Summary

Foucault begins the fourth and final section of his study with the claim that if he had to choose a year when the carceral system was fully implemented, he would choose 1840, the opening of Mettray, a juvenile detention center. He writes that he chooses this event because it embodies the “disciplinary form at its most extreme,” with its partitioning in hierarchized groups, comprehensive surveillance, isolation, along with a strict work and school schedule (293). The authorities at Mettray were “technicians of behavior” that fostered the creation of docile and useful bodies through comprehensive information gathering and other disciplinary techniques. What was unique about Mettray was that the young inmates would be subject to apprenticeships so that they could later become instructors in the same disciplinary mechanisms they experienced.

Thus, Foucault writes that Mettray “marked a new era” through its “normalization of the power of...