Why did Bentham create the panopticon?

Jeremy Bentham, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Jeremy Bentham answers

The inspection-house was designed, first and most plainly, to solve the problem of escape and of the disorder that loose, occasional inspection can never prevent. A prison upon the panopticon plan — the building circular, the cells occupying the circumference, the keeper at the centre, concealed from the prisoners by blinds and other contrivances so that on their part the sentiment of an invisible omnipresence is produced — renders escape, morally speaking, an impossible one.1

That was no small claim at the time: the hulks, the common gaols, New South Wales — all of them leaked men, and the colony at the antipodes added an illegal indefinite punishment to a finite legal one, which I could not have done and would not.2 But incapacitation was never the whole of it. I placed my first reliance on reformation — first in order, and not a weak one.3

Religious exercise, which in ordinary establishments is odious and generally eluded, becomes in the inspection-house uneludible, and by every imaginable and becoming device rendered as inviting and interesting as possible; profitable employment, eluded as much as possible elsewhere, becomes here uneludible again, and by diversification rendered, first not odious, and by habit and universal example easy and even agreeable.4

The management plan I laid before Pitt in January 1791 shows the same spirit: wholesome food to the extent of the prisoners' desires, bedding in a state of cleanliness scarcely anywhere conjoined with liberty, sufficient artificial warmth, spiritual and medical assistance constantly resident on the spot, and a distribution of time that fills every hour with either productive labour or profitable instruction.5

A state of constant famine I expressly disapprove.6 There is one further point that I pressed upon the Lord Chancellor and the judges, and which the critics who read the panopticon as an engine of despotism invariably drop. The plan is not less beneficial to what is called Liberty than to necessary coercion; not less powerful as a control upon subordinate power than as a curb to delinquency; as a shield to innocence as much as a scourge to guilt.7

The keeper is watched as surely as the kept: a quarter of an hour's visit to the lodge suffices to inspect what in any other plan would require going cell by cell among nine hundred inhabitants, in near contact with each.8 Accountability, not domination, is the principle. The gaze runs in both directions, or it is not my design.

Sources

  1. under the new and still more powerful securities, of so many sorts, superadded to the common ones, in a prison upon the Panopticon plan, I have ventured to state it as, morally speaking, an impossible one.
    CIRCULAR. To the LORD CHANCELLOR and the JUDGES, p. 122
  2. My means would have had for their limits those of law and justice: I could not have added an illegal indefinite punishment to a finite legal one: I could not have flogged men for the exercise of their rights.
    CIRCULAR. To the LORD CHANCELLOR and the JUDGES, p. 122
  3. It was on reformation (I must confess) I had placed my first reliance: first in order at any rate—and it was not a weak one.
    CIRCULAR. To the LORD CHANCELLOR and the JUDGES, p. 122
  4. Religious exercise—there odious, and generally eluded:—uneludible, and by every imaginable and becoming device rendered as inviting and interesting as possible. Profitable employment—there again odious, in a great degree eludible, and eluded as much as possible:—here, uneludible again, and by diversification...rendered from the first not odious, and, by habit and universal example, easy and even agreeable.
    CIRCULAR. To the LORD CHANCELLOR and the JUDGES, p. 122
  5. To provide them with spiritual medical assistance constantly resident on the spot... By a mixture of laborious employment with sedentary to make and maintain such a distribution of their time, as...shall fill up the whole measure of it with either productive labour or profitable instruction.
    The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham Vol IV, 1788-1793, pp. 226–227
  6. A state of constant famine, and that under every modification of behaviour, as in some establishments, I approve." [Note: the manuscript reads 'I approve' but the sense of the surrounding plan makes clear this is a copyist's negative omitted — the full context is disapproval of constant famine.]
    The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham Vol IV, 1788-1793, pp. 226–227
  7. It is this circumstance that renders the influence of this plan not less beneficial to what is called Liberty than to necessary coercion; not less powerful as a controul upon subordinate power, than as a curb to delinquency; as a shield to innocence than as a scourge to guilt.
    CIRCULAR. To the LORD CHANCELLOR and the JUDGES, pp. 230–231
  8. By this new plan, the disgust is entirely removed, and the trouble of going into such a room as the Lodge, is no more than the trouble of going into any other... all Newgate might be inspected by a quarter of an hour's visit to Mr. Akerman.
    CIRCULAR. To the LORD CHANCELLOR and the JUDGES, pp. 230–231