Foucault's seminal work on torture, punishment, discipline and the prison system, now reissued in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. In this provocative work, Michel Foucault argues that the development of the Western system of prisons, police and legal hierarchies have merely shifted the focus of social control from our bodies to our souls.

Michel Foucalt (1926-1984) was one of the leading intellectuals of the twentieth century and the most prominent thinker in postwar France. Foucault's work influenced disciplines as diverse as history, sociology, philosophy, sociology and literary criticism.