A four-day detention is part of a ‘test run’ for a newly-built Swiss facility in western Zurich
Hundreds of residents of the Swiss canton of Zurich want to be locked up in prison, media reported on Monday. The unusual interest in booking a stay at a correctional facility was sparked by a local institution that recruited ‘volunteers’ for a brief ‘test run’ in late March.
Official registration for the experiment started on February 5, and accumulated 832 applications in around two weeks. Marc Eiermann, the head of the new facility, described the registration process as a rush for free places. “One can already say that we are fully booked,” Elena Tankovski, a spokeswoman for the Zurich region’s corrections and rehabilitation services department, told local media outlet SRF.
Located in the western part of the city of Zurich, the prison is expected to house up to 124 people under provisional arrest, and 117 people in pre-trial detention, bringing the total number of places to 241.
The prison authorities warn that the four-day detention, scheduled to take place between March 24 and 27, will not be an easy ride for the volunteer ‘inmates’, since the facility would like to keep the conditions inside as realistic as possible.
The ‘test run’ participants will have to hand over their money and mobile phones, remain locked up in their cells for most of the day, receive prison food and walks in the yard according to a schedule, and undergo a standard security check at the beginning. They will, however, be able to choose whether they want to stay for just a few hours or the entire duration.
One of the few optional things for participants is whether they want to undergo a strip search before entering the prison. “It is definitely not that pleasant. It is all the more surprising that 80 percent of those who registered agreed to being strip searched,” Eiermann says.
The would-be ‘inmates’ will be able to choose between regular, vegetarian, and halal meals, the prison authorities said. According to them, just as many women as men registered for the experiment. The same goes for vegetarians and meat-eaters. The volunteers will also have a ‘safe word’ in case the conditions turn out to be too harsh for them.
The trial will help the facility test the capacity, services, and operations, as well as cooperation and communication with other law enforcement authorities. The prison administration also hopes to dispel what they call myths about prison operations.
“There are so many penny dreadfuls about life in prison and about the demanding work the prison staff does every day that we wanted to use this opportunity to show how we really work – and how much professionalism and experience is needed to work with inmates,” Eiermann told AP via email.
Tankovski also said that a modern-day prison guard is “more a carer than a guard.” The prison is expected to house the first real inmates in early April.
