Political Philosophy

The Panopticon Writings

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Jeremy Bentham

1787

Bentham's most notorious practical proposal: a circular prison in which an unseen inspector could observe every inmate at all times, producing in each prisoner the permanent awareness of potential surveillance — and thereby reforming behaviour without continuous expenditure of force. The Panopticon writings encompass the original letters, the Postscript expanding the design to hospitals, schools, and workhouses, and later correspondence with the British government that consumed nearly two decades of Bentham's life. Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish later made the Panopticon a defining image of modern disciplinary power.