I’ve seen a few pictures of what Victorian prisons were like a hundred and fifty years ago, or more, we’ve had it pretty cushty now. We’ve got a television in our room, we’ve got a telephone, we can speak to our family and our friends whenever we want. There’s some prisoners that still don’t have telephones in their cells, they still have to go and queue up to wait for the telephone, we have got it easy now.
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.