When you think about incarcerated people, do you imagine them as faceless masses, or as individuals with personalities, histories, hopes and dreams? Artist JR, best known for his oversized photographic wheat paste murals, challenges us to see them a different way with a new project called “Tehachapi, California.”

Named for the maximum security correctional institution where it’s located, the piece magnifies a selection of former and currently incarcerated citizens as well as some prison staff, all of whom helped him install the mural across the institution’s recreation space. The subjects include people who are “keenly focused on rehabilitation,” and some of their stories are featured in this brief video. They’re working on a longer version that will shed a little more light on JR’s intentions for the project.

The mural consists of 338 strips of paper which were wheat pasted onto the court over the course of a few hours. On the ground, it’s hard to get a sense of what the piece depicts, so it’s best seen aerially – which, unfortunately, is a view few people will get outside of photographs. You can see an overview of the whole process at JR’s website.

Not every pub in London has a spying room complete with binoculars so patrons can gaze into the windows of the British Intelligence Service across the street – nor does just any old pub have a historic basement so creepy and rife with strange activity that the owners have set up a CCTV system just to keep an eye on it. The Morpeth Arms is definitely one of a kind, used as a prison and transfer facility for inmates waiting to be shipped off to Australia before its conversion into a business.

If you think this sounds like a publicity schtick to get more tourists to spend fists full of quid on burgers and ale, you’re not far off, but there’s a layer of fascinating history beneath the hype. Built in 1845, this public house at 58 Millbank in London’s Pimlico district was originally established as a deportation facility. A tunnel system running beneath the city streets carried convicts from the old Millbank prison to a holding area beneath the pub, while they waited for transportation to whisk them away. The prison itself, which featured six wings attached to a central chapel like the petals of a flower, closed in 1890 and was ultimately demolished.

The basement isn’t open to the public, but customers can see into it via a live feed on a prominently placed monitor, over a sign reading ‘Can you see the haunted prisoner?’ According to Atlas Obscura, employees have reported glimpses of inexplicable movement, items going missing and a general sense of unease. The beer barrels are kept in the area beside the former cells, which are just dank, mildewy rooms off the arched brick tunnels.

The tongue-in-cheek spying room, meanwhile, really does look in on MI6. It has its own bar, a Mata Hair theme and is, unsurprisingly, often packed full of actual spies from across the street, who sometimes bring members of the FBI with them. So, fair warning, if you’re running from the Feds, find ye another pub on Millbank to patronize.

Murder, deadly biological weapons, the torture of prisoners never formally charged with crimes and one of history’s largest mass suicides are just a few of the violent events that took place on these 7 notorious islands, leading to legends of hauntings in the ensuing years.

Poveglia: Venetian Island of the Dead

A mysterious-looking, tree-covered island visible from both Venice and Lido in the Venetian Lagoon houses the mass graves of thousands of plague victims who were quarantined there between 1793 and 1814. Locally known as The Island of Venetian Dead, Poveglia hosted over 160,000 infected people whose remains were eventually dumped into ‘plague pits,’ resulting in an unusually high amount of human remains on such a tiny island. The existing buildings were converted into an asylum for the mentally ill in 1922, with many patients reportedly claiming to be haunted by the spirits of the dead; rumors flew around Venice that the island was the setting for all manner of psychiatric experiments and that particularly troublesome patients were taken to the bell tower for lobotomies. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the legends about Poveglia partially inspired the Dennis Lehane novel Shutter Island, which was adapted for film by Martin Scorcese. After the hospital closed in 1968, the island was abandoned altogether. Today, it’s strictly off-limits to tourists, though some people manage to sneak in to take photographs.

Gruinard Island: Biological Warfare and Animal Testing

Warning: if you’re sensitive to cruel animal treatment, you may not want to watch the video above. Sheep tied to a line are exposed to deadly weapons as part of the X-Base Anthrax Trials of 1942 and 1943, held on Scotland’s Gruinard Island. The tests proved that airborne anthrax is highly infectious – a little too well. While the island is uninhabited, spores eventually made their way to the Scottish mainland, causing an outbreak. The island had to be completely sealed off to visitors, and locals report that the animals that remained on the island after the tests displayed genetic abnormalities for generations. The soil remained contaminated for decades until a group calling itself ‘Operation Dark Harvest’ began sending samples of it to government facilities across the UK, demanding that it be cleaned up. The entire island was sprayed with a solution of formaldehyde and seawater to inactivate the remaining anthrax, and by 1990, it was declared safe.

Clipperton Island: Idyllic Atoll with a Murderous Past

Imagine being shipped off to a beautiful island in the Pacific Ocean to mine guano, relying on shipments from mainland Mexico for survival, only to be abandoned and left for dead when the people sending the supplies you need are distracted by war. That happened to the one hundred men and women who began working on Clipperton Island in 1906 up until the Mexican Civil War, with all but one dying of malnutrition or failed escape attempts in the ensuing years. The lone male survivor, Victoriano Alvarez, proclaimed himself ‘king’ over the 15 remaining women and children, and began a reign of terror, raping and murdering them one by one until the widow of the former ship captain finally killed him. Three women and seven children were rescued by a passing ship in 1917. Since then, the island has been largely abandoned, though it has occasionally served as a wildlife research station.

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Should architecture be used as a punishment in itself, made as harsh and cruel as possible in a bid to make inmates sorry for what they’ve done, or should it uplift and rehabilitate them, showing them that there’s more to the world than a life of crime? While some architects boycott prison design altogether so as not to participate in what is often seen as a corrupt and immoral system, others produce (often controversial) designs that revolutionize prisoners’ relationships with their environment, each other and the world at large – for better or worse.

Justizzentrum Leoben Minimum Security Prison, Austria

(images via: hohesinn-arhitektur.at)

Possibly the poshest prison on the world, Austria’s Leoben Justice Center lets inmates live the high life in a beautifully designed facility with perks like designer furniture, personal televisions, gardens and an indoor ping-pong court. Resembling a luxury estate more than a penitentiary for criminals, this ‘rehabilitation center’ aims to give prisoners a comfortable, nurturing place to reflect on their crimes, and inspire them to live better lives in the future. One inscription on the exterior reads, “Each of the persons deprived of their liberty must be humanely and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human being treated.”

Shipping Container Prison Cells

(images via: adelaidenow, greenbiz)

Are shipping container prison cells a brilliant example of eco-minded reuse, or a cruel way to house criminals? A local prison in Australia has upcycled shipping containers into cheap prisoner housing, and another prison in New Zealand has begun using them as a solution for overcrowding. The concept has drawn controversy from critics who worry that the conditions of shipping container prison cells are inhumane, or that they’re not secure enough.

Vertical Prison

(image via: evolo.us)

An interesting concept from Malaysian designers Chow Khoon Toong, Ong Tien Yee and Beh Ssi Cze places a productive prison complex in the air above a ‘host city’. This vertical prison aims to create a prison community where inmates live and work in agricultural fields, factories and recycling plants as a way to give back to the community. While law-abiding citizens below might not appreciate their view of the sky being replaced with a looming, spaceship-like prison, the system would theoretically turn a prison sentence into a learning experience that benefits everyone.

Halden Fengsel Prison, Norway

(images via: architizer)

This prison, located in Norway, is nicer than the homes of many wealthy people, featuring award-winning architecture, art and amenities. Believing that prisons needn’t be cruel and painful in order to be effective, Erik Møller Architects produced a facility where inmates can jog down woodland trails and take cooking classes. While this may seem unreasonably plush for a place of punishment, it’s worth noting that whereas harsh and austere prisons in America and Britain have a 50% return rate, Norway’s is only 20%.

Benthamite Radial Prisons

(images via: wikimedia commons)

In 1791, philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham designed an institution that enables the managers or staff to view every inmate in the building, enabling a smaller workforce and thus lowering costs. His ‘Panopticon’ concept never came into being during his lifetime, and no true Panopticon prisons have ever been built according to his exact designs; the closest is the now-abandoned Presidio Modelo in Cuba (pictured).

Danish State Prison

(images via: dezeen)

A new state prison will soon be built on the island of Falster in Denmark which is laid out like a small village and emphasize work and leisure activities as well as green spas. Danish architects C.F. Møller have made the prison bright and airy with large windows and skylights. A network of streets connect inmate housing to administration buildings, a library, a worship room, sports facilities and a shop.

Juvenile Pavilion

(images via: archdaily)

Believing that wayward youth will benefit from a connection to nature, UArchitects have given the Juvenile Pavilion in The Netherlands an earthy, organic feel with an open structure wrapped in slatted wood. Instead of a dark, enclosed prison, the facility is transparent, maintaining a lifeline to the outside world that reminds the residents that their stay is not permanent.

The Creative Prison

(images via: subtopia)

How does the design of prisons inform their effectiveness? That’s the question that architect Will Alsop asked when he teamed up with activist arts group Rideout for the Creative Prison Project in 2006. The collaboration produced concept art for a ‘fantasy prison’ that was driven, in part, by the ideas of inmates who were asked how they would improve the prison environment. The results emphasize rehabilitation and education, allowing the prisoner population to live in college campus-like ‘modules’ and interact with the outside world. Each prisoner block would include a communal kitchen, common room and enclosed garden.

Port Arthur ‘Separate’ Prison

(images via: architecture.com)

On the darker side of prison design are facilities like the notoriously inhumane ‘Separate’ prison in Port Arthur, Australia. The Victorian concept of placing prisoners in extremely solitary environments, which certainly did nothing to contribute to their mental stability, is precisely the sort of cruel punishment that many of these modern ideas are pushing against. The Port Arthur Separate Prison in particular was an experimental facility of silence and strict control.

World’s Smallest Prison

(image via: zentner)

This particular facility isn’t modern, futuristic or revolutionary, but it’s definitely interesting. The smallest jail in the world fits just two prisoners. Sark Prison is found on the Island of Sark in the English Channel; it’s still used for overnight stays despite its diminutive size and lack of permanent staff. Anyone requiring more than a single night’s lockup is sent to a more standard prison on another part of the island.

LEED-Certified Butner Federal Prison

(image via: mnn.com)

The North Carolina facility where notorious scammer Bernie Madoff is living out the remaining years of his life is America’s one and only LEED-Certified prison, meaning it has met the U.S. Green Building Council’s standards for sustainable design. Bicycle storage, alternative fuel stations, water-smart landscaping, optimized energy performance and reduced greenhouse gas emissions are among its notable features. You might imagine that this kind of eco-friendly design would be more expensive and thus, not a great example for other cash-strapped prisons around the country to follow, but that’s not the case. The measures taken to make the building so efficient and green have actually helped the facility save money.

Bastoy Island Eco Prison

(images via: bastoyfengsel.no)

“Is Bastoy the place for you?” asks the Bastoy Island website beside idyllic photographs of sunsets, snow and sleigh-pulling horses. You’d better hope not, unless you’ve committed some kind of crime, because this place is not a resort, it’s a prison – though you’d never know that looking at it. Bastoy Island is an experimental minimum-security ‘eco prison’ where 115 ‘residents’ eat organic food and enjoy cross-country skiing, tennis and other activities once they have completed their mandatory hard labor on the farm. The prison warden says that this place is such a nice place to live, he worries more about all of the curious outsiders who find their way onto the property than about inmates escaping.

How would you like to be jailed underground on a planet where the surface is too scalding hot to touch, or locked up in an asylum with the most depraved of criminals, where the corrupt guards are just as crazy as the inmates? Real-life prisons are scary enough, but some fictional prisons take the terror of being locked up to a whole new level. These 13 nightmare prisons from films, novels and comic books go beyond a mere lack of freedom, introducing man-eating monsters, mental manipulation and unexplained medical examinations.

Limbo – THX 1138

(images via: benjaminharlow)

A dystopian vision of the future made in 1969 by pre-Star Wars George Lucas, THX1138 takes place in an underground city where citizens are forced to use drugs that suppress emotions. The prison in THX1138 is a bizarre white wall-less ‘limbo’ world where lawbreakers languish, subjected to interrogations and mysterious medical examinations.

Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161 – Alien 3

(images via: moveedo)

In Alien 3, heroine Ellen Ripley awakens from hibernation to find that her space ship has crashed on the planet Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161, a bleak rock with blazing hot temperatures during the day and freezing temperatures at night. No life exists here – except for 22 maximum risk prisoners being held in a correctional unit, and a handful of overseers. As if that weren’t bad enough, Ripley has unwittingly brought an alien egg to this prison planet, resulting in one gory death after another.

Azkaban Prison – Harry Potter

(images via: harry potter wikia, random film stats)

You might think, Harry Potter is a kids’ story – how scary can this prison be? For starters, Azkaban is a remote fortress in the middle of a roiling sea holding the likes of Bellatrix Lestrange, a deranged murderer and torturer. Then there are all those creepy ‘dementors’ swirling around in the air beyond the prison, ready to suck out the soul of anyone who comes near.

Minority Report

(images via: screencap – dreamworks)

So-called criminals are apprehended before they have even committed a crime in Minority Report, where three psychics called ‘precogs’ warn the authorities of events which may come to pass. Not only are citizens imprisoned for acts they haven’t actually carried out, they’re tossed into a bizarre facility where they’re kept in individual pods, seemingly peaceful yet perpetually bombarded with images of the crimes of which they’ve been accused of contemplating.

Crematoria Triple-Max Prison – Chronicles of Riddick

(images via: riddick wikia)

Described as ‘hell on earth’, Crematoria is a ‘triple maximum security’ prison, reserved for the most dangerous criminals and located deep inside a planet with a surface so extreme as to be uninhabitable. It’s so blazing hot during the day and freezing at night that there’s only a 20-minute period when travel on the surface is even possible. Staying alive is a daunting enough challenge, let alone trying to escape.

The Dark City

(images via: weblo)

No sun ever rises to illuminate the shadowy world of Dark City, where inhabitants become temporarily comatose at night while mysterious beings called Strangers alter not just the city, but the identities and memories of the people. What the Dark City denizens don’t realize (spoiler alert!) is that they’re all trapped on a prison planet where they’re the focus of one big alien experiment.

Blackgate Penitentiary – Batman

(images via: comic vine)

Located on a small island in Gotham Bay, Blackgate Penitentiary is the home of Gotham City’s slightly less terrifying criminals like the Penguin and Catman spend their time (the others, of course, are held in an even more frightening and far more well known facility). Blackgate is rumored to make an appearance in the upcoming Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises.

Asylum Prison – Blindness by Jose Saramago

(images via: monsters and critics)

A sudden plague of blindness spreads across the globe in the novel Blindness by Jose Saramago (and the film based on the novel, starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo). All those afflicted are forced by the government into isolation in an asylum, which becomes a chaotic, gloomy and hopeless prison.

Cthon by Piers Anthony

(images via: wikimedia commons)

In this 1967 novel by Piers Anthony, the underground prison known as Cthon houses criminals that get more dangerous the further one travels beneath the surface. Somewhere in the bowels of the prison, labyrinthine tunnels are rumored to hold the one and only escape route. Too bad they’re also apparently home to a man-eating monster that kills escapees one by one.

CryoPrison – Demolition Man

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Two men – one a true criminal, the other a falsely accused police officer – are sent to ‘CryoPrison’ in 1996, where they’re cryogenically frozen and rehabilitated through subconscious suggestion, ‘implanted’ with new interests and hobbies to replace their criminal impulses. They awaken in the year 2032, when crime seems to have been abolished, and find that their minds have been manipulated in all sorts of disturbing ways.

Absolom – No Escape

(images via: imdb)

Though arguably not the greatest movie ever, ‘No Escape’ (released in some areas as Escape from Absolom) features an irrefutably terrifying prison – an island where the worst of the worst criminals engage in brutal fights… and sometimes eat each other.

Torture Prison – V for Vendetta

(images via: imdb)

Rounded up for her role in a brewing revolution headed up by a mysterious man in a Guy Fawkes mask, Natalie Portman’s character Evie is hauled into a dark prison, interrogated and tortured. While the experience isn’t quite what it seems, it’s transformative, and still utterly terrifying to anyone who has ever feared persecution by a totalitarian government.

Arkham Asylum – Batman

(images via: joystiq.com)

If you’re in Arkham Asylum, you may not be in the sort of mental state that would allow you to even notice the corruption and depravity that’s going on all around you – but not everyone at Arkham is actually crazy. This psychiatric hospital doesn’t just hold patients in need of care, it imprisons criminals that aren’t quite sane enough to be kept at Blackgate Penitentiary. In the game Batman: Arkham Asylum, fires that break out at Blackgate necessitate moving many of the Joker’s goons to Arkham which leads, of course, to utter chaos. The game allows players to virtually explore the asylum, confronting all of the horrors hidden within.