[desertrider12]

If one person could rotate the whole thing with a crank, why couldn't the prisoners do the same by holding the bars and pushing on the walls?

Anyway, this reminded me of the mechanical fortress from Myst.

[fake-name]

There's a variety of motion mechanisms that can't be backdriven. A worm drive[1] is a common one.

Alternatively, they could simply have a external lock on rotation that's engaged when someone's not actively moving the cells.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_drive

[catalogia]

Worm gear maybe, so it couldn't be back driven?