CentralNotice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Prison design For other uses, see Panopticon (disambiguation) . Plan of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison, drawn by Willey Reveley in 1791 The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard , without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched. Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all times. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to ...