Life inside: testing a new Swiss prison
Over 800 people volunteered to be locked up in a Zurich prison last month to test the new facility. SWI swissinfo.ch reporter May Elmahdi-Lichtsteiner was one of the lucky inmates selected for the trial.
The Zurich cantonal authorities recently came up with the unusual idea to give the detention facility and staff a test run before the prison starts taking real inmates.
The pilot project was intended as a good way of “ensuring the proper functioning of daily operations and allowing wardens to familiarise themselves with the facility”, according to the authorities. May stayed for 24 hours before being released.
The new Zurich West prison was built partly to alleviate criticism of conditions for remand prisoners in the canton.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.