Medium
Text
Form
Poem
Artist / Maker
Declan, HMP/YOI Lincoln
Walking on to the wing you notice the blinding lights along with the towering walls lined with rows of steel doors. The walk to the cell is short but you can hear everything from the echo of the boots of the officer, the rattle of their keys, the mumble from every prisoner, even your own heart beating. The smell of the floor polish and moisture fills the air and everything you touch is cold and leaves you with a chilling thought of the people who died here and how it must have been for them all those years ago. If these walls could talk imagine the stories they could tell you. The amount of people that have passed through this place, the good, the bad, the lost, the sad. From ex-soldiers to murderers, people making good lives from bad ones and even losing their lives for the mistakes they made. They would say “It’s not forever so stay humble and your time will come. After 150 years I have seen it all and if you could hear me you would not believe half of what I’ve seen”
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.