Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Panopticon

Today I came across this word twice, during my Nation-building and Sociology tutorials.

Panopticon.


This is essentially talking about the blue prints of a type of prison.


Below is a simple illustration:
Legend:
Red Cube in the middle: Place where the prison warden will be stationed.
Blue Cubes surrounding the circle: The cells where the inmates will be in.

The idea is that, the wardens can see what the inmates are doing but the inmates cannot see the wardens.
This idea has been emphasized alot to the inmates. What actually happens here, is that this so called Panopticon casts a "Panoptic gaze" upon the inmates. What it means by a Panoptic gaze is that, the wardens are not actually present, all that could be present is maybe a helmet or something, but the idea that they are constantly being watched has been so internalized with them, that they believe that they are watched and will tend to behave.

This concept is also applied by the CCTV, in fact most security guards don't really pay attention to the consoles. Potential robbers, thieves are stalled by the fact that they believe these CCTV will catch them in action and thus, will provide evidence for their capture/prosecution, thus they are deterred from possible crimes.