The panopticon - a prison system designed to monitor the maximum number of prisoners with the least amount of guards. Designed by an English philosopher and social theorist, Jeremy Bentham, it consists of a central tower where the guards are, surrounded by the prison cells arranged in a circular building.

The layout of this tower is such that the guards are able to look into the prisoners’ cells at all times, but the prisoners are unable to see whether the guards are looking at them or not. This results in a feeling of constant surveillance, which in turn eliminates the need to discipline prisoners with forceful authority, as they discipline themselves because of the internalised sense of omniscience. As Foucault put it, “the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.”