In History of Madness Foucault describes a movement across Europe in the seventeenth century which saw the establishment of institutions which locked up people who were deemed to be ‘unreasonable’. This included not only mad people, but the unemployed, single mothers, defrocked priests, failed suicides, heretics, prostitutes, debauchees in short anyone who was deemed to be socially unproductive or disruptive. He labels this movement the ‘Great Confinement’. He continues his study of confinement in his history of the birth of the prison Discipline and Punish.
