November 26, 2025
Glaring emptiness
Anonymity
Sharp edges and lines, grids
Barriers, hatches, doors
Rooms full of onions and garlic
The smell of onions and garlic in the concrete building
After the interview with KR, the prison director, and ST, who manages the pilot program, KR offers to show me the building.
We start on the 3rd floor. There are several cells here, two workrooms, and a communal shower. By chance, we run into the manager in charge of work operations—a calm, pleasant man. He shakes my hand, introduces himself, and offers to show me the workrooms. An inmate is mopping the corridor. KR, the prison director, greets him and asks how he is doing. There are several types of work: the wood workshop, metal workshop, working in the laundry, peeling onions, peeling garlic, processing wooden scrubbing brushes, working in the kitchen. We walk through the building—work is going on everywhere. The manager unlocks a door; we—KR, ST, and I—greet everyone. Most return the greeting; some shake our hands. There is a loud speaker in every room and the inmates listen to Arabic music while working; many are chatting. The atmosphere feels relaxed, and the men talk about what they are working on. Some look worn-down. Who knows how long they have been here. In the laundry room, one of the men reports that he has been working there for a long time—about one and a half years—and that it is the only form of work that is also done on Saturdays. In the other areas, work is only done Monday through Friday, a few hours each morning.
Huge quantities of garlic and onions are peeled. In the onion room, there are containers filled with large white onions; the floor is covered with onion skins. Six to eight men work here, wearing masks. You can already smell the onions when the elevator opens onto the corridor; the work supervisor's eyes are watering. We say goodbye and he locks the room again. We visit the other workrooms, the library, communal rooms, the open-air exercise yards, the infirmary (external doctors visit twice a week or are called in emergencies), and the intake cells, in which inmates are placed immediately upon arrival. A maximum stay of 96 hours is permitted in these cells. These inmates are locked in for 23 hours and allowed one hour per day outside, alone, in a small, open-airyard. Eight to ten such cells are located along one corridor. I let myself be locked in for a few minutes. Through the cell door you can hear everything—conversations and footsteps. Each cell has a hatch that can be opened from the outside. Before unlocking a room, KR glances through the hatch—for safety reasons and out of habit, she says, even though an orange light above the dooron the outside indicates that the cell is unoccupied. Anyone can look in at anytime from the outside; the occupant has no control over this. The cell is made of exposed concrete and contains a bed, a chair, and a built-in desk consisting of a simple white panel, mounted beneath the window. The window looks out onto the exercise yard. The cell is unexpectedly large and has its own shower and toilet.
Next, we visit the cell for inmates at risk of suicide and those who may pose a danger to others. According to ST, the cells are deliberately constructed so that one cannot injure oneself or destroy the cell. Nevertheless, inmates still manage to damage them—one had taken an entire cell apart. I can easily imagine how rage and despair could intensify to immeasurable levels here. One inmate was experiencing psychosis, KR reports. He was hearing multiple voices and was very difficult to manage, but he still had to be granted his hour of out door time in the yard. “When inmates are not doing well, solitary confinement is the worst thing, because the feelings become even more unbearable and the inner voices even louder than usual,” says ST. PD1 is repeatedly assigned inmates who should really be housed in a clinical facility, but because there are not enough places available, people also end up here, even when this setting is only partly suitable for them. We then visit the two rooms reserved for consultations with lawyers—one with and one without a glass partition—as well as the visitation room.
The architecture has a far greater effect than I had expected. The exposed concrete creates a brutal atmosphere. The material feels cold, unyielding, and forbidding. Inside, I get the impression that the building is designed to repress, strip away, and even “erase” the person. The omnipresent grey of the floors, walls, and ceiling produces an overwhelming sense of power and, at the same time, of emptiness. You cannot look outside—only into the inner yards. There is no decoration whatsoever; everything looks impersonal and identical, as though all color had been drained from life.
There should really be no prisons. The pervasive powerlessness, the dependency, the near-absence of autonomy, the almost non-existent space for agency—one feels all of this immediately. Even though I am only being guided through the building for an hour and a half, I feel completely crushed, overwhelmed by the architecture. It takes away your personality; it takes away your life as you know it. People speak of normalization, of everything being done to make the stay as normal as possible, but the architecture screams. It roars. It signals unmistakably that nothing here is normal. The walls are bare; there are no plants, no green spaces, no wood, no natural materials. The cells are made of concrete, the furniture of plastic. The shower and toilet are metal. Everything feels cold, forbidding, unnatural. It is simply impossible to feel normal here. The daily routine is always the same, any sense of autonomy is truly minimal—in fact, it barely exists.
At the same time, considerable effort is being made to maintain the principle of normalization. Each inmate has his own shelf in the communal refrigerator; inmates can purchase or order items and store them there. Each shelf is opened with a separate key and is marked with the corresponding cell number—so that, like anyone else, one can simply go to the fridge and take something out. Inmates spend ten hours a day outside their cells—except those in the intake cells.
What surprised and impressed me was the relationship between inmates and staff. Everyone greets each other, strikes up conversations—almost like colleagues. The difference is that some move around freely, while doors close again behind others. The atmosphere is unusually relaxed. The atmosphere here bears no resemblance to the image conveyed by the media, politicians, or films; those portrayals feel worlds away from reality.
Yet the architecture drains me, makes me feel small, takes everything away. In another context, one might describe it as modern, sleek, or simply industrial. But here in the prison, it weighs on me and makes the power relations unmistakable. There is no disorder, no darkness, nothing is broken—and yet everything is impersonal, sterile, overwhelmingly empty. I can well imagine that some people go mad here. The architecture truly weighed me down; I had the feeling of losing myself. Nothing looks or feels like a space one knows from ordinary life. It is a world unto itself, completely cut off from everything familiar. No matter how hard one tries to make pre-trial detention as normal aspossible—the surroundings undo those efforts immediately. Photographs of the architecture cannot begin to capture this.
December 3, 2025
5 CHF per day
7 CHF per day for working
5 CHF per day for German course
The PD2 prison is the largest in the canton. It is located in the middle of the city and is not recognizable as a prison from the outside. I walk around the building. It strikes me as well-maintained and innocuous—like an administrative building. The prison is part of a large complex that is 120 years old, delimited by the PD2 public prosecutor's office on one side and the district court on the other. In the courtyard, ST and I ring the bell at anarrow white door bearing the cantonal coat of arms and the inscription “Prison PD2.” The door opens and we stand in a passageway. ST waves to an officer at the gate to let us in. He indicates that we will shortly be collected by a manager (M). While we wait, a woman comes in with two small children and two bags full of clothing and snacks—a visit for an inmate.
M and aguard collect us and lead us through a second courtyard into the administrative building, to his office, where we leave our bags and phones. I sign a confidentiality agreement. Then we set off. M leads the way, followed by me, then ST, and then the two-meter-tall guard. Several corridors and doors later, we arrive in the prison building proper. Cells are spread across four floors. The smell of cigarettes hits me immediately. We start at the very top, the fourth floor. M explains that this floor houses the particularly difficult and disruptive inmates.
There are 25 men in group detention. The corridors are narrow and visibly run-down, the ceilings low, the rooms small, and the walls at least 80 cm thick. All windows are barred from the outside. Two inmates are sitting in the corridor in front of a cell, talking. M unlocks an unoccupied cell. It is furnished in the most rudimentary way: a “bed” with a blanket and a stainless-steel unit combining toilet and sink. Also, a plastic tableware set from IKEA—a cup, abowl, a plate, a knife, a fork, and a spoon, each in a different color, like in a kindergarten. The colorful set looks out of place in the small, dark cell. The light switch can be operated by the inmate from the inside, the television is mounted out of reach, high on the wall. Subject to good behavior, one can purchase television time for one franc per day. The window runs lengthwise just below the ceiling. You have to tilt your head back to see the light coming in. ST explains that cells used to be built this way so that incarcerated individuals would have to look up to God and pray for their sins to be forgiven.
The fourth floor has its own exercise yard, located on the roof. It is half covered and half open-air, the open section, is, however, enclosed with barbed wire. There is a ping-pong table, two plastic armchairs, a punching bag, and some sports equipment. Ashtrays are placed on the two benches. M hands me one of the ashtrays: “They're made of rubber. In the past, inmates used to hit eachother—or themselves—in the head and face with them and break their noses.”
We leave the roof and descend to the third floor. The pervasive smell of cigarettes is foul; it reinforces the run-down look of the building. M explains that smoking is permitted in individual cells. “I'm very glad about this rule. In the prison where I used to work, smoking wasn't permitted at all. It was a constant topic with the inmates. They were furious about the ban and there was continual trouble because inmates found ways to light their cigarettes inside the building anyway. One of them ripped the cables out of his television and used them to create sparks to light his cigarette.”
By now, all the cells are unlocked and the men can move freely on their floor for up to 10 hours a day—group detention. They are only locked in their cells during staff breaks and from the evening onwards. Suddenly I find myself surrounded by prison inmates. I try not to let my tension show. M shows me the music room, the common room, the kitchen, a dining room, and the in-house barbershop. The latter is a small room with glass walls, where an inmate is currently cleaning. M unlocks it so I can look around more closely; the four of us stand in the open doorway. An absurd situation unfolds, and my stomach turns. M says that Africans are particularly talented at cutting hair, and that the inmate running the barbershop accordingly has a lot of work. This inmate can hear every word and continues working calmly. As M speaks, I get the impression we are talking about an animal being observed in its cage. The fact that the inmate is presentand can hear everything does not seem to bother M in the slightest; he talks about the inmate as though he didn’t exist. Elsewhere, outside this place, that would be unacceptable—here, however, it seems normal.
We go down to the ground floor and out into the exercise yard. The center of the yard is covered, sheltering the fitness equipment beneath. As I look around the yard, more and more inmates arrive. They walk together in a circle around the yard, anticlockwise, talking. There must be around 60 men. M says you can read a lot from the dynamics in the yard—who gets along with whom, who walks alone, whois having problems and who is causing them. Two inmates approach M and ask whether they can share a cell, because one of them doesn't get along with his current cellmate. M says he will have to look into it. Off the exercise yard is the kitchen, where 3 inmates are working. Only plastic utensils are used in the entire kitchen. We move on to the so-called kiosk. Inmates can order items there once a week on a designated day. There are snacks, tea, toiletries, and stationery.
Next, we look at a cell reserved for particularly aggressive inmates. In the small anteroom, protective equipment for staff is stored. M shows me a device that can be used to cut clothing off a person's body. On the floor lies a torn mattress in a bag; the blanket on the chair is also torn. The items in this cell need to be extremely durable and virtually indestructible, as inmates take out their aggression on them, M explains. Even though the cell is specifically designed for such cases, there are always inmates who manage to take everything apart. He presses the shredded blanket into my hands, along with a pair of underpants packaged in plastic. He tears open the packaging and then rips the underpants apart. “The fabric is so thin that it tears immediately, so inmates can't use it to hang themselves.”
From the outside, PD2 looks like something out of a picture book—a castle-like structure with thick walls and bars on the windows. Inside, everything is small, dark, and run-down, and the acrid stench of cigarettes drifts through the complex. Compared to PD1, I find this place to be profoundly inhumane; it fills me with an overwhelming sense of bleakness. I cannot imagine how anyone could ever lead a “normal" life again after being incarcerated here. And yet it feels almost less oppressive than PD1, and that is clearly due to the interior. PD2 has existed for 120 years. It is dark, cramped, and full of corners and recesses in the corridors. But it feels “lived-in”; there are pictures on the walls and in the cells. PD1, by contrast, is new, brutalist, and stark. What a paradox.
Objectively, the architecture and design of PD2 have serious shortcomings—no light, spaces and corridors that are too narrow, everything in a dilapidated state, in use for far too long. Clearly, I am not the only one who feels this way, as the building is scheduled for demolition and reconstruction in 2028. And yet it feels, in a strange way, more pleasant than the new, almost sleek building of PD1—which is spacious, clean, and flooded with light. This is due to PD1 being radically direct, leaving no room for ambiguity. It shows no weaknesses, it is unmistakably powerful. This observation makes clear to me just how central interior design is for creating a more humane atmosphere.
To an outsider, the inmate population at PD2 appears homogeneous. According to M, Arabic is the most widely spoken language, which is why two Arabic-speaking custodial staff had to be hired. In addition, though, there are a significant number of Polish inmates, and a considerable proportion of the staff is also recruited from Eastern Europe. Also notable is the physical appearance of the male staff, who tend to be tall and powerfully built—in contrast to PD1.
The policy at PD2 is as follows: those who behave well are granted more freedoms and opportunities. Those who fail to comply with the rules—for example by losing control, resisting orders, attacking others, or harming themselves—have their privileges removed. I a mnot sure what to make of this approach. A thought experiment: an inmate feels lonely, his entire future is uncertain, he misses his family and is in despair. This leads him to start rampaging in his cell and destroying objects. As a punishment, his family visits are cancelled, and he is placed in solitary confinement for a day. This cannot be a sensible way of dealing with the situation, and it does not address the underlying problem either. M can order up to two weeks of solitary confinement on the 23/1 principle for an inmate who violates rules, for example by attacking staff. He says that afterwards those affected are usually cooperative because they have "understood something." In my assessment, after such a long time they are simply worn down and no longer have the energy to be uncooperative. I doubt this punishment leads to genuine insight.
After the visit, I ask ST whether there are also hopeless cases where even the most valuable approach simply fails to have any effect. Yes, he says, such cases exist—but they are very few.
December 10, 2025
I alight from the train at D. and walk to the correctional facility. The path leads through the small village and past fields. A group of men wearing orange vests comes towards me, possibly equipped for collecting rubbish—it looks like they are coming from where I am headed. A bridge crosses the motorway, separating the facility from the village. The scale of the prison complex becomes more apparent with every step across the bridge. At the main entrance, I join a group of around 40 law students whom I am accompanying today.
The complexis impressively vast, surrounded by two rows of fences and barbed wire. The entrance consists of three gates. We are collected by a prison officer and led through the gates into a covered area where security checks for visitors, delivery personnel, and others take place. Each gate must be closed again before the next one opens, so the arrival process itself takes some time. We have to hand over our keys and ID in a paper envelope and pass through a scanner. Received by the prison director, we are led through two further gates into an exercise yard, in the middle of which stands a decorated Christmas tree. The expansive site resembles a village, encompassing several free standing buildings, green spaces, a sports field, and plots of land, all surrounded by fences and barbed wire, with fields and mountains visible in the background.
The facility houses inmates in regular detention, measure-based detention, and preventive detention.
We are led through the regular detention section in small groups. All doors in the building have multiple locks. Next to each lock there is a white or orange circular dot. I ask a member of staff what these mean. He evades the question and gives no answer. They are probably technical markings relating to the locking system.
We are ledto a prison workshop and I ask about the level of pay. The director informs me that inmates receive approximately 40 CHF per day.
I ask what happens if an inmate attacks a member of prison staff: “solitary setting”. The principle is: if you obey the rules, you get something in return. If you disobey the rules, you are subject to further restrictions, basic things are taken away from you, and you are placed in the “solitary setting”—a euphemism for solitary confinement.
In the surveillance center there are at least 10 screens. Next to it is a room where parcels and letters are X-rayed. Two staff members push packages through the machine, just like at an airport. One inmate has ordered a book titled “10 Ways to Kill Someone with Your Bare Hands.” “Inmates are allowed toorder any book they wish to read. We are not permitted to intervene. However, in cases of suspicious orders, we monitor the person more closely and also speak to them about it,” explains a member of the staff.
In one of the free standing buildings, a pilot program for preventive detention is underway. This is where the prison director used to live with his family. Six inmates subject to preventive detention live here as a shared household. “These inmates are suitable for this because they get along well with others and have demonstrated good behavior,” the prison officer explains. On the first floor there is an open living area with sofas, a television, a dining area, and a kitchen. On the second floor are the six rooms—not cells—which are not locked overnight either. The residents were permitted to furnish the house according to their own wishes within a set budget. Puzzle pictures hang on the walls. The windows have bars on the outside.
Unlike the other inmates, those subject to preventive detention are free to move around the site (except into the measure-based detention building) and to participate in all available activities such as work, classes, sport, and so on.
Although those under preventive detention are granted considerably more freedom and autonomy, they are nonetheless confined like the other inmates and live on the same grounds, in a prison. They may no longer be punished, as they have already served their sentence. Yet they are not permitted to re-enter society either, since they continue to be classified as too dangerous to be released.
Here in prison, the inmates move from their cells to the prison workshop, to the sports field, to classes. Just like in life outside the walls.
February 18, 2026
Massimo andI walk from the small train station up the short path to the prison. It is 11:30; we have an appointment with RS at 12:00. Massimo films our route through the small village, as we had discussed at the outset. There are a few particularly beautiful spots, and I ask him to capture those as well. In between, he keeps stopping to take photographs.
We walk right up to the prison gate and then follow a narrow path along the side of the building to take shots of the architecture. The path is squeezed between the prison wall and single-family houses. From their homes, residents look directly onto the prison building, its perimeter lined with barbed wire. Behind the prison, a church tower with a cross rises into view. We film a small open garden with chickens that shares a fence with the prison. After a few minutes, I notice that someone is watching us from a window in the administrative wing. Gradually, more figures appear at the windows. One of them is on the phone.
As it is just before 12:00, we head back to the gate and ring the reception bell. The gate opens and we cross the forecourt to the entrance I remember from my last visit. Here too, we are scrutinized from the windows above us. VB greets uswith the words: “You just triggered a police response. Filming the building is strictly prohibited. Anyone who films or takes photographs is considered suspicious and will be immediately asked by the police to delete the recordings.” He adds: “I would have appreciated it if you had discussed this with usbeforehand.” I apologize immediately and explain that it was an honest mistake and that I was not aware that taking photographs and filming the building from the outside was not permitted.
We walk with VB across the yard to a second entrance leading into the prison wing. There, he asks us to hand our IDs to the officer at the gate; we will get them back after the visit. RS comes to receive us while VB takes his leave until later. We have to place our phones and all potentially dangerous items in a locker. RS jokingly asks whether we have any weapons on us—a pistol, for instance. Massimo replies that he has a knife in his backpack. We laugh—but he does in fact open his rucksack, takes out a Swiss army knife, and places it with the phones.
We wait in front of the gate until it is opened for us. We then walk through the empty corridors to the library where the workshop will take place. There RS hands us a confidentiality agreement that Massimo and I have to sign. I take the opportunity to ask him a few more questions about how the workshop will be run:
Should I address the inmates using formal or informal modes of address? How much should I tell them about my project? Can they move freely around the building? Will they be accompanied?
Afterwards I accompany RS and Massimo into the prison yard, where they smoke a cigarette. I notice that it is unusually quiet compared to my last visit. I know that open detention was in effect then, and that now it is the staff's lunch break, during which the inmates are locked in their cells—but I still would not have expected it to be this quiet. RS explains that at this time around 90% of the inmates are asleep. I ask why they feel tired at 12:30. “They sleep because it makes the time pass more quickly. Many go to the gym in the morning to exhaust themselves so they can sleep better afterwards,” RS replies.
It is 12:40 and RS leaves for his lunch break, saying he will be back at 13:20 to collect the inmates. In the meantime, we prepare the workshop. I unpack the materials and set up seven stations, arranging chairs in groups around the room.
Massimo andI are talking when a shout makes us fall silent. A loud voice calls out into the yard adjoining the library. Shortly afterwards, we hear a loud rumbling above our heads.
It is 13:45. We hear several male voices in the corridor, and moments later the men enter the room. Some greet us with a “Grüezi.” At the same time, five supervisor in uniform join us. Another man in civilian clothes enters the room; when I ask, RS explains that he is the social worker. The men sit down; one is still missing. Someone says he is still in the shower. After a few minutes RS brings him into the room. Once everyone is present, I introduce myself with my first name and briefly explain my master's project and the structure of the workshop. As I do so, I notice some of the men exchanging amused glances. I then demonstrate the imprint process on a wall, to illustrate what I have in mind.
The men look at the stations; some take some modeling clay and get started. From the corridor I hear laughter and conversation. Some are talking in a language that sounds Eastern European to me. Others are speaking Swiss German with an accent.
Massimo andI follow two men who leave the room, accompanied by RS and another guard. One of the men walks purposefully down the corridor to the telephone. As he works the clay in his hands, he flattens it and then presses it onto the keys. He works calmly and carefully. Together we return to the library, where he transfers his first imprint onto paper. Gradually more men come back and begin making prints from their clay imprints as well. I move between them and observe the process. I notice different approaches: some work very precisely and deliberately, others more quickly and with more movement. Some press the modeling clay firmly into the ink pad, others press it only lightly.
The men talk among themselves, ask each other what the imprints are from, and look at the results together. One man has difficulty peeling the clay back off the paper. They also ask me questions—whether I am only interested in disruptive elements, and where the finished prints should be placed. One man eventually comes up to me and asks what exactly my thesis is about.
We walk together with a man and a supervisor. The man goes up a few stairs to the second floor and makes an imprint of a door lock. The door separates the corridor behind it from the stairwell. “The lock is forbidden,” the supervisor says. “Es prohibido,” he repeats several times in Spanish. The man laughs and places his imprint on a windowsill. The supervisor then smashes the imprint with a firm punch of his fist and repeats: “Es prohibido!” The man asks why. "Punto!” the supervisor replies, repeating it several times on the way back to the library.
We then accompany an inmate into the yard, where he takes an imprint of the window bars. After that we follow another man and RS into a second yard, where he takes an imprint of a scratched wooden table surface, then also of a light switch and a wall. In the background, the beeping of a washing machine can be heard.
RS is asked over the radio whether he knows where I am. “She's standing next to me, we'll be back shortly anyway,” he replies.
Back in the library, one of the men informs me that one of the ink pads has run dry. I had not anticipated this, but the social worker brings ink to refill the pads. The Spanish-speaking inmate asks another participant to write the object descriptions on his sheets for him, then adds his own name himself.
Some of the participants go to the well-equipped sports room to make further imprints there. The workshop runs from 13:45 until around 16:00. The supervisors either accompany the men or remain at the back of the room.
Around 16:00 it becomes clear that most of the men have finished. Some are already sitting on the chairs; one asks me whether I need anything else from him orwhether he can go. RS announces that the workshop is coming to an end and asks everyone to gather for a brief feedback round. One man, however, is still working on his prints, picking up color from the ink pad with his finger and painting around the shapes. “I need more time,” he says. “I'm not finished yet.”
Once all the men are seated, I ask them to give me feedback on the workshop.
“It was good to do something different for once.”
“It was fun.”
“Maybe bring more ink pads next time.”
“You're welcome to come back.”
After all the participants have left the room, only RS, VB, Massimo, and I remain. RS and VB examine the prints and imprints, and erase any names or cell numbers written on them. RS then asks me to hand him the camera's SD card and explains that heand VB will review the material in his office.
While they are away, I tidy the room and gather up the prints and other materials.
After a while, RS returns and informs us that the recordings of the building must be deleted and proceeds to do so on his laptop in front of us. He then says he does not feel comfortable with the video material and that we should therefore work exclusively with the photographs. He does not want us to leave the building with the material on the SD card. DC comes back into the room and explains that he has just spoken with the media office and that, since Massimo and I have signed a confidentiality agreement, we are legally obliged to handle the material in accordance with the conditions set out there in—and that we may therefore also use the video material.
They hand us the SD card and escort us back to the entrance.
Challenges in Prison Research
