Escape to Prison
Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment
1st Edition
Published on 1. May 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-520-28616-0 (ISBN)
Description
The resurrection of former prisons as museums has caught the attention of tourists along with scholars interested in studying what is known as dark tourism. Unsurprisingly, due to their grim subject matter, prison museums tend to invert the Disneyland "experience, becoming the antithesis of the happiest place on earth." In Escape to Prison, the culmination of years of international research, noted criminologist Michael Welch explores ten prison museums on six continents, examining the complex interplay between culture and punishment. From Alcatraz to the Argentine Penitentiary, museums constructed on the former locations of surveillance, torture, colonial control, and even rehabilitation tell unique tales about the economic, political, religious, and scientific roots of each site's historical relationship to punishment.
Reviews / Votes
"An invaluable critical contribution to the growth of cultural criminology and dark tourism literature." -- Lindsey L. Upton Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology "The book's importance lies in its contribution to dark tourism theory and its exploration of the human drive to gaze-not just at prisons, prisoners, and implements of punishment but also at the darkness of human suffering... Recommended." -- R. Price CHOICE connect "Escape to Prison is a stimulating work ... It will be a particularly useful volume as we expand our cultural analyses of punishment." Punishment & Society "Michael Welch's Escape to Prison brings a criminologist's focus to prison museums and the roles they play in constructing cultural understandings of crime and punishment. [His] criminological perspectives provides new tools to explore the interplay of public memory and public policy, and imagine alternatives." American Quarterly "An exemplary study of penal heritage... [provokes] harder questions about public complicity in the durability of the prison." British Journal of CriminologyMore details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
30 b&w scattered
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-520-28616-0 (9780520286160)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
05/2015
1st Edition
University of California Press
€99.04
Article not available at the moment
E-Book
04/2015
1st Edition
University of California Press
€33.99
Available for download
Person
Michael Welch is Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University and a Visiting Professor at Mannheim Centre for Criminology in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics.
Content
List of Illustrations Preface 1. Penal Tourism 2. The Museum Effect 3. Dream of Order 4. Architecture Parlante 5. Religion and Governance 6. Work and Economics 7. Suffering and Science 8. Colonialism and Resistance 9. Memorialization 10. Cultural Power References Index