Closing the cell door : where are the Histories of Care-leavers at the old Melbourne Gaol?
Journal article
Musgrove, N. and Saxton, L.. (2024). Closing the cell door : where are the Histories of Care-leavers at the old Melbourne Gaol? International Journal of Heritage Studies. 30(11), pp. 1324-1335. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2024.2378421
Authors | Musgrove, N. and Saxton, L. |
---|---|
Abstract | The Old Melbourne Gaol maintains a crucial place in social histories of the city. The Gaol ceased operation in 1924 and, as a heritage site, locates its history firmly in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. While the exhibition invites a moral consideration of modes of punishment implemented in the gaol, its critique suggests resolution: these are not practices that we engage in now. By presenting these kinds of closed or finished narratives, the site turns visitors firmly towards the past rather than creating a site which invites reflection on the harms that carceral institutions continue to inflict in the present day. This, we argue, has a particular significance for Care-leavers, who are a significant demographic to have passed through the Gaol’s walls. While recognising that a site like the Old Melbourne Gaol has innumerable memory communities invested in it, and that no presentation of the site might fully satisfy them all, this article argues for present-looking public histories that place the gaol’s history in conversation with weighty social justice issues of today, including acknowledging the gaol’s role as part of the foundations of the ‘care’-to-prison pipeline observed by many activists as a pressing social issue in the twenty-first century. |
Keywords | Care-Leaver Activism; Dark Tourism; Sites of Conscience |
Year | 2024 |
Journal | International Journal of Heritage Studies |
Journal citation | 30 (11), pp. 1324-1335 |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2024.2378421 |
Web address (URL) | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13527258.2024.2378421#abstract |
Open access | Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access |
Research or scholarly | Research |
Page range | 1324-1335 |
Funder | Australian Research Council (ARC) |
Publisher's version | License File Access Level Open |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 12 Jul 2024 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 03 Jul 2024 |
Deposited | 17 Mar 2025 |
ARC Funded Research | This output has been funded, wholly or partially, under the Australian Research Council Act 2001 |
Grant ID | DP210101275 |
Additional information | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. |
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided theoriginal work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allowthe posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/90xwx/closing-the-cell-door-where-are-the-histories-of-care-leavers-at-the-old-melbourne-gaol
Download files
Publisher's version
Closing the cell door where are the Histories of Care-leavers at the old Melbourne Gaol .pdf | |
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | |
File access level: Open |
9
total views3
total downloads9
views this month3
downloads this month