A thousand years

Medium

Text

Form

Interview quote

Artist / Maker

Prisoner, HMP Liverpool

Built to last like a thousand years, this jail. […] It’s straight, isn’t it? Victorians built buildings right. All modern jails, there’s loads of blind spots where you can turn and move. Victorian jails are just straight so you can see straight down, and you have a central point there so they can just look down the wings. Designed better. I don’t know how they done things better back then, just everything […] how thick the walls are. That’s what I mean, that’s how they could literally be here a thousand years, that’s how well built it is.

– Prisoner, HMP Liverpool

Why have we collected this work?

We want to understand what these prisons are like to live and work in, and how has this changed over time. We are examining the ways that these prison buildings carry traces of the past, while operating in the present day.

The project considers how and why these buildings have survived for so long, and asks how we will know when they have reached the end of their operational lives. We consider the significance of the Victorian prison in shaping public and professional ideas of what prison should be like. Crucially, this project explores the implications of the continued operation of Victorian-era prisons for the contemporary prison service, and aims to inform policy development.

Skip to content