Truth- The justice system being described by Foucault has an interesting concept of truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence. It “did not obey a dualistic system: true or false, but a principle of continuous gradation” (42). In this way, minor punishments are given to people who are accused of horrible crimes but have only minor evidence against them: they are a little guilty, so receive a minor punishment since their absolute culpability cannot be established. Although this certainly seems very odd to us, it seems like a strangely modern idea: the accused is only as guilty as the evidence suggests. It is not exactly innocent until proven guilty, but still only as guilty as you are proven. The idea of physical punishment is very tied up with the notion of truth, as in many circumstances torture and execution is done with the objective that “the body has produced and reproduced the truth of the crime” (47).
Secrecy-The justice system in Europe remained secret from not only the public but from the accused. Foucault notes that “knowledge was the absolute privilege of the prosecution,” as the accused had no idea who was accusing him, any evidence or documents being used, or the names of any witnesses against him (35). The modern day justice system is an interesting reversal of this, as we currently make a spectacle of the arrest and trial, while punishment is kept secret. While the spectacle of public torture and execution was intended to reveal truth, the secrecy of the justice system was intended to limit the knowledge of the truth to the magistrates and judges.
Spectacle- Part of the reason that there is a spectacular element to punishment is so that the public will be deterred from committing crimes: “men will remember…pain duly observed” (34). Perhaps more importantly, though, punishment and torture must be a spectacle so that the public can witness the triumph of truth and justice; this is the “ceremonial of justice” (34). In this way the guilty man becomes “the herald of his own condemnation,” every ritual procession and reading of the sentence reinforces the triumph of truth over the accused (43). The public punishment of a condemned man was less about him and more about the audience: as Foucault notes, “in the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance” (57).