Henry Hagnäs

Spending time behind bars: Kakola Prison

On friday we had the company summer-party. Every summer-party starts with and excursion to some interesting places and is kept secret from most of the participants. This years instructions suggested that we bring good shoes, warm clothes and (electrical) torches. Since I had already planned to visit the now closed Kakola Prison I knew this was the suggested equipment-list there, the timetable didn't allow for any longer travel either to places that might need warm clothes or torches in the middle of summer.

Kakola prison was closed down some years ago and hasn't been in use since, according to the guide its the only prison in the world that is not a museum but you can visit. Its a pretty popular tour and costs more than most tours so plan ahead, you can find more information here: http://www.turku.fi/Public/default.aspx?contentid=81657&nodeid=8726

The popular style of prison design you see in many movies is called the Philadelphia design:

It allows the guards to have a good overview of what is happening and if you have rules about being silent its easy and fast to notice trouble. Kakola also has some older cells of a more finnish design:

These were more as sleeping quarters for prisoners that spent their days laboring, according to the guide they were especially popular among older inmates because they were quieter.

The prison courtyard might look drab to us but the newer prison, 15km outside of Turku, is just a concrete jungle and much smaller so this is a slice of heaven compared to more modern prisons:

Even in prison you can't deny finnish people the right to sauna:

Some more pictures from Kakola below, I took almost 300 pictures on the trip which is a personal record for a two hour period.

The tour was extremely interesting and the guide very knowledgeable without being annoying about too much details, highly recommend you take the Kakola-tour if possible! The tours are only done during the summer but the prison is also a popular place to film movies so, for instance, this summer it'll be closed for two weeks while at least three movies are filmed there. 

On my way home from the more social part of the summer-party I stopped to take a few long-exposure pictures too, some even came out nice: