Gentrifying prisons in America
The curious appeal of disused penitentiaries
“I WOULD CONSIDER Lorton a hell-hole, being that life is always on the line,” Andre Mitchell, an inmate at a prison in Virginia, told a researcher in 1990. “At all times really. I never get to relax.” How restful he would find it today. The building in which he slept has been turned into serene apartments, their patios dotted with deckchairs. An outdoor pool, surrounded by plants, glints in the sun. Nearby, within the vast, windowless walls of what was a maximum security unit, a shopping centre is being built, the final stage in the development of a once overcrowded prison complex into “Liberty”, a spacious “urban village”.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Fulsome”
United States October 2nd 2021
- New taxes will hit America’s rich. Old loopholes will protect them
- The Republican response to an absurd recount in Arizona underscores a threat to democracy
- Americans have forgotten how their government shaped Haiti
- The new Supreme Court term is about to begin
- The jail on Rikers Island is both appalling and generously funded
- Gentrifying prisons in America
- America’s green energy industry takes on the fossil-fuel lobby
From the October 2nd 2021 edition
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