‘ Less museum and more like Disney’ The infantilisation of dark histories: Objective violence at Bodmin Jail

Dark tourism

The investment in, and popularity of Bodmin Jail, is in keeping with the wider growth of dark tourism. Whilst people have long been drawn to sites of suffering (Sharpley, 2009), dark tourism has become increasingly widespread and varied in form. In recent years, it has been conceptually developed to encapsulate and critique spaces outside the remit of orthodox understandings. In their book 50 Dark Destinations (2023), Lynes et al. draw attention to forms of tourism that are not normatively related to suffering, but rather are implicit in the creation of various forms of harm (e.g. alpine ski resorts and their environmental implications that verge on ecocide (Smith and Smith, 2023); and Disney World with its problematic employment conditions and surveillance (Lloyd, 2023). This said, prison museums fall into a more traditional category of dark tourism, yet we contend that whilst drawing tourists in with the promise of explicit violence, they also have the potential to perpetuate implicit objective violence (Žižek, 2008).

The value of prison museums is often framed around offering an educational experience, acting as a frontier where visitors experience dark pasts for themselves (Walby and Piché, 2011). This is presented through the careful curation of atmospheres that evoke a sense of how it really was, inviting our senses to engage with what they experienced. This has the potential to foster empathy, understanding and caution. However, in the case of Bodmin Jail and similar projects around the world (Duffus, 2023), genuine educational endeavours are adroitly intertwined with profit driven agendas, and an entertaining consumer experience is held as gold standard. The way in which we critically engage (or not) with these spaces of ‘infotainment’ has affective and emotional implications for our present-day perceptions of past incarceration and punishment and as such, are implicitly political and formative in our current day understandings.

This enmeshment within consumer markets is important, as it helps us define with more clarity how we operationalise dark tourism with a polysemic approach. Bodmin Jail then, fits comfortably within both definitions of dark tourism. As we shall see over the coming pages, it epitomises a fixation on, and marketisation of, the sensationally tragic (or subjectively violent), and simultaneously offers an entertaining, frictionless consumer experience from carpark to gift shop. Indeed, as Trip Advisor comments show, it is simply, for many ‘a good day out.’

Sensory criminology

It is only in relatively recent years that a sensory lens has been used explicitly to explore criminological issues (for examples, see Holt and Lewis, 2023; Lam and Kohm, 2024; McClanahan and South, 2020). Importantly, there is a large body of work that focuses on the sensorial experience of (working) prisons (Herrity, 2024; Herrity et al., 2021). Concurrently, tourist sites and museums are often explicitly designed around a multi-sensory experience, as these spatial encounters are realised through a shift in affect that differs from everyday life (Howes, 2014). The way the senses are engaged to constitute a memorable and enjoyable tourist experience has received increased attention (Agapito, 2020), as well as how the sensorial theme of destinations is carefully curated to induce an appealing uniqueness of character (Agapito et al., 2014). In contrast to many tourist experiences that focus on curating a sense of escapism through ‘relaxation,’ spaces of dark tourism typically rely on evoking thrilling atmospheres of danger and violence to allow visitors to escape the prosaic experience of our contemporary day to day lives under advanced capitalism.

However, despite these clear connections, there is little that definitively explores the sensory modalities that operate in dark tourism sites. Work that flirts with this approach often focuses on the visual (Lv et al., 2022), atmospheres (Goulding and Pressey, 2023) and affect (Golańska, 2015; Martini and Buda, 2018), rather than sensory totality, as is encouraged by criminologists McClanahan and South (2020). This involves paying attention to the external and internal senses, the latter of which are often ignored, even in work that advances sensory criminology (Holt and Lewis, 2023). Inspired by this, we consider how the senses are engaged in the ‘consumer’ experience, as well as acknowledging the interoceptive conversance with a dark tourism site. We use this approach of sensory totality to discern how dark histories of punishment are told and sold through the manipulation of our senses. Significantly, it is through this focus that we analyse why some visitors perceive the attraction as ‘inauthentic’ and ahistorical. We contend that this technologically mediated sensorial evocation is a form of infantilisation (Hayward, 2024), in that through these mediums we are encouraged to be entertained, rather than educated. Thus, this approach opens new epistemological avenues and critical insights as to how we can be (un)affected when attempting to connect with our past. We argue that we should pay attention to this to understand how history merges with tourism and is sensorially told and sold in spaces such as Bodmin Jail, to curate an infantilised experience that can act as entertainment and (mis)education.

Infantilisation and objective violence

By putting these three distinct foci of criminology in dialogue with one another, we can further explore how sensorial tourist encounters with sites of past tragedies have the potential to engage, educate and evoke a sensitivity to local histories. Yet we contend that these curated spaces and experiences often teeter on the edge of reconstructing dark (hi)stories into either paltry renditions or exaggerated performances with the goal of maximising the consumer experience and subsequent commercial gain.

We use Hayward’s (2024) concept of culturally induced infantilisation to frame our observations around the corrosion of museums as spaces oriented towards reflection, thought and education, towards a focus for infantile entertainment. Hayward conceptualises life stage dissolution- the breakdown of traditional life categories insomuch that our normative understanding of the life course is impacted by the twin processes of adultification and infantilisation. This process generates a culture of infantilisation where perpetual adolescence is a marketable option. While the nadir of this may be hard to pinpoint, the effect of this all-encompassing process is a flattening of cultural experience, and the creation of monotonous, lobotomising experiences across music, film, TV and of course, museums. The museum experience must not be too challenging, rather it should be a lightly educational, inoffensive (to the consumer, at least), mildly entertaining experience that operates as a soothing lubricant to slide the consumer into the gift shop, primed and ready to spend. In the context of dark tourism, we argue that this infantilised mode of (hi)story telling constitutes a form of object violence.

Žižek (2008) differentiates between subjective and objective forms of violence. Subjective violence is the visible, direct acts of violence that form the basis of the consumer experience at Bodmin – the brutal accounts of murder, snapped necks, and punished bodies. Objective violence, however, is framed as the systemic and symbolic forms of violence, which normatively operate though social, political and economic structures. In the context of Bodmin Jail, we can, for example, see the distorted history telling for the commodified experience as exemplifying objective violence through its focus on the individual, whilst obscuring the systemic causes of violence. For example, the narrative at the museum focuses on the corporeal punishment meted out to prisoners, but the broader political and economic systems that produce incarceration, and the inherent biases within the justice system are conspicuous in their absence.

Furthermore, the emotional experience associated with the way that empathy for some of the prisoners is solicited serves as a proxy for true engagement with the past in a way that historical criminology would encourage us to- by connecting the past to the present and future (Churchill et al., 2021). Yes, the set up allows the visitor to feel as if they have successfully confronted history, but they are simultaneously able to avoid shifting the focus to how things are today. In fact, the ‘path’ we are taken on as visitors carefully guides us into a state of fetishistic disavowal, a process by which we paradoxically know and ignore (or disavow) troubling realities and unpleasant truths (Žižek, 2009), sublimating the knowledge of the horrors of incarceration back into the recesses of the unconscious. Any semblance of serious reflection that may have been evoked in the cells, dissipates as, at the end of the attraction, you are forced through the ‘paranormal’ exhibition, ‘hanging room’ and the gift shop. Indeed, there is a buzz from the slip of the floor and a buzz when buying something from the gift shop. The final feeling then, when entering back into the courtyard, is a carefully designed concoction of adrenaline and dopamine. This sensorial and affective shift means we are encouraged to forget as soon as we have remembered.

We contend that this disney-eqsue, palatable and ‘infotaining’ way Bodmin jails’ history is presented, alongside its curation of amnesia of the horrors that may have been acknowledged, act as a form of objective violence. It encourages visitors to revel in being entertained rather than educated and puts temporal and spatial restrictions on any positive affect that comes from engaging with our troubling past. Is it too much for us to occupy a residual state of uneasy retrospection that might nudge us to connect this past with our present societal and criminal justice shortcomings? Or to act as a warning for what could be to come? Perhaps so. Perhaps to do so would allow the historical horrors of Bodmin Jail to bleed into the present. It would stain the quaint Cornish villages as places that were once suffocated by a poverty that drove people to murder, a poverty that still exists in its contemporary form, as the area holds the mantle of the second poorest area in Northern Europe (Elliott, 2024). It would tarnish its postcard pristine beaches as places that once hosted dangerous smugglers, and as areas that now fall victim to environmental harms caused by our own consumption habits, alongside institutional greed and neglect (evidence of harmful micro plastics is rife (BBC, 2023), and sewage pollution in the area has received significant national media attention (Seaman, 2024)). These acknowledgements would chip away at the curated tourist state of fetishistic disavowal (Žižek, 2009) of the complex realities of the places we visit, thus disturbing the pursuit of hedonic wellbeing that is at the core of a ‘good holiday’ to Cornwall. If this is the case, then it is no wonder we are seeing this form of infantilised consumerism take hold across dark tourism sites on a global scale. As Ayres and Hodgkinson (2023: 76) consider, museums face ‘commercial pressures that often result from commodification and the demands made by the tourist themselves for their creature comforts.’ As Ferguson et al. (2015) note, penal spectators (significantly, those posting online about their experiences) are increasingly being given weight as a key stakeholder in how heritage sites are curated and ‘sold.’ To appease the infantilised consumer, then, these sites should be thrilling enough to grasp our attention for the duration of a visit, but not so disturbingly real or provocative that they hold a place in our psyche, sharpen our critical eye, and darken the rest of our (holi)day.

Dark Tourists: Methods

This research involved a field analysis of Bodmin Jail, and a content analysis of the attraction’s Trip Advisor reviews. Between the three researchers involved in this project, we have visited Bodmin Jail Museum 14 times. Whilst earlier trips inspired and inevitably informed our perceptions of and interest in the space, it was two trips on consecutive days in May 2024 that constitute our analysis presented here. Our field analysis took a sensorial focus, developing knowledge through embodied practices and drawing epistemic attention to more than the textual or visual (Pink, 2015). We can learn from ethnographic studies that focus on the sensory experiences of spaces laterally connected to the prison museum, including working prisons (Herrity, 2024), courts (Russell et al., 2022) and museums and tourist sites (Crouch and Desforges, 2003; Lynch, 2022; Sumartojo, 2019). It is fruitful to engage with the sensory to develop our epistemological understanding of dark tourist sites, as the (desired) sensory and affective experience is very different to ‘normal’ tourist sites, with the aim often being to induce a sense of disgust, fear, sadness or empathy (Lv et al., 2022). During the first visit, we simply tried to experience the museum as tourists. On the second visit, we took photos, videos and made notes, focusing on how our senses were engaged and manipulated.

After our trips to the museum, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of Trip Advisor reviews of the ‘Bodmin Jail Attraction.’ Trip Advisor is ‘the world’s largest travel platform,’ also described as an ‘online travel community’ (Lee et al., 2011), where the public can leave reviews of hotels, restaurants and attractions. There is an array of research that has used Trip Advisor reviews as data to understand visitor reflections on museum experiences (Alexander et al., 2019; Riva and Agostino, 2022) and dark tourism sites (Boateng et al., 2018; Çakar, 2018; Ferguson et al., 2015; Lupu et al., 2017; Yousef and Kim, 2023). Ferguson et al. (2015) highlight how these online platforms and technologies enable visitors to co-construct the past, shaping preconceptions, expectations and experiences of the sites. Significantly, reviews can also offer insight into how visitors reflect on their experiences and how they have been ‘affected’ (or not).

The Bodmin Jail Attraction is tagged as a historical site, and at the close of data collection (November 2024), had a 4.5 (out of 5) rating based on 1505 reviews. Of these, 1017 were excellent, 186 very good, 119 average, 79 poor, and 104 terrible. This is important to note, as based on this balance, our analysis disproportionately draws on critical reviews. However, the fact that the jail is clearly a much-enjoyed attraction for many who visit is of equal interest to us and we have endeavoured to incorporate a wide range of perspectives. Each review was read by at least one member of the research team, with a coding process that focused on comments that addressed or hinted at the sensorial, consumerist and infantilisation processes at work in the jail. Ethical approval was not sought for this project: whilst the attraction offers guided tours, we chose the self-guided option, and thus, had minimal interaction with any of the staff.

Findings

In order to frame the findings, we first offer a brief overview of the ‘self-guided tour’ we undertook to ‘set the scene’ for our analysis.

Our tour begins just off the main courtyard, where we find ourselves part of a group of about 10 visitors loitering in a dimly lit room, echoing with the sounds of continuous countdown. After being held here for a few minutes, a door swings open, and we head into the gloom to begin the ‘Dark Walk.’ We descend and arrive in a spacious, dark, dank room. There are muddled sounds of Cornish mines and smugglers shouting. We see a boat on the horizon and a bright flash of light reveals a hanging skeleton, whilst an ominous voice warns us ‘these spaces are dangerous, do not wander off’ and to ‘never stray from the path’. The atmosphere is one of desolation, danger and lawlessness. We jump slightly, as we feel a splash of ‘sea spray’ from the ceiling and a ‘south westerly gale’ ruffles our hair. A projection of the menacing Bodmin Moor flickers eerily in front of us. We hear of the mythology of murder, fact and fiction already merging seamlessly in this haunting landscape. We get a flash of the infamous Beast of Bodmin- a looming, panther like face, with piercing yellow eyes. We are introduced to the tragic story of Selina Wadge, as she crosses the moor, baby in arms and child in tow. We are not privy to this as we watch but later find out Selina was an unmarried mother- a deviant in Victorian society, and that a soldier had promised to marry her if she got rid of her youngest, disabled child. We flinch as we bear witness to a distraught and conflicted Selina dropping her baby down a well.

Once this sombre scene is over, we are ushered by the disembodied voice of our guide into the next room. The space is laid out like a court room, and we take our seats on a hard, wooden bench. Through a large-scale projection, we are told three more stories of people sentenced to death by hanging at Bodmin Jail. In a 4D experience we might recognise from superhero movies at the IMAX, each story is told through a combination of animatronics and holographic imagery to create ‘atmospheric projections’ (Moonraker, 2024). As we watch, we are repeatedly told by our narrator that all these people were punished for ‘straying from the path of righteousness.’

We emerge into an area lined with the old prison cells. This is the most museum-like, education-oriented aspect of the attraction, although this space still draws heavily on the sensorial. It is dark, with low ceilings that create a feeling of entrapment. We take our time exploring the relatively bare cells, running our hands along the cold granite and reading from screens detailing life in the prison. In one cell we hear the voice of Selina Wadge; in another, we interact with tools of punishment on display. Despite an almost clinical cleanliness, a semblance of authenticity remains within the walls of these cells.

After exiting this relatively sombre and unadorned area, we pass through several rooms that refocus our attention to mythology and the paranormal. The Beast of Bodmin angrily reappears, and we are confronted again with contrasting darkness and flashing lights, accompanied by loud, eerie noises. The paranormal is a large part of the jail’s seduction, claiming to be one of Cornwall’s most haunted sites. It hosts ‘adrenaline fuelled’ ghost hunting, paranormal walks and encourages visitors to engage with this aspect of ‘history.’ As we walk through phantasmal murmurings and projections, we see a display of paranormal sensory equipment, including an REM Pod (a popular piece of ghost hunting equipment that alerts the user to changes in ambient temperature), a k2 Metre (an electromagnetic field reader) and a laser thermometer. There are plaques on the wall detailing the number of ghostly interactions that staff and visitors have been privy to.

After this, we head upstairs and briefly pass through a room that displays some examples of life in the prison including artefacts, death masks and food. We then arrive at the ‘Execution Experience,’ which, on Trip Advisor, is often referred to as the ‘big surprise.’ In what is reminiscent of a fairground ride, we are ushered into rows, with a rope at the end to secure us in. After listening to the preamble of Selina’s hanging, which is emotive as she speaks to redemption, we experience ‘the drop,’ an acutely proprioceptive sensation. Indeed, it comes as an adrenalised surprise, not dissimilar to the stomach lurch when you dip on a rollercoaster. Awkward laughter rumbles through the crowd, and the shift from sobriety to joviality is spurred on by a bizarre, light-hearted commentary from our narrator. Finally, as the executed are sent on their path to religious redemption, we head into the gift shop, which offers ‘I survived Bodmin Jail’ bags and t-shirts, ‘Hanging on by a thread’ fridge magnets, ‘I’ve just served 9 months inside’ baby rompers and much more. We exit through the gift shop to the ‘Jolly Hangman’ café, feeling slightly bewildered and mildly entertained.

Sites of dark tourism offer potential for education and empathetic engagement with some of the darker elements of local histories. However, we contend this is not at the forefront of Bodmin Jail’s agenda, nor is it of key importance for most visitors. To explore this, we separate our findings into two interconnecting sections. First, we will explore how visitors reflect on the hyper-real, sensorial experience of the jail. We critique this as a disneyfied form of infotainment that permits and perpetuates a state of infantilisation. Secondly, we consider how this can lead to objective violence. The assiduously designed ‘path’ of the attraction means that after exiting the cells, the visitor is confronted with the paranormal exhibition that convolutes with any ‘real’ learning that may have occurred. This is followed by the ‘hanging room’ that, whilst sombre, also encourages joviality and a priming for the final destination, the gift shop. We do not leave museum educated and empathetic but rather having had an encounter that seamlessly fits into our infantile, consumer driven lives.

Sensorial (hi)storytelling: Infotainment, inauthenticity and infantilisation

Bodmin Jail attraction offers an interesting, exciting tourist encounter. This is evident from the overwhelmingly positive Trip Advisor reviews. Indeed, if entertainment is what you are looking for, then the attraction certainly delivers. As one reviewer reflected:

The immersive walk through is just that, totally immersive, in the last of these rooms you can feel the sea air and the wind and I felt like a kid in Willy Wonka’s factory.

The infantilised consumer is apparent here, and the sensorial encounter is formative in its production. However, it is not just a ‘childlike’ experience, but one of thrill and fantasy. Many (positive and negative) reviews consider the attraction, to quote a reviewer: ‘quite theme-parky and very touristy.’ Theme parks are described as ‘entertainment emporiums,’ whereas museums are considered ‘high culture institutions catering to an audience of largely adults . . . that would look down on the domain of theme parks’ (Macdonald and Alsford, 1995). In the broader context of neoliberalism and the need to meet consumer demands, Bodmin Jail is a stage upon which the ideologies of entertainment and education merge. And yet, it certainly seems to sway heavily towards themed entertainment, as one reviewer mused the attraction is ‘less museum and more like Disney.’ In fact, numerous reviews make explicit comparisons to Disney:

A brilliant attraction, that has had lots of money spent on it and you can tell. Impressive Disney-esque storytelling and effects. . .

The first part of the tour is interactive/digital and it’s really impressive. It reminded us of the Haunted Mansion at Disney World — similar vibe. In a great way.

There were also negative comparisons, including comments such as: ‘Felt more like a Fred Flintstone plastic Disney installation than a tour of Bodmin jail. . .’ and ‘Shame it could not be less commercial. Like a Disney attraction!.’ These observations are telling when we consider the philosophy of Disney as one of the world’s biggest entertainment brands. Disney purposefully suspends reality and provides fantastical experiences (Girous and Pollock, 2010). This makes sense in the context of a child focused, magical entertainment brand, where fairies and ‘happily ever afters’ are the norm. However, at Bodmin, where museum and theme-park enmesh, information is offered to the consumer as objective ‘truth.’ This is despite the fact that, through commercial trajectories, these histories inevitably become dramatised for entertainment and convoluted further with entirely fictional embellishments. Whilst most reviewers were uncritical of this, for some, the result was a disconcerting experience. There are almost 300 reviews that rate the attraction as average/poor/terrible. Many of these mirrored our own conflicting feelings of our Bodmin Jail experience. As one reviewer said:

I have really mixed feelings about this place because we enjoyed our visit but left feeling slightly guilty. I’m not sure that it’s morally sound that the horrors that happened here should be subject to such a theme park experience. We felt bad for inadvertently laughing at several points on our way round. Some of this was the sheer cheesiness of it all and the cheap shock tactics used; some of it was the over-egged references to the paranormal.

Much of this discernment can be more deeply understood through a sensorial engagement. The sensorial atmosphere of any tourist site is of paramount importance to the curation of the ‘authentic’ experience many tourists seek (Ferguson et al., 2015), as well being impactful and educational. As Menceralli et al. (2010) consider, museums should be places of intelligent entertainment. Dark tourism is no different, and in many ways the senses are often purposefully tantalised to achieve this, as the authentic ruggedness of these spaces are maintained to connect us to darker and harder times. It is worth noting then, that even experiences considered by tourists as ‘experientially authentic’ (Penrose, 2020) are in fact, staged authenticity. Yet at Bodmin Jail, attempts at hyperreality create ‘fake’ feeling atmospheres, that, as one reviewer said, risk ‘Ruining the place with Hollywood effects’. Another mused that ‘it seems there is hardly any history anymore. . .it’s all fake.’ Indeed, the warped sensory experience at Bodmin led to numerous visitors critiquing the atmosphere as lacking any ‘real’ historical depth:

For me it lacked any authenticity, real history and feeling. Everything seems staged, uninteresting and rather boring.

It all feels quite clean and clinical, so doesn’t really convey the authenticity I’ve felt touring other old prisons.

The tour is not what we were expecting, you’re taken into rooms (newly built) that have animations telling stories, although this is very clever, we felt it took the historical feel away from the prison.

This place has so much history- much of it sad and brutal and the way they did the videos/ overall experience just felt silly and disrespectful.

These reviews mirror our own conflicting feelings regarding the overt use of technology to enforce an acute sensorial experience. In our field notes we consider: ‘it’s impressive and intense, engaging, but feels like being at a theme park, not an old prison.’ This sense of inauthenticity happens as the museum attempts to connect us with the past through a reliance on modern technologies that conjure a sense of hyperreality. In the renovated attraction, there are 30 different bespoke formats and nearly 100 individual pieces of media including projections and holograms (Moonraker, 2024). Jacques Derrida argues that technologies contract space and time (Colebrook, 2014), yet here the use of virtual technology to feign the past seems to fall short in evoking a sensory experience that feels like ‘going back in time.’ Rather than encouraging visitors to feel like they have time travelled, the artificial husks of past inmates are brought to the present in the form of projected images. This explicit use of technologies acts as a constant reminder that we are in fact, in the 21st century, not the 1700s, making it hard to access a ‘sense’ of the ‘real,’ ‘authentic’ prison. This feeds into concerns articulated by Ferguson et al. (2015), who consider how penal museums, even when striving for ‘authenticity,’ can memorialise in a way that increases social distance, rather than bridging it. In this setting, a reliance on technologies to conjure a visual spectacle, to the detriment of ‘sensory totality’ (McClanahan and South, 2020) leads to an ahistorical, modernised atmosphere, disconnected from its spatio-temporal host of an 18th century granite prison:

It’s more like an amusement park mock up, everywhere is spotlessly clean, warm and very un-jail like, and it’s disappointing when you expect to see an old jail and the associated evil and squalor, and to see, feel and hear about the history of the old place.

. . .It’s a very commercialised attraction and the ambiance and feel of the original gaol is totally lost. The old smells of old are long gone.

I have been to the jail several times over the last 40 years and the atmosphere you felt when you walked in the cell area, a definite chill, has gone.

Penal spectators often judge the authenticity of a heritage space based on the emotional connection they feel whilst touring (Ferguson et al., 2015). Therefore, this sensorial diminution highlighted above is not insignificant. It confines us to the present, keeping us at a safe distance as visual spectators of the horrors of the past, as voyeuristic bystanders of pain and suffering. Interestingly, many of the (positive and negative) Trip Advisor comments compare elements of the experience to being at the cinema, insinuating that we are encouraged to simply watch. In this way, the pedagogical construction of Bodmin Jail positions us as passive spectators, rather than participants- or, infantile consumers of spectacle, rather than critical thinkers.

Infantilisation, consumerism and objective violence: A ‘Very well executed’ attraction

We will now consider the implications arising from how Bodmin Jail sells its history. First, we will show how visitors articulate the affect of the histories presented at the attraction. We then focus on two elements that bookmark the end of the attraction: The hanging room and the gift shop. We demonstrate how the jail is designed in a way that induces an amnesia of horrors that have been divulged throughout the rest of the tour, allowing us to slip back into our contemporary consumerist skin (if we ever left it at all) and leave the attraction entertained. Ferguson et al. (2015) consider this based on their analysis of Trip Advisor reviews of Canadian penal history museums, stating how it is rare that visits to these museums translate into a critique of punishment or a humanising and empathetic response to the criminalised. Duffus (2023) argues that penal museums invoke less and less reflection and more penal spectatorship. She considers how this may lead some to sympathise with ‘the way things were,’ but for many it invokes enthusiasm for the historical pain of others.

As one reviewer said: ‘It’s always a bit of a dilemma when you visit somewhere like this - should people’s suffering be used for entertainment?’ We discussed this between us after the visit that forms the basis of this research and reflected on how our own shifting positionality impacted our perceptions of the experience. We had visited previously with both our families and with criminology students on enrichment field trips. Whilst it was our discomfort (as critical criminologists) with the attraction that nudged us towards this research project, it would be erroneous to say that on these previous visits, we had not been sucked in by the bright lights, dramatic storytelling and ghostly rumours.

Unsurprisingly then, most reviewers are unreflexive in their consumption of past horrors that took place at the jail, and ignorant to how ‘jarring counterpoints’ (Lawrence, 2019) might be drawn to contemporary penal institutions today:

It really gets into your soul how hard times were in the past.

. . . a real eye opener of how privileged we are this day and age.

Most met an unpleasant end which was the norm for the time they lived in. Very harsh by today’s standards.

Some disturbing stories of times gone by and possible miscarriages of justice, made entertaining by the interactive tour.

This lack of reflexivity is induced by the attraction itself. Walby and Piché (2011) acknowledge how dark tourism museums often deliver history with a degree of ambiguity so as to leave room for interpretation. They recognise that this can take critical, apathetic and punitive directions. In keeping with our analysis, parallels can be made here to the psychological functioning of Disney World. Lloyd (2023: 316) describes how Disney plays on childhood innocence and ‘provides a powerful psychological draw that allows us to forget life’s pressures and worries.’ So, at Bodmin, rather than developing historical consciousness (Churchill et al., 2021) that triggers introspection, we are encouraged to remember and at the same time disavow any link to suffering or injustice in our present-day criminal justice system. As such, by ‘remembering’ through infantile means we are simultaneously forgetting. A further severing of any connection that might be encouraged between the past and present occurs as we explore the hanging room and the gift shop. We argue that these elements of the experience act to shift the visitor starkly back to the role of entertained consumer. Advertised on the attraction’s website as a ‘time for real reflection,’ at the end of the tour we get to experience the proprioceptive drop of a hanging. Reviewers often describe this as a ‘surprise’ or the ‘finale,’ and it is regularly cited as a highlight of the attraction:

You’re warned that there is a surprise, but it wasn’t what I thought at all, and it was funny and a good laugh. Again, no spoilers!.

The part with the hanging really got my heart pumping. Would recommend.

Feeling like I’d been hung at the last stage was very good and it really made me jump which is unusual for me lol.

Despite the sombre subject, the hanging experience is laced with a joviality in keeping with the disneyfication of the attraction, with more than one reviewer describing it as ‘reminiscent of a theme park ride.’ Another sums up the experience as ‘Very Well Executed.’ Hangings in their time, were indeed theatrical, and our temporal and spatial (UK) distance from capital punishment arguably represents the change in public and political sensitivities. Yet in this moment, curated by the Jail, it does not feel as though we are sensitive at all. We are penal spectators, revelling in horrors and laughing at (certainly not with) Selina Wadge as she is hung to death. The arguable reality is that we are not as far away from this as we would like to think. This reflects Brown’s (2009) observations that prison tourism transforms punishment into a spectacle for public consumption, encouraging voyeuristic engagement rather than a critical consideration of complexities and inequalities. In this vein, Bodmin Jail brings us closer to cruelty and punishment, but not in the reflective sense. Rather it illustrates our ongoing penchant for consuming extraordinary deaths (Stone, 2012), (something made explicit by, for example, our excessive consumption of true crime media), tendency for individualising deviant activity rather than acknowledging structural factors, thus showing a draw towards punishment and with a heavy focus on subjective violence. This form of punishment shown at Bodmin Jail remains fetishised and the attraction indirectly perpetuates and encourages a form of fetishistic disavowal. As Duffus (2023: 96) states:

. . .this is harmful, as by putting a heightened focus on the brutality of the past, it can present a damaging image of current practice by implying that all current prison conditions are acceptable based on us having progressed from the levels of previous brutality . . . it downplays the existing pains.

As one reviewer said: ‘lots of sometimes gruesome detail . . . it’s a fascinating insight into how things were (please nobody let Suella Braverman visit).’

From the hanging experience, visitors are ushered into the brightly lit, modern gift shop. Despite one visitor stating ‘. . .the less said about the gift shop the better. . .it was like a stall at a Theme Park.,’ the Trip Advisor reviews of the jail were heavy in their reflection on the car park, cafes and gift shop. This mirrors the findings of Alexander et al. (2019) who found that museum visitors focused their reviews on ancillary aspects of their visits, such as cafes, toilets, cost, queues and food, rather than the cultural experience of the museum. The desire for a frictionless consumer experience is evidently a top priority and is often the making of a good (or poor) review. Museum gift shops are a prime component of how contemporary museum business strategy manifests in its foregrounding of the needs and wants of visitors as consumers. Brown (2013) critiques the position of the museum shop in dark tourism sites specifically, considering that the nature of the content of the museum means these shops are often impacted and constrained by their sensitive and dark context, and risk running into issues of taste and decency. Interestingly, Brown highlights the friction that can exist between the competing aims of the shop to ideologically and economically support the museum. Nevertheless, Bodmin’s gift shop offers explicitly jovial and ‘shock factor’ paraphernalia. The majority of comments reflecting on the shop offer praise at the array of ‘funny’ gifts and mementoes it has on offer, with a not insignificant number of visitors considering it a highlight of the attraction. However, a small number of reviews reflected our own discomfort:

Walking out from seeing a genuine hanging pit (with a list next to it of all the real deaths) straight into a giftshop selling magnets with nooses on saying “at the end of my rope!” was . . . uncomfortable.

. . .silly things for sale in the gift shop. They have “well executed jam” which felt wrong after learning about how people were hung/ wrongly convicted of crimes! Real suffering happened in this place.

I was appalled by some of the items on sale. Just steps from where many people died and there was much suffering . . . we found ‘soap on rope’ with rope nooses attached along with jam and gin marketed under the brand ‘well executed’. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing . . . they were then mocking the people who suffered and died there in incredibly poor taste.

Research has shown that museum shops are a key dimension of visitor perceptions (Cave and Buda 2018; Komarac et al., 2019; Moreno Gil and Ritchie, 2009), particularly given the fact that they are usually the final space with which visitors engage. As Larkin (2016) considers, the heavy focus on retailing poses the risk of ‘all museums becoming department stores,’ rather than insightful spaces for education and reflection. If this is indeed the case, then Bodmin’s £40 million investment and renovation places it neatly on the trajectory of consumer righteousness. If, on a global scale, heritage sites become unquestionably subsumed into these neoliberal agendas, we risk losing an integral medium through which we can reconcile with our past, present and future.

Dark tourism as consumerism, infantilisation and objective violence

Bodmin Jail is a prime example of how museums have become consumer-oriented institutions. This is evident from the more positive Trip Advisor comments where the paranormal promises, the gift shop and the eateries are often cited as highlights of the visitor experience. The negative comments largely come from those whose frictionless consumer experience was disrupted by trouble with the parking/restaurants, or those who felt that the renovations and theme-park approach rendered the place entirely inauthentic to the point of disrespect. Whilst existing work has shown that penal museums often offer distorted and misleading versions of penal reform that sanitise ongoing issues (Walby and Piché, 2011), we develop this argument to show how the commodification and repurposing of the prison building into a consumer experience demands that the jail and its history undergo a degree of infantilisation (Barber, 2008; Hayward, 2024). For all the holographic imagery, animatronic models and so on, the overarching experience is, from an educational or sociopolitical standpoint, relatively superficial, with the heavy financial investment in the museum appearing to obscure the deeper issues around justice and suffering. As one reviewer summarised: Was I entertained? Yes. Did I come away fully informed and humbled by the suffering that happened here? Only because I . . . was able to take the time to carry out my own research before visiting.’ On a positive note, the negative reviews we have presented demonstrate that consumers are indeed active and engaged in maintaining a critical eye in a way that allows them to experience and critique these sites that goes against the grain of passive consumption.

A multi-sensory pedagogy has huge potential to connect the past and present in a way that induces empathy and introspection. Other prison museums, including Eastern State Penitentiary and Alcatraz in the US, offer exhibitions that discuss and make parallels to contemporary incarceration. A good example of this (though outside the realm of penal tourism) is the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, visited by one of the research team in 2016. After a sombre tour of the house (which is left relatively empty, leaving much to the imagination) there was a bright, modernised area with an interactive polling ‘game.’ The ‘game’ connected the holocaust to contemporary xenophobia and racist rhetoric, forcing visitors to confront their own prejudices. It left you feeling slightly ashamed and reflective, as it compressed distance and diminished the ideal of ‘progress’ between then and now. In comparison, Bodmin Jail ends with a jovial hanging experience and a pun filled gift shop. It offers us the opportunity to ‘stay on the path of righteousness,’ which in today’s world is consumerist rather than religious. This permits a fetishistic disavowal of the unsettling similarities of our present day and the horrors of the past. The Bodmin Jail Attraction habitually turns to sensationalism or sanitisation when the visitor comes face to face with uncomfortable realities and seamlessly merges real stories with mythology. As nuanced social problems are mutated into digestible stories designed to entertain, it reinforces visitors as infantilised consumers who are not required to grapple with any of the complexities of incarceration. Though this paper focuses on Bodmin Jail, research has revealed similar approaches being adopted in sites of dark tourism around the world (see Ayres and Hodgkinson, 2023; Duffus, 2023). Through the appropriation of dark histories and the goal of attracting infantilised consumers, the individuals curating and running these sites collectively collude to (re)inforce the importance of satisfied visitors, rather than introspective and socially aware citizens. Through this disavowal of our contemporary shortcomings, the broader social implications of this are the risk of widespread objective violence.