Prisons of the World
June 15, 2007 10:23 AM   Subscribe

Prisons of the World | Interesting locations, harsh conditions and little known facts, includes images and video.
posted by deern the headlice (12 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
That Austrian prison looks pretty sweet -- as prisons go anyway.
posted by chunking express at 11:26 AM on June 15, 2007


Good photos -- love the Sark "breadbox." For prison drama, though, Oz kicked Prison Break's ass but good.
posted by scratch at 11:34 AM on June 15, 2007




Ditto on that Austrian prison. Cool. For a prison.
posted by MarshallPoe at 11:51 AM on June 15, 2007


It's all the more stark when compared to the other prisons in the list. I wonder how crazy that Bolivian prison is.
posted by chunking express at 12:10 PM on June 15, 2007


From the link: to be fair, it’s what a prison should be: harsh

This kind of weirded me out.

The author doesn't recall when we used to think of prison as a process of rehabilitation, instead of just retribution/revenge. Putting a human, any human, in solitary confinement for a long period of time will cause them mental harm. Those people will never be normal again. I understand the ultra-violent deserve a maximum security prison but I don't know about one that is purposely designed to turn them into crazed agorophobes.

And all the comments about the Austrian prison being too nice looking and too comfy and being bad for prisoners felt weird. There are a lot of architects that rightfully argue both the poor and rich alike should be able to enjoy nice places and nice things. Those in the lower class, or even the prison class, can appreciate a beautiful view and a nice building. Heck, it may even reflect positively on their lives otherwise spent in ugly oppressive places.
posted by mathowie at 1:41 PM on June 15, 2007


The language police should lock this guy up for refusing to use proper capitalization.
posted by bshort at 1:51 PM on June 15, 2007


I thought the Austrian prison was close to what these facilities should be. The "supermax" prison was pretty disgusting. If you're going to essentially kill someone's soul, why not just kill them and save us the expense?
posted by maxwelton at 1:51 PM on June 15, 2007


The author doesn't recall when we used to think of prison as a process of rehabilitation, instead of just retribution/revenge.

When was this? I think that aside from a few periods in relatively recent history, prisons have almost always been used as a tool to punish rather than rehabilitate. I'm not saying they should, just that I think it's strange that you seem to be recalling some past time when things weren't this way.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:17 PM on June 15, 2007


The claim that the SuperMax prison keeps all the inmates separate is questionable at best. It's got a pretty violent history despite the long standing limitations on inmate movement. This story is from 2000 but they were making the same claim about no contact then. Perhaps it's different now.
posted by BigSky at 2:47 PM on June 15, 2007


I read your article BigSky, but I think the majority of violence happened in the non-Supermax area. The Florence prison, or I guess USP is the fancy acronym for it, contains a bunch of prisons at differing security levels. At Supermaxed, there's no mention of prisoners being put into the same cells. In fact, one of the escapees mentioned in your story was trying to get into Supermax because it would be safer.
posted by meowzilla at 4:46 PM on June 15, 2007


meowzilla,

You're right. I read that article years ago. I guess because the SHU is a high security unit, relative to general population, I remembered it as ADX when I saw the list.

But still, there was mention of two prisoners in ADX who got into it while going to the yard. Supposedly they were placed there by guards wanting them to fight.
posted by BigSky at 6:49 PM on June 15, 2007


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