The Aestheticised Prison: Decommissioning, expansion, and abolitionist rupture points in the contemporary Danish prison landscape

This paper explores how aesthetic strategies in contemporaryDanish prisons conceal, normalise and reproduce the violentnature of incarceration – precisely at a time when the prisoninstitution appears to be undergoing change. I examine howdecommissioned prisons such as Vridsløselille are beingconverted into residential areas and cultural institutions withreference to community and an idyllic lifestyle, while newprison buildings – such as the extension of Sdr. Omme Prison,which turns it into the country's largest prison – are presentedthrough images of sustainability, Nordic humanism andarchitectural tranquillity. Analysing architectural drawings,municipal urban planning and citizen protests against newconstruction projects, I demonstrate how the concept of thehumane prison is aestheticised and deflecting criticism. Basedon abolitionist thinking, Roland Barthes' theory of myth andMichelle Brown's concept of ‘penal spectatorship,’ I interpretthis aestheticization as an ideological veil that naturalisesthe prison as a necessary and legitimate institution in theinfrastructure of the welfare state. At the same time, localcitizen protests against new prison construction point to anaffective sense of loss of access to common spaces and nature—alatent recognition of the prison's separating character and the violence that prison walls draw into landscapes. I argue thatit is precisely in the tension between decommissioning andexpansion that an abolitionist space of opportunity opens up tochallenge this aestheticisation, and I ask how we canreintroduce the experience of incarceration into the culturaland political landscape – and insist on communities withoutprisons.