Bear

Letters, cards, and gifts move in, out, and around prisons constantly. A handmade greetings card or modular origami bear work to maintain those relationships with families and friends which are disrupted by incarceration. These material things root the prison in wider emotional and familial networks. In the same way, the Victorian prison was a civic institution, embedded in its local community. In cities like Lincoln and Liverpool, that is still the case. Institutions like these might become a kind of ‘home’ for successive generations of incarcerated people and staff.