People Are Aghast Over The Inkcarceration Music & Tattoo Festival Being Being An Actual Thing Being Staged On The Grounds Of An Ohio Prison

This fall, Mansfield, Ohio will play host to a festival that has a great lineup if you’re a fan of alternative rock and metal, as it features Slipknot, Rob Zombie, Mudvayne, A Day To Remember, Mastodon, Halestorm, Chevelle, Killswitch Engage, and others. The festival is also focused on tattoos, so if you’re looking to get a some ink, more than 75 tattoo artists will be on hand.

All in all, if you’re into those sorts of things, this seems like a great time. There’s one significant issue, though: The event is called the Inkcarceration Music & Tattoo Festival, the name of which plays off the fact that it takes place on the grounds of the Ohio State Reformatory, which is perhaps best known as a primary filming location for The Shawshank Redemption. As the festival is getting ready for its 2021 installment (on the weekend of September 10 to 12), some folks are talking notice of its allegedly problematic nature.

For example, Kim Kelly, a journalist and author of the upcoming book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History Of American Labor, shared her thoughts, tweeting today, “I get a lot of press releases for a lot of bad music festivals I will never attend, but the emails about this one in particular always make my skin crawl. Prison isn’t an edgy ‘theme,’ it’s torture and enslavement and horror. It’s repulsive to see an event promoted this way.” Other people chimed in and echoed the sentiment.

The festival previously hosted editions in 2018 and 2019 before making its return this year. Aside from music and tattoos, this year’s event will also feature tours of the prison, as well as a “special engagement” of “Escape From Blood Prison Haunted House,” which is a yearly Halloween event held at the Ohio State Reformatory.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.