Chapter III – Panopticism: The Implementation of Body-Worn Cameras on Police Officers from a Foucauldian Perspective

Abstract

This article analyzes the concept of panopticism formulated by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975) in order to reinterpret it in light of police lethality and the use of body-worn cameras in Brazil. Based on the notion of asymmetric visibility and the production of disciplined subjectivities, it argues that police officers, far from occupying the sovereign position of the “central tower,” are simultaneously agents and targets of capillary surveillance networks. Body-worn cameras intensify this logic by continuously — or potentially — recording police actions, expanding the disciplinary reach of the State and redefining power relations among officers, police institutions, and oversight bodies. The methodology was based on bibliographic and case-law research, using a deductive approach. It concludes that panopticism provides a productive theoretical framework for understanding the ambivalence of body-worn cameras, whose promise of transparency may be neutralized — or even reversed — when surveillance mechanisms remain under the control of the State’s own armed agents.