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Initially, there was no specific architectural model for prisons, using buildings such as barracks, dungeons, inns and monasteries with mostly very simple designs. Towards the end of the 18th century, figures such as Howard, Bentham and Beccaria promoted prison reform, seeking to improve the safety and conditions of prisoners, which led to the adoption of specific architectural models for prisons internationally. This article examines how this process occurred in Mexico, analyzing the evolution of prison regimes and their influence on the country's prison architecture. Through a monographic and documentary study, five periods were established in which we describe how historical changes in the conceptions of punishment, deprivation of liberty and reintegration, influenced both the adaptation of existing buildings and the design of new buildings in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prison design requires urgent attention to ensure that prison environments support the wellbeing of those who live in, work in, and visit them. A prison's design can either support or undermine the prison's overarching aims. Architecture can be an effective vehicle for minimizing pains of incarceration, improving wellbeing, and eventually realizing decarceration.1 In fact, initial prison designs were seen as progress from more inhumane forms of punishment. This article focuses on the understudied link between individual features of prison environments and their impact on lived experiences within prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Archives of Criminology / Archiwum Kryminologii is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Legal Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper theorizes that a process of identity transformation occurs when individuals enter prisons, whereby individuals become prisoners. I investigate how this identity transformation occurs through interaction with the prison's architectural design. Prisons are posited as locations of purposeful spatial organization whose design evokes particular performances from those within and outside, and which actively contributes to the creation of the prisoner identity. This investigation reveals a carceral power at work which renders prisons sites of articulated and detailed control that exist within a broader set of institutional practices and relations of power aimed at the transformation of individuals. This discussion critically engages with the broader purpose of the prison: while prisons are meant to rehabilitate and reform prisoners, the structured architecture of the prison conflicts with this objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of mass incarceration necessitated increased investment in prisons. This increase occurred alongside of policy maker calls for greater government accountability and reliance on evidence-based practices. Despite advances in the understanding of "what works" to reduce crime and recidivism, a notable gap in research exists: What is the evidence that prison architecture influences inmate behavior or reentry outcomes? This article seeks to address that gap and argues that (1) prisons are designed to achieve specific goals, (2) there is minimal empirical evidence that variation in architecture achieves these goals, and (3) the theory by which architecture achieves these goals is inconsistent and unclear. Implications of this assessment for research, theory, and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public secrets are the information the public chooses to keep from itself. Architecture is required to both house and operate these secrets. Community sanctions are arguably a public secret. This study analyses the most visible aspects of community sanctions, probation and parole offices, to understand whether and how their architectural features help keep the system hidden. By analysing photographs of such offices, I argue that not only do the building features help maintain community corrections as a public secret, but they also keep the systems secret from the public. I also argue that keeping the offices intentionally obscured may also impact how those under supervision are viewed by the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of research based on prisons in the United States has found a positive association between prison size and inmate victimization. This study estimates rates and identifies inmate and institutional characteristics associated with victimization in the Spanish prisons, with special attention on the prison size. Data were collected from a sample of male inmates aged 18 years or older (n = 2,484) located in eight prisons in the southeast of Spain. Holding inmate characteristics constant, rates of victimization were significantly and substantively higher in larger prisons. Understanding the prison size–victimization association requires further qualitative investigation to identify whether size creates more spaces for victimization (structural opportunities) and/or lapses in supervision due to depersonalization or impersonalization (social distancing). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Space & Form / Przestrzeń i FORMA is the property of West Pomeranian University of Technology, Department of Architecture & Urban Planning and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Texas has more migrant detention centers and migrant prisons than any other state in the Union. This essay focuses on the construction and design of migrant detention facilities in Texas since the 1960s in relation to immigration policy and private prison practices. Using archival and ethnographic methods that include historical newspaper articles, ICE contracts and documents, satellite imagery, field observations and interviews, this genealogy of the construction of detention facilities reveals the government's abdication of design responsibilities, as private prison corporations and construction companies assume authority and responsibility for making critical design decisions that affect migrants' daily lives. I argue that the construction and design of facilities in Texas has formalized and institutionalized the "penal turn" and "criminalization of migration" reflected in immigration policy into an intractable material reality with long-term consequences. Not only has the evolving design of detention facilities contributed to today's increasingly punitive experience of detention, but also the building of detention facilities and their related contracts shapes both a US civic "spatial imagination" and immigration policy itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA)—an environmental justice group started and led by older Mexican American women—and the organization’s campaign to prevent the construction of a state prison in their neighborhood. The women enact motherwork that protects the well-being of the neighborhood’s children, in addition to crafting motherhood into a communal responsibility to look after the neighborhood as a mother would their child. MELA’s maternal appeals rely on and eclipse identification with traditional gender categories, suggesting new ways for motherhood to function as an organizing principle to mobilize collectives. More broadly, this essay contributes to scholarly discussions on rhetorical agency by considering motherhood as a means for women’s collective resistance and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the notion that institutional places and spaces are layered with meaning and that their architecture and design have a profound psychological and physiological influence on those who live and work within them. Mindful of the intrinsic link between 'beauty' and 'being just', the article explores the potential 'healing' or rehabilitative role of penal aesthetics. As many countries modernise their prison estates, replacing older facilities that are no longer fit-for-purpose with new, more 'efficient' establishments, this article discusses examples of international best (and less good) practice in penal and hospital settings. It reflects on what those who commission and design new prisons might learn from pioneering design initiatives in healthcare environments and asks whether the philosophies underpinning the 'architecture of hope' that Maggie's Cancer Care Centres exemplify could be incorporated into prisons of the future. The article was originally presented as a public lecture in the annual John V Barry memorial lecture series at the University of Melbourne on 24 November 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States currently incarcerates more than two million men and women, the majority of whom struggle with poor mental health, substance abuse, and limited job prospects. Research suggests that access to natural environments improves personal and social well-being. Well-designed and well-built correctional landscapes have the potential to positively influence the lives of incarcerated people by improving their mental health and reentry outcomes and by reducing stress and fatigue among staff. This cannot happen without the active and committed involvement of landscape architects with the expertise to design environments that enhance the well-being of those who live and work in correctional facilities. We invite landscape architecture professionals to use their expertise to enhance and transform the correctional landscape, and we offer seven actions to facilitate such involvement. These actions emerged from lessons learned through three successful design-build projects inside Iowa's only women's state prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the implementation of the New Prison Model in 53 facilities throughout Ecuador. Topics include the investment of the Ministry of Justice, Human Rights, and Religion to the model which aims to establish three megaprisons in the country under the name centers for social rehabilitation (CRSs), the challenges faced by the country in terms of managing prisons such as overcrowding, and problems faced by prisoners despite the new model such as abuses and lack of medical care.

The article offers information on the introduction of prison reform by Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández for the country following the death of about 362 inmates in at the country's national prison in Comayagua due to fire. It discusses the proposal of the president to develop two mega prisons that were based on the U.S. super-max security prisons. It mentions that the proposal results into co-governance in prisons with powerful inmate groups.

The prison is unequalled in pain. Uniquely designed and operationalised through deliberate pain infliction it performs a key function in the maintenance of blatantly unequal societies through the control of poor, marginalised and disproportionately BME male lawbreakers.1 But diagnosis and critique of the pains and harms of penal incarceration is not enough. It is also essential that consideration is given to feasible, policy relevant and progressive interventions that can challenge gross economic and social inequalities and mitigate the humanitarian crises confronting contemporary penal practices, without abandoning the broader obligation to promote radically alternative responses to troublesome human conduct and the logic of capitalist accumulation. This necessitates recognition and engagement with the problems and possibilities of our historical moment alongside a disruption of the ideological limitations placed upon what are considered appropriate and feasible means of social and penal transformation. Such engagement must be rooted in a normative framework -- what I have described elsewhere as the 'abolitionist compass'2 -- that can assist our navigation away from deeply entrenched social inequalities and the problems associated with the criminal process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a brief discussion of the 'new for old' prisons policy currently being implemented in England and Wales, in the context of previous waves of expansionism and in light of some of the well-publicised problems that have taken hold of the prison system. It draws on the views of experts who voiced their criticism (in the British Journal of Criminology, published in 1961) of the architectural stagnation that characterised prison planning and design during the last major prison construction programme, and repeats their exhortation that we must stop looking to the past when designing new custodial facilities. With a prison population that has almost trebled in the half century since they wrote their critiques, and new prisons being built with a capacity of over 2,100 prisoners, compared to establishments with 400 beds being considered 'very large' in 1961, there has arguably never been a more pressing time to radically re-think what prisons are for and how they might be designed differently -- to hold prisoners more safely and offer them genuine hope of rehabilitation, but also to support a substantial reduction in the prison population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Military Engineer / Hadmérnök is the property of National University of Public Service and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

August Strindberg's The Dance of Death I [Dödsdansen I] (1900) has been understood as a pivotal play in the playwright's extensive oeuvre, situated as a bridge between the naturalist works of his early career and the symbolist and proto-expressionist works of his later career. Few interpretations have been interested in historicizing the play's references to its own sociocultural moment and immediate past. Yet The Dance of Death I is a play deeply invested in social and ideological critique and revisionist historiography. This article examines the play's investigations into contemporary discourses on Swedish economic progress, military power, nationalism, and civic society, especially prison architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper synthesises existing work and extends empirical knowledge about the possibilities attendant on building bigger prisons in England and Wales. This follows on from an announcement in 2013 that a 2,100 inmate prison (HMP Berwyn) would be built in North Wales. Moreover a statement by the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, that 'ageing and ineffective' Victorian jails would be sold off to fund larger replacement prisons.' To that end it is salutary to note that in 1980 44,000 people were held in prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales and that this number was described by the sitting Home Secretary as dangerously high.1 2 This is because by October 2015 a neo-liberal inspired popular penalty had gone on to inflate the prison popqjation to 86,727.3 The social and economic costs attendant on imprisoning large numbers (and proportions) of people hardly needs further exploration. They have been amply poured over and debated in this and other journals as well as in media and political circles. Comparatively speaking, however, the practical management implications of the policy of mass incarceration has received less attention. As increasing numbers of people have been imprisoned, the prison estate has aged and contestability between the public and private sector has become the norm, the question of how the prison estate should be structured and managed to ensure prisoners 'are treated humanely, decently and lawfully' has become more salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationships between correctional officers and prisoners are crucial to life in prison, and affect prison order and prisoners’ well-being. Research on factors influencing staff–prisoner relationships is scarce and has not included the design of prison buildings. This study examined the association between prison architecture and prisoners’ perceptions of their relationships with officers. Data were used from the Prison Project, a large-scale study in which 1,715 prisoners held in 117 units in 32 Dutch remand centers were surveyed. Multilevel analyses showed that prison layout was related to officer–prisoner relationships: Prisoners in panopticon layouts were less positive than prisoners in other layouts. In addition, prisoners housed in older units and in units with more double cells were less positive about officer–prisoner interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores how watching movies in prisons both affirms and compromises the spectatorial contract of commercial filmgoing, picking apart the various kinds of interferences that defined and modified the experience of motion pictures in the nontheatrical setting of the early twentieth-century prison. Prison spectatorship is examined in relation to issues of policing and safety in prison screenings where all manner of distractions came between the inmate-spectator and the screen, including flammable nitrate catching fire in improvised projection booths, hostile or absorbed guards, fights breaking out between inmates, and the presence of dignitaries or celebrities. Using accounts of prison spectatorship from prominent archives and the popular press, this essay constructs prison moviegoing as an enigmatic and discursively complex phenomenon-an important if little understood example of the cinematic apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the exemplary case of 19th-century American state penitentiaries, the authors explore penitentiary control from the perspective of sensing agents who navigate a controlled sensory ecology – the prison, as structured by institutional rules, differential power relations, and architectural plans. Moving beyond Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1995) and Goffman’s Asylums (1961), they stress a pragmatist approach to understanding human sensing and explain inmates’ creativity under constraints. Employing wardens’ disciplinary journals and other secondary reports, the article emphasizes three theoretical issues that explain why Panoptical prisons’ attempts to control sense experiences can sometimes fail: (1) architectural designs that inadequately negotiate the contradictory demands of visual and acoustic control; (2) inmates’ active mobilization of perceptible objects as means of resistance; and (3) power differences between prison authorities and inmates that prevent actors from sharing a common sensory field. The authors’ overarching goal is to advance, via pragmatism, a sensory analysis of institutional control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most troubling aspects of current trends in American mass incarceration is the extent to which 'criminality' is produced within prison walls, primarily in the form of inmate-inmate or inmate-staff assaults. Most methods of prison or jail control have the adverse, and perverse, effect of increasing inmates' levels of fear, terror, and ultimately violence - with stabbings, beatings, and other types of assaults common occurrences. The design of podular 'direct supervision' jails and their accompanying philosophies of punishment aspire to change these conditions. Direct supervision features correctional officers inside each housing unit with no physical barriers impeding supervision, and is intended to create a safe, more humane, stress-free environment for both inmates and staff. This study draws on ethnographic evidence of inmate experiences with direct supervision at Douglas County Department of Corrections in Omaha, Nebraska ( USA). The respondents generally do feel safe in this jail environment, for a combination of reasons, some of which are related to spatial design. Inmates identified a number of implications - gains and losses - of this more 'humane' form of incarceration in terms of power and empowerment. The study also documents the potential for inmate activism on their own behalf through this design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use the term ‘expelled’ to describe a diversity of conditions. They include the growing numbers of the abjectly poor, of the displaced in poor countries who are warehoused in formal and informal refugee camps, of the minoritized and persecuted in rich countries who are warehoused in prisons, of workers whose bodies are destroyed on the job and rendered useless at far too young an age, of able-bodied surplus populations warehoused in ghettoes and slums. But I also include the fact that pieces of the biosphere are being expelled from their life space – and I insist that the tame language of climate change does not quite capture the fact, at ground level, of vast expanses of dead land and dead water. My argument is that this massive and very diverse set of expulsions is actually signaling a deeper systemic transformation, one documented in bits and pieces in multiple specialized studies but not quite narrated as an overarching dynamic that is taking us into a new phase of global capitalism – and global destruction. As an analytic category, expulsion is to be distinguished from the more common ‘social exclusion’: the latter happens inside a system and in that sense can be reduced, ameliorated, and even eliminated. As I conceive of them,1 expulsions happen at the systemic edge. At this time, I see the proliferation of such systemic edges deep inside national territories as more significant than the borders of the interstate system – which are open for some and closed for others. In brief, the types of complex systems that are the focus of the larger research project of which the present article forms a part contain multiple systemic edges: they partly reflect the multiplying of negative conditions in the diverse domains contained in such systems, from prisons and refugee camps to financial exploitations and environmental destructions. None of this is new, but the sharp escalation towards negative outcomes since the 1980s in much of the world does invite a question as to the sustainability of it all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mike Kelley's 1995 sculptureEducational Complex, an architectural model that amalgamates every school Kelley ever attended, presents an ambivalent narrative on the psychology of memory and trauma, using institutional forms to comment on the unconscious. Memory and architecture merge similarly in the writings and images of Renaissance mystic and scholar Giordano Bruno. The idea of imaginary architecture is linked with punishment in theCarceri d'Invenzione, a series of eighteenth-century prints and drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Both theComplexand theCarcerireference subterranean spaces of shadow and illusion, and thus have an affinity with Plato's cave, with Freudian psychoanalysis, and with the mental torture inflicted by spaces of solitary confinement in contemporary American prisons. This article attempts to bring together discourses of irrationalism in Western intellectual history in order to suggest thatEducational Complexoffers both a context and a critique for modern spaces of punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on ideology and architecture of prison, and talks of impact on prisoner's health and social needs; seedS, mobile therapeutic space for reflection, contemplation and self-development for prisoners designed by designer Karl Lenton, and Phototherapy, means of expression.

The history of prison architecture concerns the development of various design formats. In contemporary terms, punishment and re-socialization are the two equally important purposes of a prison institution. Rightfully, the contemporary model of prison architecture may be viewed, inter alia, as a spatial response to the re-socialization programme. Based on a comprehensive literature review, critical discussion, and scientific description, this paper defines the main qualitative elements of prison architecture, which responds to the requirements for re-socialization of inmates, and further explains the way in which each response is provided. From these architectural and design attributes, a list of 30 indicators of the spatial response to re-socialization was established. Furthermore, by using the derived indicators, a comparative analysis of four contemporary European prisons was conducted. The results showed both similarities and differences in the spatial response to the re-socialization programme, indicating that the spatial potential for re-socialization of inmates may be developed by using various approaches to prison design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Australian prisons have uncritically emulated American penitentiaries in their architecture and structure. We suggest that simply transporting physical design models from one geographic and politico-cultural setting to another, with little commitment to understanding the context-bound philosophies and conditions that underpin such models, has been highly problematic. The result has been an Australian penal estate that for decades was incompatible with its aims and purpose. Finally, we discuss the eventual introduction of unique, innovative styles of penal architecture in Australia, which are not only appropriate to their culture and context, but represent world-class developments in penal design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The indoor environment in a Danish prison was evaluated based on measurements made during the summer season of temperature, relative humidity and carbon dioxide, as well as through carefully conducted surveys among the inmates. The temperatures in the cells were high and well beyond common levels in Danish buildings. The mean CO 2 concentrations were generally low, but reached high maximum levels up to 5000 ppm. Thirty-one inmates responded to the questionnaire. They spent on average 19 h in the cell per day (range 12–23 h). Sixty-nine percent of the inmates expressed dissatisfaction with their general indoor environment and all responding inmates expressed dissatisfaction with the thermal climate. Dissatisfaction was mostly caused by a lack of airflow and air movement in the space as well as excessive direct sunlight from the windows. Security is a leading factor in the design of prisons, so a compromise must be found to ensure that the building can comply with minimum health and comfort standards. The findings of this study can be used as background for recommendations for renovation of prison buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have neglected the politically channeled and racially connected role of leveraged debt in mass incarceration. We use qualitative and quantitative data from California, circa 1960–2000, to assess how Republican entrepreneurial leveraging of debt overcame contradictions between parochial preferences for punishment and resistance to paying taxes for building prisons. The leveraging of bond debt deferred and externalized the costs of building prisons, while repurposed lease revenue bonds massively enlarged and extended this debt and dispensed with the requirement for direct voter approval. A Republican-dominated punishment regime capitalized debt to build prisons in selected exurban Republican California counties with growing visible minority populations. We demonstrate that the innovative use of lease revenue bonds was the essential element that enlarged and extended funding of California prison construction by an order of magnitude that made this expansion a boom. With what Robert Merton called the consequences of imperious interest, this prison expansion enabled the imprisonment of an inordinately large and racially disproportionate inmate population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article looks at the Australian government's policies toward refugees and asylum seekers, focusing on the detention centers it has created or is planning to build in locations apart from the country's mainland, including Christmas Island, Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, and Nauru. It notes the country's policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers and describes the involvement of private corporations including G4S and Transfield Holdings/Wilson Security in managing immigrant detention facilities. Topics include the role of the architecture profession in designing the built environment of immigrant detention and the February 2014 episode in which Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati was killed while being held in the Manus Island detention center and the rioting which ensued.

Researchers have not yet devoted sufficient attention to the effect of prison architecture on inmate misconduct. Using data from the population of male prisoners in Texas, the authors explored the association between two prison architectural design types (as determined by satellite imagery) and inmate misconduct. The results from multilevel statistical analyses suggest that architectural design is associated with nonviolent misconduct but not violent misconduct. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article Michel Foucault’s method of writing a “history of the present” is explained, together with its critical objectives and its difference from conventional historiography. Foucault’s shift from a style of historical research and analysis conceived as “archaeology” to one understood as “genealogy” is also discussed, showing how the history of the present deploys genealogical inquiry and the uncovering of hidden conflicts and contexts as a means of re-valuing the value of contemporary phenomena. The article highlights the critical observations of present-day phenomena from which a history of the present begins, paying particular attention to Foucault’s concept of “dispositif” and his method of problematization. Foucault’s analyses of Bentham’s Panopticon, of the disciplinary sources of the modern prison, and of the technology of confession are discussed by way of illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented about opening of new prison in England, its process of planning and layout citing reference to an interview with Tina Taylor, Head of Drug Strategy and Healthcare Provision at HMP Isis prison. The author reflects on the installation of the closed-circuit television camera in the yard of the jail. He further discusses the training of staff members of the jail.

This article argues about the birth of the Panopticon in absolutist Russia of the XVIII century, approaching its historical, architectural, theoretical and social course, ending with the analysis of the Digital Panopticon concept, nowadays, in the Russian Federation of the XXI century. Among other topics, the following will be discussed: the birth of the concept and the architectural design of the Panopticon in Russia (in a region which now belongs to the Republic of Belarus) through Jeremy and Samuel Bentham's hands and thought, relating this birth to the constraints and the role of power in social control played by the Orthodox Church, the Panopticon in the genesis of modern thought on surveillance and the Theory of Power by Foucault, which relates the concept of the Panopticon with the power/knowledge duality and the analysis of the evolution and use of the Panopticon in Russia's Digital Age muscled democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political aspects of California's criminal justice policy realignment plan, focusing on rehabilitation for criminals, the theory of retribution, and the potential impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 2011 prison population-related case Brown v. Plata on California's criminal justice policy. Other topics include U.S. federal courts, prison construction in America, and various sentencing reform proposals. Cruel and unusual punishments are also examined.

Copyright of Prohistoria is the property of Prohistoria Ediciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the largest prison in the country -- HMP Oakwood near Wolverhampton, run by G4S -- now up and running, and plans for a new 'superprison' in Wales, it seems that 'Titan' prisons (or something very close to them) are firmly back on the agenda. Along with new accommodation planned at HMP Pare in Bridgend, HMP Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, HMP The Mount in Hertfordshire and HMP Thameside in London, an extra 1,260 places are to be added to the custodial estate. At the same time, 2,600 old places will be lost through the closure of six prisons and partial closure of three other sites; a capacity reduction which, it is hoped, will save £63 million per year. Among the prisons to be mothballed are Shrewsbury (originally built in 1793 and redesigned in the 1880s), Canterbury (1808) Gloucester (originating 1782 and rebuilt in the 1840s) and Shepton Mallett (on whose site there has been a prison since 1610). It has not yet been revealed what these prime sites might be turned into, but one can well imagine that if converted into apartments with the façades kept intact, they are likely to appeal to the kind of affluent young professionals who stay in the boutique hotel housed in the former HMP Oxford. But is it the case that 'old' always means 'bad' in the prison estate, and does 'new' necessarily mean 'progressive' or 'humanitarian'? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses material and spatial conditions of archaeological prisons. She mentions the 1777 report, of John Howard, a sheriff in a county of Great Britain which focused on poor conditions of prisons that led to prison reforms. She talks about English architect William Blackburn who designed reformed prisons with improved ventilation and sanitation. She also reports on various escape attempts and clandestine adaptations in different prisons and establishment of female prisons.