Justin Piché

The polysemy of punishment memorialization: Dark tourism and Ontario's penal history museums

Contributing to debates about cultural representations of prisons and prisoners, as well as exploring the crossover between the dark tourism literature and cultural criminology, this article reflects on how penal museums in the province of Ontario, Canada, create and communicate meaning as it regards imprisonment and punishment. Drawing from field notes made after observations at penal museums located in central and eastern Ontario cities and towns, we contend that penal museum relics offer a polysemy of meaning to viewers, as critical, indifferent and punitive interpretations are possible. Based on analysis of tour guide narratives as well as penal relics, we explore how the process of memorialization in many of these museums is organized around the idea of penal reform, which positions imprisonment and punishment as remnants of the past and introduces a social distance between the punished and the penal spectator.

Staged authenticity in penal history sites across Canada.

Literature on penal tourism has examined meanings of imprisonment and punishment communicated in infamous American (e.g. Alcatraz, Eastern State Penitentiary), Australian (e.g. Fannie Bay Gaol, Port Arthur) and South African (e.g. Robben Island) sites. Yet such research has not extensively drawn from academic debates on authenticity and heritage that have become prominent in tourism research. This article examines the staging of authenticity in lesser-known penal history museums located across Canada. Whether large and aesthetically impressive or small and dingy, the existence of museums in original heritage penal sites raises questions about authenticity and how it is staged. Based on an analysis of field notes and interviews from visits to 45 penal history sites in Canada, we present four strategies (preservation, restoration, importation and creation) used by staff and volunteers at penal history museums to draw attention to four types of authenticity (architectural and spatial, tactile and visual, existential and narrative) that reinforce claims about the purported realities of incarceration found therein.

Bridging or fostering social distance? An analysis of penal spectator comments on Canadian penal history museums

Penal history museums are among the sites where cultural meanings about prisoners and imprisonment are developed, communicated, and consumed. Little research has explored what visitors take from these encounters. Drawing on literature concerning new media communication and Brown’s (2009) work on penal spectatorship, we analyze visitor comments about their sojourns into Canadian penal history sites found on TripAdvisor, a global travel website. We delve into the diverse stories that tourists share about their encounters with representations of incarceration, which we have found address the following themes: the performance of on-site actors; perceived authenticity of experiences and emotions; the convenience of visiting museums; attitudes about imprisonment; and views of penal history. Our research suggests that visits to penal history museums in Canada seldom translate into humanizing conceptions of the criminalized and views that challenge punitiveness among visitors, at least online. We also highlight how new media communications shape the actions of penal history museum workers in ways that tend to reinforce memorialization practices that foster social distance between authors and recipients of punishment.

Making Punishment Memorialization Pay? Marketing, Networks, and Souvenirs at Small Penal History Museums in Canada

Existing literature on the commodification of punishment has yet to examine small penal history museums or related issues of tourism marketing, networking, and souvenirs. Bringing this literature into conversation with tourism studies, we examine how penal history sites attempt to attract visitors and generate revenue to sustain their operations. Drawing on findings from a 5-year qualitative study of penal history museums across Canada, we argue tourism operators use three strategies for the marketing of commodified punishment: authenticity, historical specificity, and exclusiveness. Our findings also indicate that networking between these sites is underdeveloped and that the souvenirs sold to visitors are an important source of museum funding. Overall, we show that the concepts of marketing, networking, and souvenirs can comprise a key conceptual framework for examining consumption in small tourism enterprises in Canada and internationally. Our findings also raise questions about how to theorize and investigate museum management, solvency, and profitability in the penal and dark tourism sector.

Facilitating Prisoner Ethnography An Alternative Approach to “Doing Prison Research Differently”

In this article, we reflect on the position of researcher-as-facilitator of prisoner ethnography. By privileging the standpoint and the voice of prisoners as a way of knowing about carceral spaces, we differentiate between the position of researcher-as-facilitator of prisoner ethnography and other approaches to ethnography in prisons. Based on our editorial work with the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons—a peer-reviewed and academically-oriented journal printed by a university press, featuring articles authored or co-authored by current and former prisoners—we discuss the process, possibilities, and constraints of this form of prison research.

The front and back stages of carceral expansion marketing in Canada

Abstract This article examines how provincial and territorial government agencies and prison authorities in Canada promote new penal infrastructure initiatives. Through an analysis of press releases, websites, opening ceremonies and open houses to promote jail and prison construction projects, our analysis reveals discourses that are legitimating carceral expansion in the Canadian context including: the pursuit of public safety and institutional security; providing opportunities for rehabilitation and healing; addressing the legacies of colonization through the ‘indigenizing’ of imprisonment; generating economic stimulus through prison-related employment and other financial contributions; and the establishment of ‘environmentally-friendly’ prisons. Drawing from government records obtained using Access to Information and Freedom of Information requests, we also provide examples of how front stage messages communicated to the public are assembled by bureaucrats and marketing firms in the back stage of these punishment campaigns.

Haunting Encounters at Canadian Penal History Museums

As a form of dark tourism or thanatourism (Knudsen 2011) visits to penal history museums have gained popularity in many countries across the world (Ross 2012), including Canada (Walby and Piche 2015a). Contributing to cultural studies literature on museums (e.g. Tan 2012; Newman and McLean 2004) and penal heritage sites (e.g. Welch 2015; Wilson 2008), we examine the role that hauntings and ghosts play at Canadian penal history sites. Gordon (2011: 2) defines hauntings as expressions in which “a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known.” As mediums for hauntings, ghosts captivate believers, as well as sceptics, social theorists, and lay persons (Holloway and Kneale 2008; Gordon 2008; Jones 2001). For example, Jeremy Bentham—the author of infamous ideas for imprisonment including the Panopticon—disbelieved in ghosts, all the while remaining terrified of them.

Reconsidering the boundaries of the shadow carceral state: An analysis of the symbiosis between punishment and its memorialization:

Beckett and Murakawa conceptualize the ‘shadow carceral state’ as institutions deriving their authority from administrative and civil law that dole out punishment in conjunction with the penal state. This concept enriches criminological inquiry by expanding the boundaries of what punishment work entails. Left unexplored are the contributions of memory institutions such as penitentiary, prison and jail museums intersecting with the penal state that bolster the latter’s power to deprive liberty and inflict pain. Based on an analysis of three Canadian penal history museums, we illustrate how Correctional Service Canada mobilizes federal prison labour and other involuntary prisoner contributions, as well as agency staffing and resources to naturalize punishment. After examining this symbiosis between punishment and its memorialization, we argue for a conception of the shadow carceral state that includes cultural entities and processes which reproduce state control as a dominant way of responding to criminalized conflicts and harms.

Chapter 12 “Everybody Likes Escape Stories”: Exploring Representations of Prison Escape in Canadian Penal History Museums

Decommissioned carceral sites that have been transformed into penal history museums serve as popular destinations for visitors. There are hundreds of other penal history museums across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania (Wilson et al. 2017) that similarly claim to offer a rare chance for “those on the ‘outside’ to access life ‘inside’” (Turner and Peters 2015, p. 72). Ross (2012) uncovered 95 penal history museums in operation worldwide. More recent investigations, such as a study by Walby and Piche (2015a), which identified at least 45 museums in the Canadian context alone memorializing the history of imprisonment in settings that include former penitentiaries, prisons, jails and lock-ups, have pushed this global count to well over one hundred. This chapter explores representations of escape in these sites of punishment memorialization.

Introduction: Prison Tourism in Context

The advent of a Handbook of Prison Tourism, and one of such depth and scope as this volume, is testimony to the extraordinary rise in scholarly interest in a field that barely a decade ago supported only a handful of researchers. It is testimony too, not only to the global ubiquity of former sites of imprisonment as tourist attractions, but also to the centrality of prisons, and the concept of incarceration as a dominant mode of administering justice that spans cultures and nations. In modern liberal democracies based on and notionally wedded to principles of individual liberty as core legal and societal precepts, it is unsurprising that imprisonment is regarded by many as a fair and just response to individuals’ transgression against society. In an age when many believe in the principle that “the punishment should fit the crime,” the imposition of a prison sentence for a variety of offenses rarely raises questions.