Trouble Afoot

Like many a young armchair troublemaker, I have ishoos with The Fuzz. Not because I think that they're all power hungry bastards but because I think that they're just doing their job. Michael Parenti said that:

"...there are people who believe the function of the police is to fight crime, and that's not true, the function of the police is social control and protection of property."

So there we were last night, sat outside the V&A when a meat van pulled over to speak to these two genlemen who were wheeling their bicycles along the pavement. They didn't run away, they courteosly obliged when the officers questioned them, they laughed to themselves as they were patted down and their bike locks were inspected, they sat in the van as the police wrote important things on their notepads. A lady stopped and sat down next to us, asked us what was going on; they were friends of hers. We all watched on in dazed amusement, trying to fathom what the purpose of the exercise was.

They didn't look like criminals but them again, what is a criminal? Somebody whose eyebrows are too close together, the oik with no concept of discipline, the cold-hearted killer or just a social construct, a moment of opportunism in a sea of knockbacks, an illustration of all of our failings?

My favourite way to illustrate models of social control is Panopticism. Also favoured by Foucault, it centres around Jeremy Bentham's 18th Century prison design, the Panopticon.



It comprised of a circular building with cells around the exterior and a central inspection tower. A careful placement of blinds, walls, mirrors and windows meant that prisoners could not see other prisoners or if anyone was in the inspection tower. Bentham hypothesised that because the prisoners could never tell if they were being watched, they would presume that they were always being watched. Thus policing took place not as an exchange between prisoner and prison guard but as an exchange within the prisoner's own head. Essentially, they policed themselves.

Foucault expanded on this idea to describe two models of discipline; the discipline mechanism and the discipline blockade:

The discipline mechanism operates in an ethereal manner, it is power with a light touch that can flow through society by means of architecture, conventions and suchlike. Difficult to detect and lacking in a definable source but constantly with us, as invisible but as essential as oxygen. Its workings can be seen subtly operating everywhere. Giving up a seat on the bus for a pregnant woman, not opening somebody else's post, these are the intricate and often unwritten rules that govern society, allowing things to run relatively smoothly. They are constantly changing but often accepted with little resistance.

The discipline blockade however is easy to detect, it is the system of power exemplified by prisons and suchlike - heavy handed and outside the boundaries of society where there is no need for such social niceties. The demonised work alongside the long suffering, although nobody is sure who is who anymore.

The two systems feed off each other: the failures of the discipline mechanism enforce the need for the discipline blockade and the existence of the discipline blockade serves as a portent of what happens if the conventions of the discipline mechanism are not obeyed.

So that's the theory, which of course bears little relation to reality. When you look at rates of literacy, numeracy, truancy, mental illness etc. etc. in prisoners the waters muddy and the workings of society start to rumble through the picture. There are institutions like school which gingerly bridge the gap between the disclipline mechanism and the discipline blockade, social problems, the unfortunate truth that some people just have difficult lives from day zero, the cyclical nature of invalidating environments and their resultant effects.

I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it. I only came outside for a cigarette but I don't like rambling without bringing things full circle so back we go to a South Kensington pavement (and what lovely, gold-plated pavements they are). I quietly direct my smarmy distate at those officers who are merely just doing their job but maybe I'm not annoyed with them at all. More probably I'm annoyed at the way that complicated matters, be they media portrayals of prisoners or policeman are so simplisticly conveyed. I should be grateful though really because otherwise I think I'd explode in a tirade of exasperated confusion every time I opened the newspaper.

Did I tell you that I stopped reading the newspaper?