Foucault's seminal work on torture, punishment, discipline and the prison system, now reissued in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time.

'Imaginative, illuminating and innovative' The New York Times Book Review

The grisly spectacle of public executions and torture of centuries ago has been replaced by the penal system in western society - but has anything really changed?

In his revolutionary work on control and power relations in our public institutions, Michel Foucault argues that the development of prisons, police organizations and legal hierarchies has merely changed the focus of domination from our bodies to our souls. Even schools, factories, barracks and hospitals, in which an individual's time is controlled hour by hour, are part of a disciplinary society.

'Foucault's genius is called forth into the eloquent clarity of his passions ... his best book' Washington Post

"Discipline and Punish is clearly a tour de force ... that rare kind of book whose methods and conclusions must be reckoned with by humanists, social scientists and political activists" - The New York Times Book Review

"Foucault's genius is called forth into eloquent clarity of his passions ... his best book" - Washington Post

"'The main line of the thesis is enormously appealing and the range of historical sources and, even more, the analytical skill with which they are made to yield up their secrets, is quite dazzling'" - International Journal of Criminology and Penology