Fortifying Sisyphus, or the architectural machinery of modern punishment (1820-1870)

As the leitmotiv of corrections in England in the period between 1810 and 1870, the treadwheel effectively replaced its French counterpart, the guillotine, as the visible machinery with which punishment would be dealt to transgressors. This marked the shift from a system of punitive justice, to a system of reform of the prisoner for re-entry to society. For Foucault, this architectural nexus is summarised by the divergence between what he terms the "punitive city" and "coercive institution". This essay explores the rapid inversion of the architectural machinery of corrections, which, over a period of a few decades began extracting labour from the prisoner, rather than pain. This was linked to the belief, reinforced by many of the religions of the period, that there was a strong correlation between idleness (vagrancy) and crime. As the European prison became a more wholly functional system, closely geared to the march of industrial progress across Europe, an economy of labour emerged within it whose only objective was to undermine production and establish a new and pervasive architectural morality. The forces of progress and productivity, determined to infect the idle, secretly and ironically propagated this new technology of toil.