"Newborn" Starts From Here:Rehabilitation And The Constructing Of Inmates' Subjectivity

Prison is the projection of social structure,its intent of cultivating docile and rational citizens appears almost simultaneously with the expansion of modern state and political power.Therefore,the study of prison power mechanism is of great importance.Foucault analyzed how subjects are shaped through truth and power,and he focused on two specific technologies:power technology and self-technology.Based on Foucault's power theory,this study used the interview materials of 25 male prisoners,which were collected in the field investigation of the men's prison in Yunnan Province,to analyze how rehabilitation operates.This article found that these two technologies exert profoundly in the daily transformation activities of prisons,but they are not mutually exclusive areas.Both of them contain a certain degree of dominance in behavior training and attitude training for individuals.Prison power technology limits and trains criminal behaviors through transversal surveillance networks,detailed physical techniques.While self-technology refers to the shaping of offenders' identity both by prison and themselves.On the one hand,with purpose of transforming inmates' self-awareness into the identity for institutions,prison asked the offenders to acknowledge his guilt and participate professional skill training lessons.But criminals also developed four main strategies to response the penal mechanism:acceptance,attachment,reconstruction and resistance.This article found that the rehabilitative program greatly affected the formation of inmates' subjectivity,but the criminals will resort actively self-shaping to respond to and resist the penal power system,ultimately,the culprits gained very limited autonomy.To a certain extent,the situation of criminals reveals the ordinary people's living conditions in carceral society.