A building containing a prison.
In the modern era, many fortified buildings, such as abbeys and fortresses, were converted to use as prisons. Pictured is the cloister of Clairvaux Abbey, converted to a prison exercise yard after secularization.
A building containing a prison.
Jeremy Bentham's "panopticon" prison introduced many of the principles of surveillance and social control that underpin the design of the modern prison. In the panopticon model, prisoners were housed in one-person cells arranged in a circular pattern, all facing towards a central observation tower in such a way that the guards could see into all of the cells from the observation tower, while the prisoners were unable to see the guards. (architectural drawing by Willey Reveley, 1791)