Usually when the topic of discipline and prisons is broached, the first items of discussion are Jeremy Bentham's prison panopticon and Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish. The panopticon was designed to provide prison guards with maximum surveillance over inmates, therefore facilitating the guards' ability to control, discipline, and rehabilitate the incarcerated. This design enabled prison officials to peer into every cell and continuously supervise prisoners while remaining hidden from view. This act of unseen surveillance was supposed to instil prisoner self-discipline. For Foucault, this act represented the ultimate example of the state's ability to control and dominate society through the implementation of new instrumentalities of governance. As discussed in Chapter 4, these new methods of prison governance included new regimens, prisoner organisation and divisions, improved hygiene and health conditions, better provisioning, constant surveillance, religious instruction, and ‘rehabilitating’ labour. Most importantly, prison guards became the linchpins in the implementation of these reforms. According to Foucault, prison officials and especially guards are the definitive representatives of state power to prisoners who, in turn, epitomise society's disorder, unruliness, and menace to the common good.

Foucault, however, fails to recognise very important aspects of the panopticon and the various roles played by guards. The panopticon's architectural design contains a dual disciplining purpose. In addition to disciplining prisoners, it is also designed to discipline the prison cadre. Foucault never acknowledges how corruption and collusion between guards and inmates adversely affects discipline and order. In other words, the state, as represented by the guards, also requires surveillance, thus breaching the supposedly impenetrable barrier and upending the unidirectional flow of power that Foucault drew between ‘state’ and ‘society’.