The space of the prison is no longer on the margins in relation to societal `centres', but instead acts as an adjunct to the urban environment. With the disappearance of the Gothic prison from the archi-texture of contemporary cities, the meaning conveyed by its façade has lost much of its potency. It is now contemporary prison drama, as opposed to the physical façade, that represents the interface between the public and the prison. This article explores a dramatic representation of the prison ( The Shawshank Redemption) through the lens of Freud's (1919/1955) notion of the uncanny and Bachelard's (1958/1994) poetics of domestic space. Incarceration, as depicted in film and television, reinforces the `place myths' of the prison (Shields, 1991). Contemporary prison drama portrays the prison as a marginal space in much the way that the Gothic façades of the 19th-century prison projected a particular message. The prison, as depicted on screen, is a simulacrum. It is a facsimile of an architectural idea that only ever existed as a façade — a façade that occluded as much as it projected.

Criminology has long sought to illuminate the lived experience of those at the margins. More recently, there has been a turn towards the spatial in the discipline. This article sets out an analytical framework that synthesizes spatial theory with hauntology. We demonstrate how a given space’s violent histories can become embedded in the texts that constitute it and the language that describes it. The art installation Die Familie Schneider is used as an example of how the incorporation of social trauma can lead to the formation of a spatial ‘crypt’. Cracking open this ‘crypt’ allows us to draw out Derrida’s notion of the spectre within the context of a ‘haunted’ city space.

Ghost Criminology has used the metaphors of haunting to sketch the pressing demands of a present in which the intersecting crises of racial injustice, structural imbalance, and climate catastrophe rise. In listening to the ghosts of the future, we must shape the “not yet” and imagine a social order that does not “let die.” We must imagine a state that is not death-dealing, that does not rely upon the technologies of war to police its subjects. Rather than using the “language and rituals” of violence, we must imagine communities that operate through non-violence, through empathy.

This article explores the uncanny interplay between folk and official readings of Victorian prison architecture. From building designs to cinematic depictions, the visual underpins any understanding of the prison. Using Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, it will be shown how the visual elements of prison buildings, both physical and cinematic, obscure a 'programmatic organisation of space'. As such, the prison is akin to a 'phantasmagoria'. Both have visual elements that embrace and encourage an imaginative response, but that also mask a rational core. The term 'Gothic(k)' is developed here to describe those elements of the prison that constitute its 'place-myth'. The prison no longer requires a physical apparatus to project its message or consolidate this place-myth. By drawing upon the Gothic(k) readings of the prison and the analogy of the phantasmagoria, we see how the prison has been fully rendered as a 'system of light'. KeywordsBakhtin, phantasmagoria, prison architecture, prison film, uncannyThere are three images that underpin the coming argument. They are intended to orient the reader, demonstrating how the interstices between them allow for a ghostly, shimmering unity of meaning across all three. Firstly, we might imagine a crowded theatre in late 18th-century Paris. The lights are extinguished and an inky blackness descends over the suddenly hushed audience. Above the stage a pale, cloaked figure slowly materializes. As it comes into focus we see its arms reach out, clawing toward the unsettled crowd. Beneath its hood stare the empty sockets of a leering skull. A second image: a lone figure, a prisoner, kneels in a cell. Head bowed, he faces the bars. From our vantage point behind this stooped figure, we see the expanse of Bentham's panopticon. In the middle ground stands the central observation tower. What appears to be a crucifix surrounded by candles caps the tower. How could such a configuration of bricks and mortar bring this individual to their knees? Finally, we see an aerial shot of Shawshank Penitentiary. As Thomas Newman's score swells we are lifted up and over the administration block, this architectural curiosity that is 'one part cathedral, two parts Castle Frankenstein' (Demyan cited by Kermode, 2003: Crime Media Culture 7(1) 83 -97

This article dredges the 'reservoirs of dogma' and 'symbolic lagoons of social fears' to locate the 'home invasion' film genre within its diachronic and synchronic contexts. As such, we will first situate these films as part of the historical tradition of Gothic literature. This allows us to unpack the ways in which the depictions of the 'home' and 'homeliness' in Gothic literature and the 'home invasion' genre problematise constructions of identity and category formation. Secondly, exploring the genre in its contemporaneous socio-cultural setting allows us to see how particular social traumas are manifest in popular culture. These dimensions are explored by focusing on three key examples and their subsequent remakes: The Last House on the Left, Straw Dogs and Funny Games.