Daily quotes

[Angrboda]

The rule of lateral effects.

The penalty must have its most intense effects on those who have not committed the crime; to carry the argument to its limit, if one could be sure that the criminal could not repeat the crime, it would be enough to make others believe that he had been punished. There is a centrifugal intensification of effects, which leads to the paradox that in the calculation of penalties the least important element is still the criminal (unless he is likely to repeat the offence). Beccaria illustrated this paradox in the punishment that he proposed to replace the death sentence — perpetual slavery. Is this not a physically more cruel punishment than death? Not at all, he says: because the pain of slavery, for the condemned man, is divided into as many portions as he has moments left to live; it is an infinitely divisible penalty, an Eleatic penalty, much less severe than capital punishment, which is only one step away from the public execution. On the other hand, for those who see these slaves, or represent them to themselves, the pains they bear are concentrated into a single idea; all the moments of slavery are contracted into a representation that then becomes more terrifying than the idea of death. It is the economically ideal punishment: it is minimal for him who undergoes it (and who, reduced to slavery, cannot repeat his crime) and it is maximal for him who represents it to himself. “Among the penalties, and in the way of applying them in proportion to the offences, one must choose the means that will leave the most lasting impression on the minds of the people, and the least cruel on the body of the criminal” (Beccaria, 87).

— Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish