The F-House cell block at Stateville Correctional Center, in Illinois, is the last remaining panopticon-style prison building in the United States –
The round plan of a panopticon, as designed by 18th/19th century British philosopher and criminologist Jeremy Bentham, was meant to allow the guards, stationed at the center of the circle, to monitor prisoners without the prisoners themselves knowing whether or not they were being observed. Bentham once described the panopticon as “a mill for grinding rogues honest.” All the flowers in the world cannot disguise the design’s essentially coercive function.
