Tourism on the Prison Boundary

Abstract

Turner explores a variety of sites and spaces that market landscapes of imprisonment as attractions for tourist consumption. Drawing on case studies including former-prison hotels, prison museums, and the unique prison restaurant, Turner reveals the specific relationship created between the visitor and the prison at these tourist sites. These different forms of tourist experience have attempted to bridge the divide between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to allow members of the public to engage (through a range of senses) with the prison environment in spite of its increasingly closed-off nature. In its conclusion, ‘Tourism on the Prison Boundary’ scrutinises how tourists rearticulate, respond to and rework the boundary between society and carceral space.