The Persistence of the Victorian Prison: Alteration, Inhabitation, Obsolescence and Affirmative Design

英格兰和威尔士的22000人，或者说超过四分之一的在押人口，目前居住在32所监狱中，这些监狱都是在1960年代建造的，由于其中大多数是“地方”监狱（即关押等待审判或判决的人），剩下的60000人中很少有人不会在其中度过一段时间。媒体报道称他们的持续运作是一个“丑闻”，经常有人呼吁“拆除维多利亚监狱”，这与1922年的一份报告相呼应，该报告声称"建筑物唯一能有效进行的改革就是炸药“。一个世纪过去了，尽管政客们经常承诺关闭这些过时的“遗迹”，但它们仍然是监狱财产不可分割的一部分。我们如何理解老建筑承载（或不承载）新思想和新体验的能力与承载它们自己过去的痕迹和它们所包含的过去生活的能力之间的紧张关系？这个项目探讨了维多利亚时代的监狱是如何在明显过时的情况下继续运作的，以及它们的运作是否应该继续下去。维多利亚时代的监狱的“持久性”意味着，尽管在20世纪20年代被认为是“过时的”，但许多监狱已经运作了一个世纪，它们的持久性通过集体意识中的许多互文循环得到加强。通过多种方法，该项目追溯了这些监狱的结构、功能、感觉、“框架”和“后果”-这些建筑物随着时间的推移发生变化的方式;这些建筑物在其运作期间对监狱管理的影响;随着时间的推移，被监禁在这些建筑物中的过去和现在的情况，以及它们继续运作的影响。我们所说的“框架”和“辐射”是指这些建筑的生存影响监狱庄园更广泛的转变的方式，无论是在潜在地阻碍当代监狱庄园的更广泛的进步方面，还是在影响当代设计和建造过程方面，以及监狱应该是什么样的概念。与英国最古老的刑事改革组织霍华德刑事改革联盟合作，这一跨学科项目结合了档案研究、口述历史、文学和媒体来源的话语分析、访谈、与囚犯和工作人员的创造性方法，以及公众参与和联合制作战略-让被监禁和“自由”人口参与-以了解这些监狱的物质和概念的可靠性。一系列互动多媒体展览（监狱内外）的基础上积累和反思各种材料（例如档案记录和照片、口述历史、囚犯诗歌和艺术品），最终在一次会议上解决了这些维多利亚时期机构未来的关键政策问题。通过追溯这些监狱的时间，该项目批判性地重新诠释了建筑环境中过时的概念，探讨了英国的持久的文化依恋一个特定的（可以说是古老的）物质表现形式的惩罚，并告知当代政策的发展围绕这些有争议的问题。

Twenty-two thousand, or over a quarter, of the custodial population of England and Wales currently reside in 32 prisons with Victorian-era accommodation, and since most of these are 'local' prisons (i.e. holding those awaiting trial or sentencing), very few of the remaining sixty thousand will NOT have spent time in one. Media reports describe their continued operation as a 'scandal', and frequent calls to 'tear down the Victorian prisons' echo a 1922 report claiming that 'the only reform to which the buildings can be usefully subjected is dynamite'. A century on, despite politicians' frequent promises to close these outdated 'relics', they remain an integral part of the prison estate.What are the implications of their continued operation? How can we understand the tension between the capacity of old buildings to carry (or not) new ideas and experiences, versus their capacity to carry the traces of their own past and the past lives they contained? This project asks how and with what implications Victorian-era prisons continue to operate despite their apparent obsolescence, and whether their operation should continue.The 'persistence' of Victorian prisons means that despite being considered 'outdated' in the 1920s, many have operated for a further century, and their permanence is reinforced through numerous intertextual loops in the collective consciousness. Through multiple methodologies, this project traces the fabric, function, feel, 'framing' and 'fallout' of these prisons - the ways in which the buildings have changed over time; the influence of the buildings over prison management across their period of operation; what it was and is like to be incarcerated in these buildings over time, and the implications of their continued operation. What we mean by 'framing' and 'fallout' is the ways in which the survival of these buildings influences wider transformation in the prison estate, both in terms of potentially hindering broader progress in the contemporary prison estate, and influencing both contemporary design and construction processes, and notions of what prison should be 'like'.In partnership with the UK's oldest penal reform organisation The Howard League for Penal Reform, this interdisciplinary project combines archival research, oral histories, discourse analysis of literary and media sources, interviews, creative methodologies with prisoners and staff, and a public engagement and co-production strategy - engaging both incarcerated and 'free' populations - to understand these prisons' material and conceptual solidity. A series of interactive multimedia exhibitions (both inside and outside prisons) builds cumulatively and reflectively upon diverse materials (e.g. archival records and photographs, oral histories, prisoner poetry and artwork), culminating in a conference addressing the critical policy question of the future of these Victorian establishments.By tracing these prisons through time, the project critically reinterprets notions of obsolescence in the built environment, explores the UK's enduring cultural attachment to a particular (arguably archaic) material manifestation of punishment, and informs contemporary policy development around these contentious issues.