: xxxviii Bentham arrived in Krichev in early 1786 and stayed for almost two years. In 1785, Jeremy Bentham, an English social reformer and founder of utilitarianism, travelled to Krichev in Mogilev Governorate of Russian Empire (modern Belarus) to visit his brother, Samuel, who accompanied Prince Potemkin. The word panopticon derives from the Greek word for "all seeing" – panoptes. It is his prison that is now most widely meant by the term "panopticon".Įlevated view of the panopticon prison, by Reveley 1791. Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums, but he devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison. From the centre, the manager or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates. The architecture consists of a rotunda with an inspection house at its centre. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour.
![prison architect layout prison architect layout](https://vistapointe.net/images/prison-architect-wallpaper-19.jpg)
The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched.Īlthough it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all times.
![prison architect layout prison architect layout](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EaTRZrKeSCY/maxresdefault.jpg)
The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. Plan of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison, drawn by Willey Reveley in 1791