Panopticonism

• Surveillance Theory: Foucault's surveillance theory argues that in today's society, self-surveillance has become an important way of achieving social control. We know that we might be being watched - for example by CCTV cameras - so we monitor and control our behaviour ourselves. Society has become a panopticon.
• Bentham was a founder of utilitarianism and was a leading advocate for the separation of the church and the state, freedom of expression and individual legal rights.
• UCLs PanoptiCam project tests surveillance algorithms.
• Prison design can also impact on crime. The traditional prison design is the panopticon (all-seeing) shape. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to view all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being watched. The building has a tower at the centre, from which it is possible to see each cell in which a prisoner is kept.
• However, though the guards can see the prisoners, the prisoners can’t see the guards and so they do not know whether or not they are being watched at any given moment. Therefore, not knowing if they are being watched, the prisoners must constantly behave as if they are, just in case. In this way, surveillance turns into self-surveillance.
• The guards have no need to discipline the prisoners; the prisoners discipline themselves. In other words, visibility is a trap. Prisoners can be seen but cannot communicate with the prison officers or other prisoners. The 'crowd' is abolished. The design ensures a sense of permanent visibility that ensure the functioning of power.
• Santa Claus is coming to town is an example of panopticonism. The lyrics claim that Santa always sees them (children) so they know they’re being watched. A child internalises this and feels like they’re being watched all the time (internal social control). This encourages the children to behave acting as an internalisation of tradition and culture.
• The hitlerjugend can be seen as another example of the panopticon. The children are ‘always watching‘ the parents so the parents have to be on their best behaviour all the time because they’re unsure if they’re actually watching or if they’re not but behave just in case. This acts an external role of social control. This links to a rational Choice Theory, the parents know there’s a high likelihood of being caught by their children so they make a rational choice not to commit crime.
• Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is also an example of a panopticon. It acted as an external social control on the parents of children; the children would report them to the police if they were caught doing drugs. The parents would only do it at home previously but now the children acted as surveillance cameras at home so couldn’t do it anymore.