Territories of incarceration. A comparative study of prison farms in rural Europe and a proposal for Flanders.

Project Information

ARCHPRIS

Grant agreement ID: 844184

DOI

10.3030/844184

Project closed

EC signature date 1 April 2019

Start date 1 February 2020

End date 1 September 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 178 320,00

EU contribution

€ 178 320,00

Coordinated by

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ARCHPRIS (Territories of incarceration. A comparative study of prison farms in rural Europe and a proposal for Flanders.)

Reporting period: 2020-02-01 to 2022-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

A Prison Farm (PF) is a correctional facility located in rural environments where people imprisoned are employed in open-air manual work. They originated in the settlement types of domestic labour colonies built in rural Europe since the 19th c., like the French Colonies Agricoles, the Dutch Koloniën van Weldadigheid, and the Italian Colonie Penali Agricole. A common reading of these carceral settlements embraces rhetorics of progress, care, and ultimately positive utopia, hence disregarding their role as agents of internal colonisation that violently reshaped the remotest rural land of modern nation-states. While their history is often magnified by local initiatives, their closure opposed by local staff, and their basic principles (open-air work, access to and views of natural elements) acclaimed in prison studies, PFs are being shut down because considered obsolete, expensive, and little attractive for imprisoned people as opposed to new suburban walled prison complexes.
The project 'Territories of incarceration. A comparative study of prison farms in rural Europe and a proposal for the Flanders' aimed to (1) compile a comparative study of selected PFs in Belgium, Italy, and Finland, acquiring and systematising currently missing knowledge and revising their spatial history. Drawing from the fields of architecture and criminology it aimed to (2) observe the relation between space, institutional model, and everyday inhabitation practices in one specific Belgian PF - the Centre Penitentiarie Agricole de Ruiselede. Finally, trying to contrast the still enduring link between carcerality and the countryside that PFs embody, the project aimed to (3) propose a pilot project in the context of rural Flanders. This promoted sustainable agriculture and rural development envisioning a cooperative network of small-scale residential farms that adhere to principles of restorative and environmental restorative justice (RJ).
The project is grounded on critical theoretical insights around the empowerment of architecture in directing human behaviour and the relationship between architecture-institutions-large scale territory. It explored the concepts of 'home-ification' of prison environments and 'carceral idyll'. It benefited from inputs from criminology, cultural studies, and photography, and from collaboration with members of NGOs De Huizen and Rescaled, the Flemish Dept. of Agriculture and Fisheries, and the European Forum for Restorative Justice.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work was organised into 3 research work packages: (1) Comparative study on the space of contemporary EU PFs; (2) Interdisciplinary study at the Centre Penitentiarie Agricole de Ruiselede; (3) Pilot Project.
15 European PFs were studied, either closed or in operation (St. Hubert, Ruiselede Merksplas, Hoogstraten, Wortel in Belgium; Isili, Mamone, Is Arenas, Porto Conte, Castiadas, Asinara in Italy; Huittinen Satakunta, Vilppula, Pelson in Finland). Visits were documented with photography and architectural surveys; historical documents, drawings, and photographs collected in archives, libraries, and from prison staff; workshops conducted with prison staff to collect and share information and results. At the Centre Penitentiarie Agricole de Ruiselede, an interdisciplinary study involved the staff and the imprisoned people in an art project that resulted in the exhibition 'Rural Postcards · Productivity and ‘idyll’ in a Belgian prison farm'.
Based on this groundwork, a pilot project was drafted that, contrasting the rationale of PFs, developed as a proposal for a network of residential farms in Ranst (Flanders) each retrofitting a greenhouse at risk of being dismissed in favour of alarming suburbanisation and meant to be collectively inhabited by a heterogeneous group of people linked by kinships that surpass the single-family - now the prevailing societal model, however in crisis, at the base of the organisation of farm labor in Flanders. While acting as a locus for imagining new ways of living together in line with RJ approaches, this network could secure a long-term housing solution and support infrastructure for vulnerable people struggling to enter the housing market and usually accommodated in temporary shelters and carceral facilities. Collaboration with members of the Flemish Dept. of Agriculture facilitated timely understanding of the challenges of rural development, identifying a specific socio-economic issue, a study area, and a set of specific sites that could be tackled by the project. The social agenda was developed in collaboration with members of the EFRJ while advancing the work by NGOs De Huizen and Rescaled. With the latter’s support, knowledge about their proposed models for small-scale detention was deepened and 3 existing case studies in Belgium (Mechelen and Enghien) and Denmark (Skejby) were analysed.
Intermediate and final results were published in 2 peer review articles and will be featured in 3 forthcoming articles/book chapters; presented at 3 academic conferences; discussed and presented in several short and long workshops with practitioners, academics, and NGOs; communicated to a wider public in events and festivals as well as via social media, broadcast, blog pages; exhibited in public venues; and formed the base of a university taught course.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This project has proven innovative in two aspects. First, by compensating for knowledge gaps in prison studies about European PFs. Second, by drafting a pilot project that is experimental in addressing timely societal and environmental challenges.
The project has provided an alternative spatial history of PFs as institutions of dispossession set to accelerate the modernisation, privatisation, and exploitation of the European countryside often at the expense of sustainable and common use of resources by locals, rather than as progressive experiments for the treatment of people in beneficial rural settings – the latter being the widespread narrative. The project adds insights to cultural studies’ readings of the countryside as a condition of 'carceral pastoral trap' or 'carceral idyll'. It contributes to scholarship about the benefits of natural environments in detention, revealing how such benefits are contentious and often do not act as drivers for their spatial arrangement and practices of inhabitation.
The project has shown similar trends in the design, use, and decay of the institutional and spatial-territorial models of European PFs. Plans waver amid arguments for their closure or implementation as a strategic asset in rural development, however, both positions are controversial. These were discussed in workshops with prison staff, who were made aware of institutional/spatial/farming models from other European PFs and of the goals of social movements like RJ and Rescaled. Besides workshops, the art project 'Rural Postcards' addressed imprisoned people and staff, enlarging communication with young students and the wide public.
The pilot project, acknowledging the controversy of using carceral institutions as drivers of rural development, embraces an abolitionist and RJ perspective and advances the agenda of De Huizen/Rescale. This research opened a new theoretical perspective on the architecture/RJ relation by applying RJ principles to overlooked domains – countryside and housing. It addressed rural development in Flanders focusing on a specific artefact, the greenhouse, that is a key challenge for the Flemish Dept. of Agriculture.

Fields in Satakunta Prison, Finland. Picture by the Author. Summer 2022