The Insane Real Life 19th Century Rotating Squirrel Cage Human Prison Design

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The pen. The clink. The slammer. The joint. The cooler. The nick. The big house. The hoosegow. Whatever you call it, it is the place most of us dread ending up: prison. A central pillar of our modern justice system, prisons loom large in the popular imagination, inspiring whole genres of literature, music, and film; and even entire schools of philosophical thought. They are entire insular worlds unto themselves, potent symbols for the nature of freedom, justice, and humanity itself. But more than just institutions or buildings, prisons are also a form of technology, whose function is to contain, control, and - hopefully - reform and rehabilitate large numbers of people as efficiently as possible. As a result, over the past two centuries prison design has seen plenty of innovation, ranging from the practical to the ingenious to the downright bizarre. And few prison designs were stranger than an 1880s contraption that enclosed its prisoners in what can only be described as a giant rotating squirrel cage. While several of these innovative structures were constructed across the midwestern United States, they proved impractical and reliable, and became but a minor yet fascinating footnote in the history of criminal justice. This is the strange tale of the rotary jail.

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Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila