Modern Containment – Key Vocabulary

Overview / Central Thesis

• Containment is not a recent invention; it belongs to a historical trajectory of roughly 300 years and spans many institutions, including historical examples like quarantine stations and workhouses, and more contemporary ones such as reformatories, internment camps, missions, and Indigenous reserves. These diverse settings all embody the core principle of confining or managing populations that are deemed problematic or different.
• Modern societies have normalised a wide spectrum of containment practices so thoroughly that many people find it hard to imagine a past or future without specific groups of people being confined or managed within prescribed boundaries, often viewing such measures as essential for order and safety.

Key Scholars & Theoretical Frames

• Michel Foucault - Describes the past 300 years as “the age of the great incarceration,” emphasizing that expansive, systematic confinement is a defining characteristic of modernity. He argues this goes beyond simple punishment, becoming a pervasive form of social control and the production of subjectivities through institutional discipline.
• David Garland (sociologist/criminologist) - Argues that containment is so common and deeply embedded in our social structures that we often take it for granted, failing to critically examine its foundations. He encourages critical questions such as: How did containment develop structurally and ideologically? What specific mechanisms and rationales support its ongoing existence? For what purposes is it employed, and with what measurable effects on individuals and societies?

Language, Everyday Usage & Definitions

• The vocabulary of containment permeates daily life, used in phrases like “contain a bushfire” (limiting its spread and destructive power), “contain disease” (preventing its transmission and outbreak), or simply putting items in containers (physical enclosure for order or storage).
• General definition: to confine or limit something or someone within prescribed boundaries, involving both physical restriction and conceptual limitation of their influence or freedom.
• Modern containment (term):
  • Refers to a specific set of ideas, institutions and techniques that date from roughly the 1700s onward, marking a profound shift from temporary holding to systemic institutionalisation as a primary social strategy.
  • Plays a major governing role, particularly over the last 150 years, becoming a central, often invisible, tool for state control, social ordering, and the management of 'deviant' or 'undesirable' populations.

Containment as a Social Management Tool

• Used to “manage” perceived problems and the specific people associated with those problems, often by removing them from mainstream society or regulating their behaviour within controlled environments. This 'management' aims to control perceived threats or undesirable social elements rather than necessarily rehabilitate.
• Example: Prisons \$ \leftrightarrow \$ crime/criminals, where incarceration is the primary method of managing criminal behaviour and those who commit it, often seen as a solution to public safety concerns.
• Example: Detention centres
  \$ \leftrightarrow \$ asylum seekers and undocumented migrants, where confinement is used to manage migration flows and those seeking refuge, often under the guise of processing or security.

Five Key Features of Modern Containment

1. Coercion - Largely involuntary; individuals are typically placed into containment against their explicit will or consent, imposed by some authority (e.g., state, medical, welfare agencies); often backed by law (e.g., criminal codes enabling imprisonment, mental health acts allowing involuntary commitment, or immigration laws authorizing detention without charge).
   • Mental-health statutes in Western nations, for instance, allow involuntary psychiatric commitment based on perceived risk of harm to self or others, even without criminal charges.
2. Isolation - Involves physical removal or separation from wider society, segregating individuals into distinct, often geographically remote or walled-off, spaces away from public view and interaction.
   • Motivations differ widely (e.g.,- Early 20th-century Aboriginal missions aimed at assimilation or control, separating children from families; - Contemporary immigration detention focuses on administrative processing or deterring irregular migration).
   • Common underlying belief: contained people are different, dangerous, diseased, or otherwise problematic, and thus need/deserve separation for the safety, order, or 'purity' of the dominant society.
3. Institutional Forms & Regimes - Confinement almost always occurs in institutional or institution-like settings (e.g., dedicated buildings with secure perimeters, specified zones with limited access, or regulated communities with strict rules).
   • Rigorous rules govern every aspect of daily life, including clothing, communications (often restricted), daily schedules, movement, labour (if applicable), and personal conduct, creating a highly structured and controlled environment.
   • Institutional logic shapes not only inmates but also staff and administrators, dictating their roles, routines, and perspectives within the confines of the system, often leading to a distinct internal culture.
4. Targeted Populations - Containment is systematic, not random, and applies specific criteria for exclusion, confinement, or control, reflecting societal anxieties and power dynamics.
   • Disproportionately hits:
     • Economically/socially marginal groups (e.g., the homeless, destitute, jobless, disabled, and impoverished), often seen as unproductive, burdensome, or a threat to public order.
     • Racial/ethnic minorities (e.g., Indigenous peoples, Roma, asylum seekers, immigrants from non-Western countries), who are frequently subjected to state control due to perceived cultural differences or national security threats.
     • Those labelled unfit/abnormal (e.g., homosexuals, drug users, physically/intellectually disabled persons, mentally ill), who are pathologized and subjected to medical, moral, or penal management regimes to 'normalize' or segregate them.
5. Cultural & Memory Embeddedness - Evident in government policy, the continual creation of new facilities, official records and statistics, and legal frameworks that perpetuate containment as a legitimate response to social issues.
   • Saturates cultural imagination: deeply reflected in films portraying prison life or dystopian futures, novels exploring confinement, museums commemorating detention sites (e.g., internment camps), personal memoirs of incarceration, and ongoing public debates about crime, migration, and social welfare.

Historical Evolution of Containment

Ancient & Medieval Precursors

• Ancient Rome/Egypt: Dungeons primarily used to hold prisoners until sentencing, trial, or sale as slaves; confinement itself was rarely the punishment but a temporary intermediate step.
• Middle Ages (Britain & Europe): Local prisons served as temporary holding cells before the application of actual punishment, which typically involved public humiliation (e.g., stocks), corporal punishment, execution, fines, or exile from the community.
• Confinement
  \$ \neq \$ punishment in itself; merely a logistical step toward these final dispositions.

Early Foundations (The 1600s)

• Houses of Correction (Britain) - Established by acts of Parliament, these institutions (e.g., Bridewell in London) aimed at petty offenders, vagrants, the “disorderly poor,” and prostitutes, forcing them into labour and discipline rather than merely holding them temporarily. They combined punishment with efforts to instill work ethic.
• Transition of Confinement - Marked a significant shift from temporary holding for trial or punishment to ongoing institutional residency, where the act of confinement itself became a primary punitive, reformative, or rehabilitative measure, rather than just a precursor.

Workhouses & the Late 1700s

• Workhouses - Introduced soon after houses of correction, often combining elements of poor relief and forced labour. They were designed to deter pauperism and extract labour from the poor, elderly, sick, and unemployed.
• By 1778: >1,800 across England & Wales, indicating widespread adoption as a primary means of managing poverty and social dependency on a national scale.
• Residents (destitute, elderly, ill, children) were often subjected to dehumanizing conditions and forced into hard labour, sometimes earning their keep through tedious and monotonous tasks.
• Conditions: disease, filth, poor ventilation, overcrowding, inadequate food, and strict separation of families — spurred widespread calls for reform from social critics, philanthropists, and parliamentary commissions, leading to later poor law reforms.

Intellectual Re-engineering (Late 1700s)

• Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon ( 1791 ) - An influential architectural blueprint for the modern prison, featuring a central observation tower allowing a single guard to see all cells without the inmates knowing if they are being watched. This constant potential for surveillance creates a sense of self-discipline.
• Centralised surveillance
  \$ \rightarrow \$ maximum control with minimal staff, making it a highly efficient model for discipline and social engineering.
• Poverty, punishment and politics become pivotal discussion topics among elites in Britain, Europe and the newly formed USA, leading to philosophical debates about social order, crime prevention, and the role of the state in managing its citizens.

Nineteenth-Century Institutional Expansion

• Rapid expansion and specialization of large-scale institutions as primary tools of social management, reflecting a belief in rationalized control and expertise.
• Prisons - Exemplified by major constructions such as Millbank Prison, London (1816), Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia (1829), and Pentonville Prison, North London (1842). These were designed for solitary confinement, hard labour, and moral reform, aiming to reshape the criminal's character.
• Lunatic Asylums (early 1840s)
  \$ \rightarrow \$ specialised medical framing for the “mentally disordered,” shifting from general poorhouses to institutions focused on 'cure' through moral treatment and segregation from society.
• Reformatories
  \$ \rightarrow \$ designed to house, educate, and train “wayward” or neglected children, often from impoverished backgrounds, aiming to 'correct' their behaviour and prevent future criminality through discipline and vocational training.
• Operated predominantly by governments, these institutions mirrored broader legal, social, and political shifts towards extensive state intervention in individual lives and the management of social problems through institutional means.

Twentieth Century & Beyond

• Proliferation of new containment forms beyond traditional prisons and asylums: internment camps (e.g., for enemy aliens or specific ethnic groups during wartime), immigration detention centres (for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers), quarantine stations (for disease control, especially during pandemics), and juvenile justice facilities.
• Triggers range from acute crises (e.g., wars, pandemics, economic depressions leading to increased social unrest) to chronic social “problems” (e.g., drug addiction, homelessness, increasing migration flows), demonstrating containment's adaptability as a tool of state power.

Ethical, Philosophical & Practical Implications Highlighted

• Normalization: What once was extraordinary (e.g., mass incarceration, widespread psychiatric confinement) now appears “natural” or an unavoidable necessity for social order, obscuring its historical and contingent nature and preventing critical examination.
• Power & Knowledge (Foucauldian view): Containment institutions double as sites of social classification, surveillance, and behavioural engineering, where knowledge is produced about individuals (e.g., through files, diagnoses, psychological assessments) to better control and categorize them, thereby reinforcing existing power structures and social hierarchies.
• Reciprocal Impact: Institutional regimes profoundly reshape both detainees and staff, creating specific roles, behaviours, and identities within the confined setting, echoing sociological observations, notably Erving Goffman’s concept of total institutions (e.g., prisons, asylums, monasteries) where every aspect of life is conducted in the same place and under the same single authority, leading to a breakdown of boundaries between different spheres of life.
• Social Justice Questions: The disproportionate impact of containment on marginalised populations (e.g., racial minorities, the poor, Indigenous peoples, migrants) raises critical concerns about equity, human rights, and the search for more humane and effective alternative solutions to social challenges that do not rely on segregation and deprivation of liberty.

Course-Related Inquiry Moving Forward (PDC Module)

• How exactly have containment strategies evolved since the 1700s, adapting to changing social, economic, and political contexts, and what are the specific historical inflection points?
• Which political, economic, and cultural logics underpin their endurance and continued expansion globally, even in the face of critiques?
• What measurable effects (positive or negative) do they deliver on individuals (e.g., rehabilitation rates, mental health impacts), communities (e.g., safety, social cohesion), and broader society (e.g., economic costs, justice outcomes)?
• Can we meaningfully imagine or design social futures beyond containment, proposing alternative paradigms for managing social problems that prioritize community integration, restorative justice, or public health approaches over confinement?