So, what was the prison building in ancient China like?
To answer this question, let's go through a tunnel with a history of thousands of years and see how the prison came from its birth to the present. ...
Hao Tao is the originator of prison industry. What is the prison he created? According to Peng's note in Guangyun: "It is a prison, and its system is like a fight. The wall is called the wall and the door is called the door, so it is called earth. " One is to use soil as a wall to form a round earth city, and the other is to dig down to form a crypt.
Since Hao Tao's grandfather created the model model of prison, generations of prison officials and craftsmen have put their intelligence into prison buildings, and sometimes they have original moves to improve and enrich the prison architectural concept.
Because of the institutional setup of ancient state administrative organs, trial and execution are integrated. In order to facilitate the trial and management, the judicial organs and prisons that break prisons are generally adjacent. According to the architectural geomantic omen and China's traditional theory of Yin and Yang, yamen usually faces south, and the prison is located in Kun, which belongs to Yin. So our common prison area is located in the right corner of the yamen lobby, which is southwest.
The prison door is the symbol and eye of a prison, and the prison door should be closed properly. The main color of the gate is generally black, regardless of iron or wood, pursuing massiness, simplicity, dignity and majesty. The prison door is separated by yin and yang, and solidified into the boundary between this and that, freedom and shackles, law-abiding and illegal. Criminals passing through this door is not only an exhortation, but also a reminder, and it is also a symbol of judicial majesty!
The common decoration of prison gates and other parts is "armadillo", which is fierce and scary. Legend has it that the dragon gave birth to nine sons. Armadillos are good at fighting against injustice and can break the prison, so the prison gate is guarded by Armadillos, which means don't waste it. In addition to armadillos, there are also armadillos, which are said to be "honest in nature, and can't touch directly when fighting or being criticized", and are also symbols of justice. These ornaments have become a static law enforcement ideological language solidified in prison buildings.
Prisons are generally divided into external prisons, internal prisons and women's prisons. Outside the prison, criminals are given a lighter punishment, while inside the prison, criminals are given a heavier punishment. There is a "prison hall" in the prison yard, which is the living place of prison leaders and jailers. There are many prison booths, which stand tall and easy to observe, similar to the police duty room in prisons today.
In the old society, the layout of prison buildings was mostly closed circles (such as clods) and square quadrangles. Later, after the prison reform movement in the late Qing Dynasty, it began to absorb foreign prison architecture ideas, including radial, courtyard, campus and string.
Hongtong Prison in Shanxi, which is famous for its "Su San Qi Jie", has been well preserved so far. The entrance is a narrow north-south passage. At both ends of the passage, there are six ordinary cells with east-west symmetry. Each cell has a low door and a small window, with an area of only 4 square meters, and the small pit is less than 1 foot from the ground. In a small cell, there are at least five or six people, and many times there are more than a dozen people. Entering Hutou Prison is a small quadrangle. People fall into the bottom of the well in the yard. There is a pillow kiln in the north of the yard, which is divided into three rooms. The caves in the east hold key criminals.
Shi Jing Model Prison is a prison located near Angel Road, Xuanwu District, Beijing. It was built in the late Qing Dynasty and is commonly known as "Turtle House" (named after five rows of prisons distributed around the central watchtower, which look like turtles). The central watchtower is connected with the surrounding prison passages. As long as the guards walk around the watchtower, they can see the situation of each row of prisons. Undoubtedly, this design ensured the prison managers to control the prison situation when the monitoring means were backward at that time, and it was quite scientific.
Nanjing Prison, where the author once worked, was built in 1905. It is a century-old prison. The prison has an office building, a meeting room, a teaching hall, a central sentry box, a mixed prison, a separate prison, a workshop and a watchtower. There are five prison areas: East, West, South, Women's Prison and Disease Prison. The eastern and western prisons are double-fan-shaped, each with four wings, which are distinguished by the words "loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, faithfulness, righteousness, harmony and peace"; The five wings of the South Supervision Bureau are distinguished by the words "warmth, kindness, courtesy, frugality and concession". Every prison has a dark room without lights, which is specially used to hold troublemakers. There is also a water dungeon outside the "frugal" prison to punish criminals. Hospitals are located in the east and are divided into mixed hospitals and separate hospitals. The women's prison is located in the southeast corner, with a workplace attached and managed by female guards. A total of 172 cells can hold more than three cadres.
It is human nature to yearn for freedom. Under the high wall, in the deep prison, in the seemingly calm prison life, there is an undercurrent of criminals breaking out of prison through the wall at any time. Therefore, escape prevention is the highest value pursuit of prison architecture.
In order to nip in the bud, the prison needs to be condescending, strengthen observation and prevent accidents, which is reflected in the specific prison building design concept, that is, the walls should be high, the windows should be small, the doors should be strong, the field of vision should be wide, and there should be no obstacles and climbing objects. According to Records of Historical Records and Yin Benji, Shang Zhouwang suspected that Xibo (Zhou Wenwang) had deliberately rebelled, so he put him in a cage and put on shackles for seven years. Some people say that homophonic is "cage", which means small skylight, and later became. From this name, we can see the characteristics of prison "strict door and small window"
The eight walls of Hongdong prison in Shanxi Province are masterpieces of escape prevention. The fence is eight feet high, commonly known as the Eight Walls. The height of the wall is not surprising. Strangely, its thickness is 1.7 meters. The body was completely filled with sand. The prisoner tried to escape. The only hope is to make a hole in the wall. However, as soon as the hole is opened, sand will flow down. The bigger the hole, the faster the sand flows. The prisoner wants to make a hole to escape? This road is blocked!
Some prison walls don't develop to high places, but they can also prevent escape! During the reign of Emperor Herry Liu, the brutal official Yin Shang was famous for building prisons. The prison he built is called "Tiger Cave". Its construction method is: first dig a few feet, then build a brick wall underground and cover the exit with big stones. The surrounding walls are smooth, and the thick soil is the prison wall. It is impossible to dig a wall to escape from prison, and the only exit is blocked by huge stones. Every criminal who has been thrown into the den of a tiger, covered with a slate, is a dark world. Even with all kinds of martial arts, it is impossible to escape. Dragon's Pool and Tiger's Cave probably have a certain literary origin with this tiger's cave prison.
In addition to preventing escape, prisons should also consider the requirements of preventing criminals from committing suicide and fire fighting in prisons. For example, the well of Hongtong Prison Hutou Prison is only 23 cm in diameter and only seven feet in depth. Small and exquisite, use a small bucket to draw water to prevent criminals from committing suicide. Every old prison yard basically has a pool or water tank, which is not only to solve the draught, but also to focus on fire fighting.
The prison gate is only open to the living. Criminals are imprisoned, tried, released, delivered, taken to the execution ground for beheading, and enter and leave the gate. When the criminal was killed, he was pulled out of the "corpse dragging hole" on the west side of the prison wall.
Most of the old prisons are narrow, crowded, dark, damp and cold. Many literary works and historical records have many descriptions of this. For example, Fang Bao's prison miscellanies describes that all the rooms in the prison are four rooms without windows, and the air is dirty. There are often more than 200 prisoners in the cell. "The poor are lying on the ground in the middle of winter, and the air in spring is not contagious." Because according to the prison management system, you don't open the prison door at night and pee in your room. If a criminal dies at night, "the living and the dead are close to each other." The design concept is based on the following factors:
First of all, after the prisoners enter the prison gate, they should have a strong visual impact, resulting in a depressed, shrinking and severe psychological feeling. The main color is mainly cold, in order to create a mysterious sense of terror of "unpredictable power", which will make the prisoners feel inferior psychologically and naturally produce the idea of obedience and obedience, which is conducive to the management of prisoners in prison.
Secondly, due to the punitive consideration of punishment, the purpose of "controlling death and living, knowing the source of good and evil, cutting evil and punishing violence, and forbidding people to do evil" (Sui Shu's Criminal Record) is to worsen the living and living environment, thus enhancing the deterrence and warning to society and preventing crime to the maximum extent. In this respect, there is still the gene of homomorphic revenge in primitive society.
Third, we should strengthen the basic performance of prisons, such as supervision, escape prevention, suicide prevention, fire control and riot prevention. This is determined by the nature of the prison.
Things change, time and space flow.
When we pay attention to the current pattern of prison buildings, we will find that the design concept of prison buildings has been completely changed unconsciously, and many old concepts have been subverted. In order to strengthen the respect for prisoners' education and basic human rights, many prisons have begun to develop towards openness, civilization and cleanliness while maintaining their basic functions in design. This also confirms the sentence: society is developing, civilization is progressing, and prisons are no exception.