A popular photo on social networks and entertainment sites is a woman sitting with a laptop in striped clothes in a room with a barred window. We checked whether the heroine of the photo is actually serving a sentence in a prison in Switzerland.
The photo shows a small room with a table, chair and bed. There is a telephone and, presumably, a TV on the table. A girl is sitting on the bed with a laptop in a characteristic striped uniform - the color of the curtains on the window, equipped with bars. The caption to the photo reads: “No, this is not a hotel. This is a holding cell in a Swiss prison." Often the photo is distributed along with a screenshot of two comments: the author of the first wonders why there are bars on the window (“no one wants to escape anyway”), and the author of the other explains that they are needed not to prevent escape, but to prevent anyone from climbing into such a comfortable prison from the outside.
The photo was published by users of entertainment sites (“Peekaboo", "I cried", "AyDaPrikol") and social networks. One of the posts in Facebook, posted in April 2025, received more than 2,500 reposts.
The main reason for the viral spread of the photograph is the unusually comfortable conditions for imprisonment, which in many countries people do not see in everyday life. But are Swiss prisons really so lenient?
Swiss Criminal Code does not contain any details on this issue, and the legislation of each canton and even the rules of individual prisons have their own characteristics. Yes, in the cantons Zurich And St. Gallen prisoners can rent a TV and even a computer, but bringing their own digital equipment into the cell or installing additional programs on the issued laptop is prohibited. At the same time, according to data by 2024, Swiss prisoners do not have free access to the Internet. In addition, the civilized world has long abandoned the black and white striped uniform - it was called upon brand the criminal, and at the same time help him catch him in case of escape. Nowadays Switzerland adheres to UN standards, which state that prison clothing should not be humiliating and should be comfortable. In many prisons prisoners are allowed to wear their own clothes, otherwise management prefers to issue plain uniforms in soothing colors. The style of clothing on the girl from the viral photo also looks unusual - a top instead of traditional shirts with long or short sleeves.
Reverse image search on Google allows you to find a viral photo in numerous collections hotels that used to be prisons. Such hotels are not uncommon in Western countries, where crime rates have been fell and the maintenance of numerous penitentiary institutions became unprofitable. This happened with prison in Kaiserslautern, Germany, which was founded in 1877, and in the fall of 2002 closed (or opened) its doors to prisoners. Three years later, the building with 150 cells was purchased by lawyer Michael Koll, and three years later a hotel with the not very German, but well-known name throughout the world, Alcatraz, began operating here.
The hotel is named after the famous Alcatraz prison on an island off the coast of San Francisco, among its prisoners was, for example, Al Capone. There's an old one parked next to the hotel. Citroen, reminiscent of the Cadillac of an overseas gangster.
On the hotel website in gallery The now viral photo can be seen alongside other shots of the same model. Overnight in the Element room it will cost per visitor €70.
Thus, the viral photo is not a cell in a Swiss prison at all, but a room in a German hotel opened in the building of a former penitentiary. Photo with incorrect caption spreads at least since 2019. At the same time, Switzerland is indeed known as a country with fairly comfortable prisons, which is why genuine stories have previously gone viral in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. photos And video with a similar signature, even the same comic ones comments (however, in the latter case they discussed a photograph of a Swedish hotel).
Cover photo: alcatraz-hotel.com
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