Fron Inquest:
In a blurry photograph, a blonde in a princess-cut white gown locks eyes with her groom as the pair descends opposite staircases. They aren’t in a chapel or wedding hall, but—as the peeling paint, moldy stairwell, and tiered cellblocks reveal—a former penitentiary. The photo is the web header of a February 2024 Wall Street Journal article titled “Wedding Venues That Give a New Twist to the Ol’ Ball and Chain.”
When I first came across the Wall Street Journal piece—and the accompanying photo taken inside Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary, often considered the country’s first true penitentiary—the first emotion that came to me was rage. As it turns out, jails and prisons rebranded as luxury experiences—including apartments, boutique hotels, wedding venues, and Airbnbs—abound. In the past thirty years or so, real-estate developers, hospitality and tourism companies, and investment funds have found new ways to profit from, and disguise, the legacy of systemic punishment.
Clearly, “prison flipping,” or the act of repurposing carceral facilities, is not inherently redemptive. Haunted house tours, curated cell block stays, and swimming pools built on prison grounds do not inform an abolitionist future. Beyond celebrating harmful tropes, these attempts turn incarceration into an aesthetic to be celebrated. They are acts of erasure, cruel in their levity and complicit in reducing profound histories of violence to an asterisk on a venue’s plaque. Continue reading...
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