Mount Crawford Prison, Wellington, NZ, Nov 2012: Mount Crawford (or Wellington prison) was closed in mid November 2012 after 85 years of operation. The jail on Miramar Peninsula was built by prisoners themselves in 1927, using concrete blocks made with sand from Wellington’s South Coast. The weekend after the closure, the Department of Corrections opened the doors to the public for a rare opportunity to view the macabre and historic features of one New Zealand’s oldest and most notorious prisons. I arrived just as the last public were allowed access, so found the place virtually void of life. I didn’t hang around long in case I was inadvertently locked in forever… There’s an interesting video here.
