"The Building circular - an iron cage, glazed - A glass lantern about the size of Ranelagh - The Prisoners in their Cells, occupying the Circumference - The Officers, the Centre. By Blinds, and other contrivances, the Inspectors concealed from the observation of the Prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of invisible omnipresence - The whole circuit reviewable with little, or, if necessary, without any, change of place."
— Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon, or The Inspection House (1791)
Running a prison is hard and labor-intensive, so when it comes to keeping an eye on your inmates, why not design for efficiency?
A panopticon, originally designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham
, is a prison or containment facility constructed as a ring of cells surrounding a central guard tower. This design allows one or two guards to keep watch over many cells at once, usually built so that prisoners can see the tower, but cannot see into any of the adjacent cells. For bonus points, the guard tower may be designed so that those inside can look out, but those outside cannot look in.
The goal of a panopticon design is to make surveillance as efficient, easy, and total as possible. The prisoners know that they might be watched at any given time, but are never totally sure if they are being watched at that moment; the result is that they learn to behave as though they are always being watched, introducing a psychological conditioning aspect to their time in prison. Because of this, a panopticon is a very common symbol of the Surveillance State, and it is likely to show up as an indicator that Sinister Surveillance is afoot.
If a panopticon is used as part of a prison, that prison is probably The Alcatraz.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Kill la Kill, Honnou is a round, walled fortress organized around its main attraction, Honnouji Academy, which towers over the rest of the city, allowing its Absurdly Powerful Student Council to watch the whole city.
Films — Live-Action
- The titular prison in Fortress (1992) is constructed in this way underground, with prison labour used to dig new levels. The central column isn't manned, as the security is automated — instead, it's fitted with rails to convey turrets up and down the complex. The escapees use this in their prison break to hitch a ride all the way up into the command centre. The rooms are totally exposed to the central shaft, allowing the turrets to shoot into any given area and patrolling scanners to stop the prisoners from dreaming.
- In Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), the prison cells in the Kiln are arrayed in a hemisphere around a central guard tower, which becomes the focus of the protagonists' escape attempt. That said, the surveillance clearly isn't perfect as there are maintenance hallways behind the cells that some of the prisoners seem to have access to.
- Spectre: The "Nine Eyes" building is cylindrical with a central core, evoking Bentham's drawings in a neat little bit of Genius Bonus.
Live-Action TV
- The eponymous women's prison in Capadocia is run by the ECSO corporation, which uses the inmate work program as a front for drug trafficking. The opening credits feature a shot of Capadocia's blueprints showing that it is built in this design.
- In Doom Patrol (2019), this is the deep, dark secret literally buried under the otherwise-wholesome Danny the Street; that in exchange for Niles using his resources to prevent the Bureau of Normalcy from finding Danny and their citizens, Danny agreed to use their limited omniscience to serve as an all-seeing prison for Niles' daughter Dorothy, making sure that she never, ever left her tiny room beneath Danny's surface. Dorothy was down there for over ninety years, and none of the "Dannyzens" ever knew she was there.
- Briefly discussed and namedropped in Law & Order. A liberal college professor writes "panopticon" in big letters on a chalkboard, and says that it's what America has become.
Podcasts
- The Magnus Archives: The Institute itself is built on the ruins of Millbank Prison, the first Real Life example. Among the many miles of old tunnels found beneath the archive is a still-standing Panopticon. This turns out to be a vital piece in Big Bad Jonah Magnus' plan to bring his patron into the world. His patron, the Eye, is the personified fear of being watched.
Tabletop Games
- The Panopticon Ministry in Mage: The Awakening is an Ancient Conspiracy in service to the Eye, a malevolent, quasi-divine personification of Big Brother Is Watching. Its headquarters is a Pocket Dimension in the form of a classical panopticon, with cells for its favoured servants and its reigning Minister's throne on a central pillar beneath the light of the Eye.
Video Games
- The level 'The Gulag' in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 takes place in a... well, gulag used to hold enemies of the new regime. The concrete brutalism which constructs the rings of cells and the guard tower only drives home the misery of this place.
- An interesting spin on this is seen in Control, wherein the containment facilities of the Oldest House are less of a prison and more of a storeroom for the paranormal oddities the organisation has collected. Instead of a fixed central guard tower, there is an elevator/bridge which can move guards between levels.
- "Panopticon" is used as a password in Deus Ex to characterise the person who set it — Helios' plan is to use electronic surveillance to turn the whole world into a Panopticon, and the people are so sick of the Crapsack World they're in that they go along with it.
- The last remaining human settlements in Freedom Wars are called Panopticons, and though they rely on technological surveillance and Ridiculously Human Robot corrections officers for actual observation, the characters discuss the origins of the term and how appropriate it is at one point.
- Persona 5: The Velvet Room resembles a panopticon, with the cells in a circular formation and Joker being confined to one with Caroline and Justine acting as the wardens. Later, it turns out that Yaldabaoth actually replaced Igor and took over the Velvet Room. The false god fuses the Velvet Room with Mementos, transforming it into a massive panopticon, trapping humanity in an endless tower of countless cells with the Holy Grail acting as the watchtower.
- The "water prison" from Silent Hill 4 is a panopticon operated by the cult, believed by outsiders to be just an abandoned water treatment plant.
- The Flesh Panopticon in ULTRAKILL is a biotechnological version of this, taking the form of a cube of flesh with eyes and a mouth rotating in place atop a pillar of stitched meat in the middle of an arena. Curiously despite the arena's walls being lined with cells, they're all empty and the Panopticon contains the only prisoner (Sisyphus Prime) inside itself. Lore indicates that these cells were intended for the Sisyphean Insurrectionists before it was realized that Sisyphus' prime soul was already manifesting and thus the prison was hastily completed and sealed before anyone else could be placed inside.
- Eisenwald Prison in Wolfenstein: The New Order features at least one cell block with a panopticon design, which is meant to embody the unsettling totalitarian aspect of the game's fascist society.
Web Videos
- In Power Rangers Hyperforce, the rangers visit a panopticon prison on a Baby Planet where the A-Squad are held. Alpha-55 compares it to a donut.
Real Life
- As mentioned above, philosopher and architect Jeremy Bentham is the Trope Maker and Trope Namer, having described the concept in his writings. He didn't limit himself to prisons: hospitals, schools, and asylums, among others, were also planned for. He wanted to extract as much labor from convicts as possible.
- Following Bentham's plans, several prisons were built using the panopticon plans.
- In the United Kingdom, Bentham lived to see Millbank Prison being built in 1821 but criticized the approach taken by the Crown. The site was too marshy to be healthy and too costly to operate and it was turned into a holding prison for those Sentenced to Down Under, a local and military prison, before being bulldozed in 1890. The Pentonville prison, built in 1832, was to become the model for British prisons but didn't include the constant watching.
- Philadelphia had the Eastern State Penitentiary, which incorporated several cell blocks that radiated outward from a central hub like the spokes of a wagon wheel.
- In 1925, Cuban president Gerardo Machado ordered the building of a modern prison. It was eventually built as a panopticon, with wardens actually able to see inmates without being seen themselves. However, by the 1960s, the prison was overcrowded and underfurnished.
- In The Netherlands, Breda, Arnhem, and Haarlem penitentiary are cited as historic panopticon prisons. However, wardens couldn't fully see the cells.
