Description
Book SynopsisFrom Alcatraz to the Argentine Penitentiary, museums constructed on the former locations of surveillance, torture, colonial control, and even rehabilitation, this book tells the tales about the economic, political, religious, and scientific roots of each site's historical relationship to punishment.
Trade Review"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 Criminology
Table of ContentsList 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
