It’s advertised as an “immersive cocktail experience like no other” in which bar staff cosplay as prison inmates, actors play crooked guards, and the patrons don orange jumpsuits to drink in mock prison cells.
But the bar, which is scheduled to open in Melbourne in June, has been condemned by a charity as a “disturbingly” insensitive concept that capitalises on suffering.
At “Alcotraz” – a play on Alcatraz, the notoriously brutal prison in the US – patrons are required to “smuggle” their own alcohol into the bar past “corrupt guards”, where it is mixed into cocktails by bartenders posing as inmates.
A spokesperson for the marketing firm Fever and the UK business Inventive Productions, which are opening the bar in partnership, said in a joint statement the venue is a “subtle” reference to cult American TV and cinema like Shawshank Redemption and Orange is the New Black.
“Alcotraz’s theatrical experience is focused on giving guests the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in a fictitious, Hollywood-like narrative, which is in no way based on the real-life difficulties and harsh realities of prison systems today,” the spokesperson said.
The company has already opened several Alcotraz bars in the UK, where it drew fierce backlash as a fetishisation of “misfortune”.
Already, the bar has drawn similar criticism in Australia.
Tabitha Lean of the National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls called on the public to boycott the bar.
“Prisons are sites of immense pain and suffering, especially for Aboriginal people who face higher rates of incarceration and deaths in custody,” she said. “Turning this into a theme for a bar is a slap in the face to those who have experienced real trauma and brutalisation.”
Debbie Kilroy, the chief executive of Sisters Inside and part of the National Network, said turning incarceration into a form of entertainment minimises the suffering that inmates endure in prison.
“The entire concept of Alcotraz isn’t just poor taste; it shows a fundamental disregard for the lived experiences of people who have been and continue to be harmed by the prison system,” Kilroy said.
“Prison is not a game – it is harsh, it is brutal and all too often a life-ending reality. Privileged white people cosplaying as prisoners for fun while real people suffer is just grotesque.”
From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the number of Australian prisoners increased by 3%. The imprisonment rate also increased by 1% from 201 to 202 prisoners per 100,000 of Australia’s adult population.
Jess Ho, a writer on the hospitality industry, said the restaurant was inappropriate and follows a trend of people in the industry not doing their cultural competence or due diligence before coming up with a concept.
In 2021, Rickshaw Bar changed its Vietnam-war theme after it drew fierce backlash from the Vietnamese community and broader public for being insensitive. The restaurant had opened in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, where many Vietnamese people who survived the war and immigrated to Australia settled.
“Unfortunately, no matter what people say, if something is culturally inappropriate or it’s making fun of oppressed people, there’s no law to stop people from doing that, which is a problem,” Ho said.
The spokesperson for Inventive Productions and Fever said it has a partnership in the UK with the Innocence Project London, which works to prevent miscarriages of justice.
“The partnership demonstrates its commitment to the education and enrichment of its customers and communities on issues relevant to their immersive experiences,” they said.
“Inventive Productions continues to be sensitive towards the real-world difficulties that could be associated with such stories and evaluate how best to support those around us.”
