Serving time with a sea view: The prison cell and healthy blue space

This chapter explores the significance of sensory interactions with blue space through the bars of a prison cell window. The architecture of incarceration is almost always assumed to impinge on the lives of those residing in carceral space in harmful rather than therapeutic ways. Drawing on notions of therapeutic landscapes and data collected from a prison located on a seashore in the UK, this chapter theorises the prison as a nurturing rather than punitive environment by examining the relationship between the prison cell and the lived experience of blue space. In doing so, it expands the possibilities for both the disciplinary theorisation of therapeutic blue space and the micro-scale health benefits that may be generated by a reconsideration of prison siting and environmental outlook, particularly from the prison cell.