Architecture signifying social control: The restoration of asylumdom in mental health care?

Prior to the era of community care, the asylum has been an architectural manifestation of the power of psychiatry and the State. Asylumdom was a period in which custodial warehouses were used by the State to store sections of the population considered to be 'unreasonable'. There are signs, however, of a re-birth of asylumdom in both the UK and Australia. For example, there is a projected growth in the number of 'secure units' in the community, and a growing concern with issues of security and risk management in mental health care. Furthermore, new technologies for containment and surveillance are being installed in acute inpatient psychiatric units. Once again the asylum will symbolize emphatically the authority of the State (and its agencies of social control), and re-emphasize the exclusion of 'unreason' from the 'reasonable' society.