'The chief and deputies at Mettray had to be not exactly judges, or teachers, or foremen, or non-comissioned officers, or 'parents' [...] they were in a sense technicians of behaviour, engineers of conduct, orthopaedists of individuality. Their task was to produce bodies that were both docile and capable; they supervised the nine or ten working hours [...] they directed the orderly movements of groups of inmates, physical exercises, miltiary exercises, rising in the morning, going to bed at night, walkis to the accompaniment of bugle and whistle.[...] Training was accompained by permanent obervation; a body of knowlege was being constantly built up from the everyday behaviour of the inmates.'**
The function of a prison is to restrict and limit movement. The everyday act of movement becomes a privilege, not a right. An act to be observed and monitored.
Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that a work entitled 'The lonliness of the Long Distance Runner' uses the body's movement through space to problematize the supposed reformatory aim of twentieeth-centry incarseration.
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