Central Gaze in Prisons

The Crawfordsville rotary jail is the last rotary jail in the United States, although several other rotary jails still stand but are no longer functioning. While none of these jails are in still in use as prisons, they still provide an interesting idea on how to contain prisoners. The prison itself is attached to the county sheriff's house and has its own separate structure to contain the prisoners. The prison block itself is a central platform with many cells with  several levels, which can be rotated in order to access different cells because only one cell can be open to the exit on each floor at a time. This idea was thought of to keep the prisoners from being able to escape so easily. This, while being a good idea in theory, was a kind of backfire in certain instances where the prisoners would cause trouble in the cells. The guards would have to rotate the cell block all the way to the cell that required attention. Therefore, while it was an idea with good intentions, the jail itself had to eventually be closed do to the danger due to both the prisoner caused problems and the problems caused by heating and cooling the structure and limbs being lost in the rotating cell block bars.

This leads to an analysis brought forth by the French philosopher Foucault, indicating the governing presence of "the gaze" which is the governing factor in creating self-control and leads to normalization in the prison and asylum systems. In the idea Foucault view, the guards of the prison have the center gaze in the middle of the prison. With this view, they can watch all of the prisoners, and with the same system of gaze the prisoners will have increased self control, never knowing when they are being watched by those guarding them in their cells. This style of the gaze is reversed in the system used in the Montgomery County rotary jail. Since the rotated cell block structure is in the direct center of the jail, the prisoners have the centralized gaze there in the cell block. They have the ability to detect if the guards are nearby or watching them by focusing their attention outside the bars, for the guards have to walk through the echoing halls past the cells. Meanwhile, the guards themselves cannot watch all of the prisoners at once, even if some of them are causing trouble in their individual cells. This reversal of the gaze would not be acceptable in the eyes of Foucault, due to the fact that the guards meant to normalize the prisoners has been reversed. Rather than the guards having the power to normalize the prisoners in the penal system, the prisoners have a power to manipulate the guards in a small way. This reversal might cause the prisoners not to become normalized in the Foucaultian view, leading to the failure of the country penal system.