The geometry of confinement in prison architectural paradigms and legal-policy rationality in 1950s Hungary

Abstract

The study examines the spatial and legal-policy rationality of the Hungarian penitentiary system of the 1950s, proceeding from the premise that during this period the institution of deprivation of liberty operated not through the modernization of classical prison architecture but through the political re-coding of existing spaces by the punitive power of the state, meaning that the penal infrastructure – through the adaptive reuse of military barracks, industrial facilities, castles, and barrack settlements – became the material manifestation of a repressive penal policy in which temporariness, puritan austerity, and overcrowding functioned not merely as technical deficiencies but as deliberate expressions of power. Furthermore, within a unified penological framework, the study analyzes the integration of prison labor into the planned economy, the institution of internment, and the spatial consequences of camp logic, while, drawing on Erving Goffman’s theory of total institutions, it reveals the mechanisms underlying the erosion of personal identity, emphasizing that the built environment functioned not only as a means of physical confinement but also as an instrument of psychological subordination. Ultimately, the study concludes that the penitentiary architecture of the 1950s represented a rupture in the developmental trajectory of the rule-of-law prison system and embodied the spatial manifestation of exceptional power, whereby the space of punishment itself became a technology of political domination.