often dealt with criminals as “children” or “inferior” in someways, to be thought of as “unsound” of mind and unable to control themselves.

Through critical analysis of the penal code of his time, Bentham brought about change in how criminals were to be dealt with. His views, though slanted, did bring about positive change allowing more humane treatment of criminals and the beginning of rehabilitation practices. He invented a new type of centrally controlled prison and tried, as usual, to overcontrol a situation.

The name of the movement arose from Bentham's test question, "What is the use of it?" Bentham, educated as a lawyer and responsible for profound reform of English19th-century criminal law, judicial organization, and the parliamentary electorate, described "utility" as pleasure, which he claimed is the ultimate goal of the action of any individual or group. In fact, he argued that even when someone claimed there was a different reason for acting, then that other reason is pursued on the grounds of the "pleasure" or utility it produces. In his "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation" (1789) Bentham states that we are subject to two "sovereigns," pain and pleasure. Our actions are focused on bringing us either more pleasure or less pain.

The other side of the utility coin is the impact on the group--the pleasure brought to the group as a consequence of the act, whatever it was. So the movement itself can be described by a defense of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."

Laws, then, were to be constructed to balance between individual liberty and group impact.

Bentham wrote the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England. Even though he thought the act was disgusting, he advocated the decriminalization of sodomy, which in his day was punished by hanging. His philosophy was that actions between consenting adults that brought no harm to the larger social group were not crimes. The published manuscript of "Offenses Against One's Self" (1785) is available online.

In America, Bentham is apparently most famous for his design of the "Panopticon," a prison constructed so that the inmates could be under visual surveillance at all times. Perhaps it is because of his work on this subject that several web page designers have thought the display of his mummified remains were an appropriate subject on the Internet. One artist claims that the video camera shots of this display is a realization of the principles behind the panopticon itself.

What exactly is a “Panopticon”, anyway.

Panopticon

The means by which the abstract space of the machine and the social space of the garden might be reconciled represents a unifying theme of utopian spatial organization. English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham struggled for decades to promote his vision of how this reconciliation might be accomplished through the construction of his architectural and social experiment, the panopticon ("all-seeing place"). Bentham introduced this concept in 1791 as a progressive and humane penitentiary. In a series of letters, Bentham proposed that the building would be circular with cells lining the perimeter. Each cell would be separated by walls on either side, so that the prisoners are "secluded from all communication with each other". A window on the wall facing the building's exterior and an iron grating facing the building's interior would allow light to pass through the cell. This light would ensure constant surveillance over the activities of each individual by an inspector who was located in a tower at the center of the panopticon. This surveillance was unidirectional, however. Bentham proposed that a set of blinders covering the windows in the inspector's tower would prevent prisoners from watching their captors.

The isolation of individuals that resulted from this architectural design ensured physical security and promoted moral reform. After all, as Bentham noted, "overpowering the guard requires an [sic] union of hands, and a concert among minds. But what union, or what concert, can there be among persons, no one of whom will have set eyes on any other from the first moment of his entrance?". From this modern form of imprisonment, individuals would have no recourse but to consider ways to improve their lot in life.

Modern Direct Supervision Facility

Further, the ability to view large numbers of inmates in a single glance reduced the number of observers necessary to maintain control and allowed public inspection of the panopticon's operations. This emphasis emerged from Bentham's philosophy of utilitarianism, which seeks the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In the Panopticon, few would be subject to the risks and unpleasantness of the inspection role, while many would benefit from the concept's enlightened means of management. Through public inspection, citizens would be free to discover for themselves the security for all bought by the tyranny over a few.

The most important benefit of Bentham's design was that his panopticon concept could be integrated into many social functions, including hospitals, schools, and military barracks. In his text Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault (1979) extends Bentham's concept further to serve as a metaphor for the modernist disciplinary society. In this state, control need not be secured by physical dominance over the body -- it is maintained though a process of isolation. The organization of our private spaces, essential mechanisms to maintaining the power relation, "are like so many cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible". Like the prisoner in the panoptiscopic penitentiary, the citizen "is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication".

Here, it must be emphasized that gaze is merely the means by which the end, individualization, is accomplished. Focus on the architectural construction, which served to illuminate individuals by a flood of light through the windows which lined the cells, is important. But that focus alone, deprives the panopticon of its utility as a metaphor for the utopian vision beheld by Bentham and shared by others. Indeed, while Hayden rejects the rigid, geometrical organization of progressive structures such as Bentham's panopticon as being "designed for imaginary space, not for the life space of communities" she obscures the larger point: regardless of their means, utopian architecture and its dystopian counterpart, suburbia, represent the dehumanizing resolution of the dialectical tension between emancipatory community and dehumanizing isolationism. Here, utopian architecture is defined as the organization of space to perfect individuals and their relationships while dystopian architecture represents the ironic result: the process of organization dehumanizes those it is designed to help. As Hungarian dissident satirist Mikls Haraszti -- a surviver of the twentieth century implications of this phenomenon -- might suggest, understanding of this phenomenon should not focus on the structure of architecture, but on "the space between the lines".