Reconceptualising prison spaces: the gateway at HMP Leicester

Since 2016 the faculty of design at DMU - under the leadership of Rosemarie Fitton - has been working with prisons to use innovative student design in prison visits spaces. This paper draws on research aimed at evaluating the impact of these projects to demonstrate how carceral geography informs and enriches the theoretical process, using work on "The gateway" at HMP Leicester as a case study. I argue adapting the geographical concept of "spatial capital" has value for examining the way the prison has increased the space's plasticity of purpose as a means of enriching the social and cultural life of the prison. Empirical research will aim to investigate the cumulative and iterative process of cultural change within the prisons which have taken part in the project.