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Chapter 12 “Everybody Likes Escape Stories”: Exploring Representations of Prison Escape in Canadian Penal History Museums

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Prison Breaks

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology ((PSIPP))

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Abstract

Decommissioned carceral sites that have been transformed into penal history museums serve as popular destinations for visitors. There are hundreds of other penal history museums across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania (Wilson et al. 2017) that similarly claim to offer a rare chance for “those on the ‘outside’ to access life ‘inside’” (Turner and Peters 2015, p. 72). Ross (2012) uncovered 95 penal history museums in operation worldwide. More recent investigations, such as a study by Walby and Piché (2015a), which identified at least 45 museums in the Canadian context alone memorializing the history of imprisonment in settings that include former penitentiaries, prisons, jails and lock-ups, have pushed this global count to well over one hundred. This chapter explores representations of escape in these sites of punishment memorialization.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Matthew Ferguson, Devon Madill & Justin Piché

  2. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

    Kevin Walby

Authors
  1. Matthew Ferguson
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  2. Devon Madill
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  3. Justin Piché
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  4. Kevin Walby
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. DIGNITY—Danish institute Against Torture, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark

    Tomas Max Martin

  2. Centre Lillois d’Etudes et de Recherches Sociologiques et Economiques, CNRS / Université de Lille, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

    Gilles Chantraine

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Ferguson, M., Madill, D., Piché, J., Walby, K. (2018). Chapter 12 “Everybody Likes Escape Stories”: Exploring Representations of Prison Escape in Canadian Penal History Museums. In: Martin, T., Chantraine, G. (eds) Prison Breaks. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64358-8_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64358-8_13

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64357-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64358-8

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

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