Michel Foucault on Attica: An Interview

In: Social justice: a journal of crime, conflict and world order, Band 18, Heft 3, S. 26-34

Abstract

(Originally published in Telos, 1974, 19, spring, 154-161.) Reactions to a 1972 visit to the Attica (NY) prison are recounted. Contrary to descriptions of prisons as machines of incarceration capable of producing virtuous men, it is argued that prisons are "mechanisms of circular elimination." Society eliminates by sending to prison people who prison breaks up, crushes, & physically eliminates, after which the prison frees them, sending them back to society. The state in which they come out insures that society will eliminate them once again, sending them back to prison. Commenting on training intended to adapt prisoners to prison life, it is contended that the only way for prisoners to escape from the system of training is by collective action, political organization, & rebellion. US prisons are much more conducive to political action than those in Europe. US prisons assume a role as a place of punishment & also as a concentration camp, where the penal system serves as an instrument & as a pretext for the practice of radical concentration. The US & French prison systems are compared. S. Millett