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Summary:
In this article by Lynne Woodruff, she writes how and why prisons have been designed the way they are. Over the years, different designs have been introduced to change how inmates interact with the building. Past prisons' commonly include a center gathering area to allow guards to watch inmates from a centralized location. Today, with improved security, many prisons implement "direct supervision" where guards are more interactive with inmates.
Reflection:
Today's prisons are still far from perfect, but they have come a long way. Past ideas were implemented solely to punish inmates, while today there is a focus on improving the quality of life, while maintaining a safe environment.

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Editor's Note: This article is the last in a series on the history of jails:
Part 1: Understanding Our Roots: A Brief History of Prisons Part 2: Prison Reform: The Origin of Contemporary Jail Standards
Today, prison design mostly incorporates direct or indirect supervision: Rather than isolating inmates in cells in a linear fashion, the facility consists of "pods" clustered around a central monitoring station. Inmates spend most of their time in common areas, with corrections officers continuously monitoring their behavior and interacting with them directly.

In addition to enhancing inmate and staff safety, jails designed around pods are thought to be more cost-effective and foster a more positive, rehabilitative environment for inmates.

But this design is relatively new; it wasn't until 1983 when direct supervision was formally recognized by the National Institute of Corrections. How did we get here?

19th Century
Modern prison design has its roots in the first "prison boom," which started in the late 1700s. Under the influence of the Catholic Church, communities had increasingly begun to rely on imprisonment as punishment, rather than the previously used tactics of death, mutilation or exile. In England, prison construction was driven by the fact that authorities could no longer merely banish offenders to America; the Revolution had put a stop to that. In America, expanding civilization and the development of criminal law drove a similar construction boom.

The Gaols Act of 1823 introduced the concept of classification of inmates, and prison design during this time reflected the concept. Prison architects began to include varied geometric shapes in their designs, including rectangles, squares and circles.

The most famous prison design of this period is the Panopticon, envisioned by prison reform activist Jeremy Bentham. The Panopticon concept was a circular building with inmate cells built on the outside wall, with the keeper's gallery rising in the center. This allowed the keepers to observe the prisoners, but not to be observed by them. Bentham even went so far as to suggest that inmates would not need to be under constant supervision because they would not know when they were being observed, so they would be compelled to behave at all times.

In the United States, only a few prisons were built in the Panopticon tradition. "Stateville," built with inmate labor in Illinois between 1916 and 1924, is probably the most well-known. The central guard tower had underground access so additional officers could get to any cellblock in which there was a disturbance. Despite Bentham's grand vision for a revolutionary prison design that would drastically reduce prison costs while enhancing inmate reform through menial labor, the Panopticon was not conducive to proper housing of prisoners. Ventilation was poor and the cells were damp, leading to disease and in turn, a high mortality rate. Overcrowding prevented the solitary confinement of unruly prisoners and eventually the prison was demolished.

The Panopticon design did, however, influence the next major design concept: radial design. This design retains Bentham's central building housing the keeper, but features prison wings or hallways that radiate out like spokes on a wheel. Some cell designs included raised cells that allowed for better ventilation and heating and prevented prisoners from digging through the floor. Two limitations that continued to cause problems were the lack of proper sanitation and the inability of the keepers to inspect the prisoners easily.

20th Century
Prison designs continued to evolve around the turn of the century, and a lack of state or federal guidelines led to significant variations, although most prisons still sought to limit prisoner contact. By the 1930s and 40s, "telephone pole" design was the most popular. This design included a central corridor with housing wings built at 90 degrees from the corridor. Prisons built in this manner included the Maryland Reformatory, Soledad in California, Utah State Prison at Draper and Eastern State Penitentiary in Graterford, Penn.

During the Great Depression and through World War II, prison building slowed tremendously but as soon as WWII ended, prison building in the U.S. took off. This new building boom was influenced by the medical model of criminal justice. The medical model held that offenders were not necessarily responsible for their actions; instead, society had to diagnose and cure the offender's illness, which could be caused by issues that were psychological (mental illness), sociological (family environment), economic (unemployed) or physiological (improper diet). Prisons became responsible for rehabilitating offenders and successfully returning them to society.

By the mid-1970s, however, societal changes such as rising crime rates, conservative public attitudes and high recidivism rates forced a change toward a "get tough" attitude against offenders. In 1974, the " Martinson report " effectively ended the medical model. Martinson detailed the ineffectiveness of treatment programs and argued that rehabilitation was rarely successful.

Martinson's ideas drove the rise of the justice model of criminal justice. Society began to believe that offenders had personal responsibility for their actions-they were not "sick." Because offenders chose to commit crimes, it was thought they must be punished, not treated. Punishments were of determinant lengths of time, no longer dependent on the success of the treatment. This resulted in a new core function for corrections: to safely and securely control inmates-not to focus on their rehabilitation.

New Standards and the Direct Supervision Model
To understand the next major phase in prison design, we not only need to be familiar with the shift from the medical model to the justice model. We also need to acknowledge three main influences on corrections during the second half of the 20th century:

1. Following WWII, the corrections industry experienced a shift toward a more bureaucratic model of administration. No longer was patronage and personal gain tolerated; instead competence, responsibility and accountability were emphasized. Selection and training of personnel was a priority as was refining the chain of command and specialization of medical, legal, accounting, fiscal planning and maintenance.

2. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson created the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice to address national crime and make recommendations for improving the functions of the police, courts and corrections. The report for corrections stated that the most important determinant for effectiveness was sufficient qualified staff. The report recommended dramatic improvements in the selection, training, supervision and accountability of correctional personnel. Recommendations for offenders included expanding community-based programs instead of incarceration, using community resources for reintegration, upgrading educational and vocational training, improving prison industries, expanding graduated release and furlough programs and providing separate treatment for special offender groups. The first correctional standards were created in part as a result of this report and became the basis for those used by the American Correctional Association's Commission on Accreditation.

3. Also during this time, prisoners began using the writ of habeas corpus and the Civil Rights Act to successfully bring litigation against correctional facilities to address violations of their federal civil rights. This resulted in more facilities operating under judicial orders and the entire industry facing liability for "failure to protect" inmates.

All these threads-managerial functions, the evolution of the bureaucratic model and judicial intervention-led to the creation of a new model called Direct Supervision. Using a combination of management and operational philosophy, design features and staff training, Direct Supervision places officers in constant and direct contact with the inmates, allowing them to get to know the inmates and recognize and respond to trouble before it escalates. Officers also become more responsible for the organization, supervision and control of the daily operation of a direct supervision housing unit, since they are directly within the housing unit. Direct Supervision has been credited with reducing vandalism, enhancing inmate and officer safety, and creating a more positive, less stressful environment for inmates and officers.

Direct Supervision was not only a new way of jail management; it also required new prison design. Local jails had traditionally been of linear design, rectangular buildings with corridors leading to single cells arranged at right angles to the corridor, resulting in intermittent surveillance (at best) of the cell. "Podular Remote" cellblock design sought to give officers better surveillance by incorporating a central control area. But this design created an "us against them" mentality because bars, walls and glass separated the officers from the inmates. Inmates became tense whenever officers entered "their" territory. Direct Supervision brings down the barriers, places control stations inside the inmate living areas and keeps inmates together in dayrooms rather than separately in cells. Inmates are aware they're being constantly supervised, officers can step in quickly to address issues and electronic monitoring systems provide officers with additional protection.

The first jail facility incorporating Direct Supervision features opened in 1981 in Contra Costa, Calif. It was the result of a design competition held by the Federal Bureau of Prisons between three firms from New York, Chicago and San Diego. All three firms came up with similar designs to meet the BOP criteria for active and continuous inmate supervision. Today, this model is widely used across the United States.

REFERENCES
Woodruff, L. (2010) A Secondary Data Analysis of Staff Reaction to the Transition from a Linear Jail to a Direct Supervision Model in Kane County, Illinois.

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The Evolution of Prison Design and the Direct Supervision Model - Lexipol

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Editor's Note: This article is the last in a series on the history of jails: Part 1: Understanding Our Roots: A Brief History of Prisons Part 2: Prison Reform: The Origin of Contemporary Jail Standards Today, prison design mostly incorporates direct or indirect supervision: Rather than isolating inmates in cells in a linear fashion, the facility consists of "pods" clustered around a central monitoring station.

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In this article by Rachael Slade, she finds several statistics on the U.S.'s prison system. The U.S. currently holds around 25% of the worlds inmate population.
Reflection:
That statistic shows just how important good design is in our prisons. There are millions of people that rely on said design.

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Architects working toward creating more livable prisons come up against challenges of epic-but not insurmountable-proportions

First, let's recognize that when we talk about mass incarceration, we're entering a euphemistic world. There aren't prisons anymore-only "correctional facilities" and "detention centers." Looking for designers for your next jail? You're tapping into the "justice" sector. Regardless of the language we use, imprisonment has become a major industry that supports the finance, law, food service, and telecommunications industries, not to mention architects, designers, and contractors. The U.S. provides room and board for 25 percent of the world's total prison population, according to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative; that's 2.3 million people-the equivalent of the country's fourth largest city, just behind Chicago. And while more people are being incarcerated each year, they're not coming out. Figures from a 2016 U.S. Sentencing Commission study show America's recidivism rates as the highest in the world, at about 60 percent.

Some would argue that America's prison problem is very much a design problem. Facilities are usually built like fortresses-monoliths in rural locations ringed with razor wire and high walls. Interiors are detailed to withstand tremendous abuse, made with hard materials like concrete, linoleum, steel, and concrete block which mercilessly reflect the endless noise inside prisons, raising stress levels of both inmates and those who work with them. There's generally either too much or too little light-most of it fluorescent, and switched on 24/7-which scrambles everyone's circadian rhythms. But due to security and cost concerns, access to natural light is a luxury. Windows are expensive, and their size and location often determine a facility's weakest security points. The typical interior color palette, meanwhile, is a study in sensory deprivation-just a few shades of monotonous, soul-crushing beige.

In fact, it just took one night inside a U.S. jail to move Frank Gehry to run a Spring 2017 semester course at Yale exploring the design of prison facilities. He encouraged his students to rethink incarceration as an opportunity for rehabilitation rather than punishment and took them to Northern Europe and Scandinavia, where prisons look and perform more like college campuses than fortresses.

But while architects and psychologists have spent much time exploring better prison design, the reality is that incarcerating humans, protecting them from themselves and each other, and moving them around safely present a huge set of logistical challenges, says Dan Gallagher, a principal at the New York-based firm NADAAA, which worked with the nonprofit Van Alen Institute to help guide New York City through the closing of Rikers Island and the relocation of its facilities throughout the five boroughs. Gallagher describes the intense choreography required to move inmates from their cells to Rikers' roof for their daily 45 minutes of outside time (required by law). Transferring inmates from cell to elevator to open space can take up to an hour, and the return can be just as long.

Design, of course, can solve many of these problems, but unfortunately, too often those who commission prisons-from counties to cities to states to the private prison industry-are more focused on cost, security, and expediency than humanity, never mind good design. (In the case of Rikers, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has endorsed a ten-year, $10.6 billion plan to radically reduce and redistribute the number of inmates to facilities around the city built or to be rehabbed using a new set of design guidelines based on Gallagher's report.) In response, many firms working on prison design hire analysts to help nudge the conversation toward more sensitive solutions. New York-based RicciGreene Architects, a major firm in the justice sector (Dutchess County Correctional Facility, Fulton County Jail Complex Master Plan, Lexington-Fayette County Adult Detention Facility, Orange County Correctional Facility) hired a criminologist to help sensitively strategize planning of their corrections facilities. When housing an ever-more diverse group of inmates, architects also need to take into account concerns such as aging in place, mobility issues, and design for a large mentally and emotionally challenged population. RicciGreene's 1,500-bed Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center in downtown Denver has interiors that feature checkerboard-patterned linoleum, bright green accents, and red chairs-a welcome acknowledgement that actual humans, none of them yet convicted, are being housed here.

The good news is that rights-focused design agendas are catching on. When he consulted on the new Iowa State Penitentiary by HOK, Greg Cook, a justice principal at the multinational architectural engineering firm HDR, says, "The state was pushing the design team to come up with something that hadn't been done before," namely, addressing the exponential growth in demand for health-care services in the correctional environment. To enhance his understanding, Cook became the first architect in the U.S. to receive the Certified Correctional Health Professional (CCHP) designation. Designing with mental health in mind, his team focused on "air quality, day lighting, and lighting in general." Unlike the original bunker-like monolith, Iowa State Penitentiary's new eight-building campus is a one-story facility with three housing units designed on a radial plan with an open courtyard at their centers. "It's almost like a farm campus, big open spaces," Cook says. Clerestory windows, patterned linoleum floors, and splashes of light blue create visual interest. The complex even features healing gardens.

Perhaps the finest example of compassionate American prison design is the recently completed Las Colinas Women's Detention and Reentry Facility, commissioned by the County of San Diego, designed by KMD/HMC Architects. The complex sits on a 45-acre campus and features residentially scaled buildings clustered around exterior courtyards. Research shows that isolation breeds violence and anger; the more normalized environment is meant to encourage socialization and to "minimize physical and psychological barriers" between inmates and staff. In fact, the facility looks a lot like the college campuses Gehry's students envisioned: Inside, the floors are a warm brown and sometimes playfully patterned; translucent green accent walls break down the scale of the cafeteria; and materials include not only concrete but also ashlar stone, cork, and wood. Due to the facility's podular layout, all public spaces feature large windows and an abundance of natural light.

Meanwhile, more and more designers are holding their peers accountable-at the very least for participating in the design of cells made for solitary confinement. As Raphael Sperry, the president of Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), puts it, "You can't fix mass incarceration by putting prisoners in nicer cages." He unsuccessfully lobbied the AIA to establish a rule banning members from creating supermax prisons. Sperry argues that the answer to the country's prison problem is through justice reform-reconsidering the laws that send so many people to prison in the first place, and providing alternative sentences that focus on rehabilitation and responsibility rather than incarceration. While that pursuit may be beyond the scope of the average designer, large architecture firms working in this space have shown that expert voices like theirs can at least start to shape how clients view the task of jailing human beings. In the end, good design is just the beginning.

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Is There Such a Thing as "Good" Prison Design?

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Architects working toward creating more livable prisons come up against challenges of epic-but not insurmountable-proportions First, let's recognize that when we talk about mass incarceration, we're entering a euphemistic world. There aren't prisons anymore-only "correctional facilities" and "detention centers." Looking for designers for your next jail? You're tapping into the "justice" sector.

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Summary:
This article published in April of 2019 by Christophe Haubursin and Gina Barton discusses the Halden Prison in Norway. The Prison uses a campus design which allows inmates to be exposed to sunlight as they move throughout the day. They also mention how many other prisons are built with unappealing materials like steel and concrete, while Halden uses a myriad of windows.
Reflection:
By creating a more inviting environment, Halden Prison is a great template for how prisons should be designed and constructed. The U.S. should look into deigns like this to improve conditions within prisons.

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How Norway designed a more humane prison

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Does prison architecture have to be cruel?

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Summary:
This article posted in 2019 by Lindsay Samson continues on how Halden Prison is the most humane prison. The goal is to make the building feel as "normal" as possible for the inmates within.
Reflection:
By keeping inmates happy during their stay, the transition back to society becomes easier allowing for more productive citizens. However, the amenities such as a rock climbing wall and game room might be a bit excessive for criminals.

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Halden Prison in Østfold, Norway is considered the world's most humane incarceration centre. Boasting amenities like workshops, game rooms, open kitchens, a sound studio, a library, and a rock-climbing wall, as well as harmonious prisoner-guard relationships, this maximum-security facility is a Utopia in comparison to prisons in the United States and much of the rest of the world. "It's crazy," a Halden inmate told Fusion of what he's seen of US jails. "It's a different world."

Decorated with designer furniture, flat-screen TVs, and unbarred windows, Halden Prison strives to maintain as much "normalcy" for its inmates as possible. Designed by Erik Møller Architects and HLM Architects, it offers its prisoners relative freedom of movement, and works to ensure that their eventual transition into regular society is a smooth one. Completed in 2010, it's undeniably a remarkable facility that offers its prisoners the opportunity for authentic rehabilitation.

Each cell features long vertical windows to maximize the light that enters, and its green surroundings are easily viewed in common areas ("the opportunity to follow seasonal changes helps to clarify the passage of time for the inmates," explains prison warden Are Høidal). Safety glass is utilised so that bars can be avoided; and shared living and food-preparation spaces are included to encourage cooperation between inmates. The primary goal of the space is to rehabilitate, a radical aim when the vast majority of the world's prison systems are more focussed on doling out punishment.

According to a 2015 academic paper from the University of Iowa's Megan Fowler tiled The Human Factor in Prison Design: Contrasting Prison Architecture in the United States and Scandinavia, it is perhaps these duelling purposes that have given rise to the disparities in prison architecture around the globe. Fowler, an architectural graduate of the University of Iowa and intern architect at INVISION Planning in Waterloo, Iowa, writes that since the 2013 California prisoner hunger strike, American architects have become less willing to be involved in the design of prison facilities because of the conditions that the spaces generate.

Tracing the history of modern prison design, Fowler examines both the systems of the United States' prisons and that of Scandinavia's. In her research, she found that cost and efficiency are the most important considerations in the design of US prisons. Expensive extras like windows and spaces for dining, exercise, and counselling are limited and the goal is to spend as little as possible rather than provide a space that accomplishes the reformative aims of imprisonment. Instead, spaces that inadvertently encourage violence and tension emerge, giving rise to punishing conditions that satiate an American sense of justice.

Due to the supposed need to be "tough on crime," many prison systems around the world have given up almost all attempts at rehabilitation, serving instead as sites of state retribution for those that have stepped out of line. Though some have accused the Scandinavian prison system for being too soft on their inmates and their design too luxurious, the stats don't lie; Norway boasts one of the lowest rates of recidivism in the world. At just 20 per cent, it stands in remarkable contrast to that of the United States and the rest of the world.

By creating an environment that prioritises its prisoners freedom, Halden Prison has shown that violent squalor doesn't have to be the inevitable nature of jailtime. Designed to induce remorse and responsibility rather than resentment and cynicism, Scandinavian prisons are proof that punishment does not need to be physical and explicit to be effective. As warden Høidal puts it, "Every inmate in Norwegian prisons are going back to the society. Do you want people who are angry - or people who are rehabilitated?"

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Can the architecture of a prison contribute to the rehabilitation of its inmates? | Design Indaba

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Halden Prison in Østfold, Norway is considered the world's most humane incarceration centre. Boasting amenities like workshops, game rooms, open kitchens, a sound studio, a library, and a rock-climbing wall, as well as harmonious prisoner-guard relationships, this maximum-security facility is a Utopia in comparison to prisons in the United States and much of the rest of the world.

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Summary:
This article by Jerry Adler has some interesting points from another view. He writes "The problem of mass incarceration is a policy problem—it’s not at its root a design problem."
Reflection:
He brings up an interesting point. There is only so much an architect can solve with the design of a building.

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"No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails," Nelson Mandela once said-and who should know better?-except perhaps Dostoevsky, who said the same thing a century earlier. By that standard, the justice system of the United States, with more people behind bars than any other country in the world, doesn't even measure up to the society under which Mandela lived, which in 1993 locked up its citizens at a rate of 368 per 100,000, compared to 655 in the U.S. as of 2016. The U.S. even imprisons black men at a higher rate than South Africa did under apartheid.

But the number of Americans in jails and prisons-around 2.2 million-is now at a 20-year low and still falling, as crime declines and the FIRST STEP Act, signed by President Trump in December, has cracked open the door to parole for victims of the mandatory minimum sentencing laws passed in the 1990s. But the law only benefits people convicted of federal crimes; 90 percent of American prisoners are held in state prisons and local jails. Parallel efforts are under way in many states, including New York, where a report by a commission headed by former chief judge Jonathan Lippman has recommended reforms, including as a "top priority" ending cash bail. "Almost a third of the people admitted to jail are released within four days, suggesting that many should not have been jailed at all," Lippman wrote.

The moment, says Stanley Richards, a former inmate of New York City's notorious Rikers Island and now executive vice president of the prisoner-advocacy group Fortune Society, presents "a historic opportunity" to rethink America's prison system, comprising more than 1,800 federal and state prisons, 3,163 jails (housing short-stay inmates and those awaiting trial or sentencing), and 1,852 juvenile facilities-in some cases from the ground up.

Architects are responding to this challenge in a variety of ways. At one end of the spectrum is Raphael Sperry, the president of the San Francisco-based Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, who has long advocated that architects should boycott prison design altogether. "The problem of mass incarceration is a policy problem-it's not at its root a design problem," Sperry insists. His idea that the resources devoted to imprisonment should go instead to "justice reinvestment"-medical and social services, housing, and education-may seem utopian, but the belief is widespread among reformers that the prisoner population expands to fill the cells available.

Privately owned prisons, which, as of 2016, housed 128,000 state and federal inmates, around 8.5 percent of the total, obviously require prisoners to stay profitable, an incentive that gets translated into policy, sometimes corruptly-in the infamous case of two Pennsylvania judges who took bribes to hand out long sentences to juvenile offenders-but typically through legal campaign contributions. Private prison PACs donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Congressional candidates last year, according to a report by the nonprofit Prison Legal News. And state prisons are an important source of jobs in many rural counties, so legislators have an interest in keeping them open-even if, as in New York State, it means inmates' families may have to travel many hours by bus to reach them for a visit.

For architects who do design such facilities, there is a real opportunity to make contemporary prisons more humane and responsive to a goal of rehabilitation. The longtime dream of reformers to close Rikers Island, New York City's main jail complex, is finally on the horizon, part of a 10-year plan that envisions reducing the total number of jail beds in the city to around 5,500, about 3,000 below the current census-which includes jails on Rikers and in the boroughs. That 5,500 figure itself is way down from a peak of 21,674 in 1991. "It's called building our way to a smaller system," says Richards, a way to ensure that a future mayor won't be able to reinstate the zero-tolerance policies that filled cells with turnstile jumpers, pot smokers, and other petty offenders in the 1990s.

Closing Rikers is just one step in a long process of reform, according to Elizabeth Glazer, director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice. The first step is to reduce the number of inmates. "The second," she tells RECORD, "is to change the culture inside: how people treat one another: whether we prepare them for leaving jail, whether we connect them to support services in the neighborhoods they're returning to." Finally, the city will reconnect inmates to their communities by putting them in jails in their boroughs. The architecture firm Perkins Eastman was awarded $7.6 million in 2018 to undertake a study of how the city can expand and update existing borough-based jails, or even replace them entirely. "We think it promotes the goals of a fairer and safer system to have our jails closer to where families live and where their lawyers and the courts are," says Glazer. "It's an old model to build prisons on islands like Rikers, on the edge of town, out of sight and out of mind."

The city's plan will spell the end of such borough jails as the one in Manhattan still called the Tombs, although the original 1838 building whose Egyptian Revival facade inspired the nickname is long gone. Another that won't be missed is the Brooklyn House of Detention, built in 1957 on the edge of downtown Brooklyn, a hulking white monolith that presents a grim, barred visage to the street. The challenge for architects will be to design secure, safe facilities that fit into neighborhoods. Perkins Eastman hasn't released its report, so the city has yet to issue an RFP for the new facilities. The Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan jails will occupy the existing locations, close to the county courthouses, and the one in the Bronx will be built on a brownfield site about two miles away. "Our principle is that the jail building should be community-facing, a civic and community asset," says Richards, enunciating a simple but startlingly novel idea: the jail as community facility, integrated with the surrounding neighborhood. "We should communicate to people who have not been convicted: You are still a member of our community and still a human being. And to the officers, medical staff, civilian employees: You're not a tool." Is there a reason why some inmates, properly vetted and supervised, can't play basketball with a local school team? Teach chess to eighth graders? Be tutored by retired teachers? "Think about the visiting experience," Richards urges. "If you go to Brooklyn on a visit day, you see a line of people around the block, because there's no place inside for them. They should have lockers, a comfortable place to wait inside, vending machines. They're not criminals, and most of the people they're coming to visit haven't been convicted of anything yet either."

Elsewhere around the country, new jails are also planned, even if crime continues to fall, and some existing prisons will be renovated. Even the notorious Angola penitentiary in Louisiana, with over 5,000 inmates the largest prison in the U.S., is now trying to live down its reputation for violence and brutality. State officials are exploring a major redesign of Angola, in informal consultation with the Vera Institute for Justice, whose 2018 report, Reimagining Prison, is a bible of the prison reform movement, and MASS Design Group, a nonprofit architecture and design firm. The discussions are only at the idea stage, says Michael Murphy of the Boston-based MASS, who is approaching the possibility of a commission gingerly. "If we were awarded a contract to redesign a prison, we'd have to seriously consider the moral and ethical dimensions of doing so," he tells record. "The question at the forefront of the moral dilemma is, can we actually reform the system as it exists through architecture? I think that's a valid question, which we have to ask on a case-by-case basis."

One of the first steps in redesigning Angola was the closing last spring of the infamous Camp J, a solitary-confinement unit for inmates so unmanageable that corrections officers have resigned rather than work there. Solitary confinement has become a lightning rod in the debate over prison design. Sperry, who has lobbied unsuccessfully to amend the American Institute of Architects' code of ethics to specifically prohibit designing solitary units or execution chambers, estimates that state and federal prisons hold 80,000 inmates in solitary cells, typically measuring some 70 square feet. Some are there for their own safety, or to punish specific infractions ranging from "being unsanitary or untidy" up to murder, but mostly for "administrative segregation," a euphemism for imposing control on uncooperative inmates. Most penologists doubt that solitary works, a view endorsed by Richards. "As someone who spent time in solitary, it never once deterred me," he said. It is a cautionary irony that solitary, when it was introduced at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia in 1829, was considered a salutary reform, removing inmates from the bedlam of the prisons of the day to repent and study the Bible in silence. The actual effect, of course, was to drive them mad, and it's still doing that; a report by the U.S. Department of Justice shows that nearly 30 percent of prisoners in solitary suffer "severe mental distress." At a Senate hearing in 2012, The New York Times reported, Dr. Craig Haney, an authority on incarceration, testified that "a shockingly high percentage" of prisoners in solitary confinement are mentally ill, and that the brutal form of punishment leads to "a profound level of what might be called 'ontological insecurity,' " Haney said. "They are not sure that they exist and, if they do, exactly who they are."

Increasingly, inmates are already mentally ill when they arrive in prison. A well-intended reform, the closing of state mental hospitals, beginning in the 1950s, meant that "a lot of people who are supposed to be in mental health facilities end up in jails," according to David Bostwick, justice principal of HDR, the Omaha-based architecture firm with an extensive justice and health practice. Mental-health experts hailed antipsychotic drugs as a way to make mental hospitals obsolete, but failed to consider that people might stop taking them. "Jails are the largest mental health provider in any community," Bostwick says. "We are starting to design jails as treatment facilities rather than containment facilities, and any new jails will more than likely have a mental-health component."

Kenneth Ricci of the New York firm RicciGreene Architects, a practice devoted entirely to criminal-justice facilities, has thought a lot about how the justice system can avoid making mental illness worse. It should begin with an evaluation at the time of arrest or arraignment, so those who need treatment can get it. As for jail design, Ricci says, "Environment cues behavior. You maximize safety by designing for good sight lines, reasonable decibel levels, and daylight and exterior views, especially of nature, which measurably reduces adrenaline levels." Ricci put those principles into practice in his award-winning 2008 design for the Union County Juvenile Detention Center in New Jersey, a one-room-deep building which arranges all the spaces along a glass walled corridor that wraps around a one-acre outdoor courtyard. The concept was his, but he was encouraged by the mayor of Linden, New Jersey, who told him, "I don't want to see any fence around this building."

Some of these goals can be achieved with technology, including acoustic engineering and the use of security glazing, which permits larger windows unobstructed by bars. ("Sixty-minute glass," says Ricci-meant to withstand an hour of battering by a 4-pound hammer.) Centrally controlled doors eliminate the incentive for inmates to attack guards to steal their keys.

But some are questions of design. Brutally functional designs and the use of cold, hard materials both inflict psychological harm on inmates and staff, and symbolically shape and reflect the public perception of prisoners as cold, hardened criminals, as reports by Vera and MASS point out. "If you imagine a prison," Ricci says, "you probably think of the movies, where tiers of cells are arrayed along a catwalk." But new prisons mostly aren't like that, and existing ones are being renovated on the "podular" model, which was conceived in the 1970s but fell into disuse during the 1990s, the era of mass incarceration, when every other goal was subordinated to building cheap warehouse-like prisons fast, and turning amenity space into cells as prisons became vastly overcrowded.

Now that prison populations are leveling off or falling, corrections officials are revisiting the podular model, which comes in many variations. The basic element is a suite holding from about 16 to 40 inmates, who can be surveilled by a single corrections officer. Meals are brought to inmates in the pod, which ideally has outside views and includes a day room, toilets, showers, and counseling and medical-exam rooms all within the locked perimeter. This minimizes the need to move inmates around the facility and gives prison officials flexibility to, say, keep members of rival gangs apart-or, as Bostwick suggests, group together inmates with shared backgrounds and problems, who can support one another, such as military veterans.

But the pod system isn't just an operational convenience; it is meant to help model normative behavior by inmates and represents the beginning of a changing philosophy, away from the punitive model that has prevailed for centuries. Many countries in Western Europe regard imprisonment itself-the loss of liberty and separation from society-adequate punishment for most criminals; terrible living conditions aren't required to reinforce the message. Over the last half-dozen years, Ram Subramanian of the Vera Institute has led three fact-finding tours of American corrections officials to prisons in Germany and Scandinavia. On one of these, in 2015, Leann Bertsch, the director of the North Dakota Department of Corrections, visited Norway's Bastøy Island prison, a model for many reformers, which claims a recidivism rate of just 16 percent (compared to around 50 percent in the U.S. federal prison system). She came away impressed enough to open a minimum-custody transitional-housing unit for selected inmates nearing release. It houses 36 residents, each in individual rooms that they can lock themselves, and includes a kitchen in which they can prepare their own meals (without knives, Bertsch notes, although "you do see those in Norway").

"Prisons don't have to be so hardened and cage-like," she points out. "I've always said about American prisons, they're efficient" at keeping people locked up "but not effective" at rehabilitating them. "What I saw in Norway was a completely different approach. They make prison as normal as possible, as much like outside as possible, to make the transition smooth."

Prison administrators can only do so much to redress the social and political failures that have created the current situation. Sperry insists that mass incarceration is inherently incompatible with the goal of rehabilitation and upholding prisoners' humanity. "Once you commit the fundamental injustice of putting somebody in prison who doesn't belong there, you can't make up for it with better conditions or design," he says. But other professionals believe architectural ideas can contribute significantly to reforming prisons and the justice system. Michael Murphy opposes mass incarceration, but he doesn't dismiss the potential of architecture to improve society. "Architecture is always shaping behavior," says Murphy, whose reimagined prison, described in the report MASS produced for Vera, is a campus-like cluster of low-rise dorms, carpeted and pine-paneled, on a grassy suburban plot. "It's on the spectrum of behavioral science and art form. No architecture more so than prisons proves that's the case."
Ben Adler and Alex Klimoski contributed reporting and research to this article. Can architects make a difference in transforming our criminal justice system? Read more about how the Vera Institute for Justice and MASS Design Group Are Reimagining Prisons in the March issue.

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No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails," Nelson Mandela once said-and who should know better?-except perhaps Dostoevsky, who said the same thing a century earlier.

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Summary:
This article by Francesca Mercurio speaks on how prison design is largely based on a region's philosophical beliefs and policies. Some places run "correctional facilities" while others call their incarceration centers prisons.
Reflection:
It is no coincidence Scandinavian countries have superior inmate structures. By not labeling them as a negative place, inmates are encouraged to come out better than before.

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Dating back to Ancient times, prisons have long been a form of punishment in human society. Today, the correctional industry is vast, complex and far from perfect. The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates, and in that country alone, there are roughly people imprisoned. Over the last 40 years, America has been an astonishing increase in prison sentences. Reasons behind this alarming spike are complicated and multifaceted; however, policies such as the War on Drugs, harsh sentencing laws, racial prejudices and a corrupt mindset towards rehabilitation have all contributed. On a global level, imprisonment rates continue to trend upwards with no downwards projection in sight.

Prison design is directly linked to punishment philosophies and policies, which differ country-to-country. For example, in some places, prisons are run as correctional facilities while others function more like rehabilitation centers. In the Western world, Scandinavian countries have been singled out for their forward-looking designs and humane treatment of inmates, which is expressed in the architecture of these facilities.

When we think of prison designs, we imagine cold concrete structures filled with steel, noise, solitude, intimidation and dreadful shades of beige. Prison designs are focused on direct supervision and security. Inmates circulate with consistent supervision and their time inside is treated as a punishment rather than an opportunity for recovery and growth. Correctional facilities call on the services of multiple governing bodies and industries, including architects and designers, in order to function. And while issues in the prison system are complex and cannot be resolved with a singular solution, it is certain that architecture plays a part in ameliorating these spaces into functioning rehabilitation centers.

Steering Away From The Institutional Feel

Take Storstrøm Prison by C.F. Møller Architects for example. This correctional facility boasts the title of the "world's most humane and re-socializing closed prison." This facility was designed to create a supportive environment for inmates as well as a secure workplace for employees. Storstrøm Prison is a high-security facility and can accommodate around 250 inmates. Unlike most prisons, this facility was built on a more human scale. By avoiding the monstrous feeling of most correctional facilities, this prison feels less institutional and fits into the surrounding environment. Secure and durable materials such as galvanized steel, concrete and bricks make up the façade and ensure the facility's max-security status. Meanwhile, its angular roof and mixed-material façade make for a less hostile environment.

Correctional Facilities Should Run More Like University Campuses

Reducing re-offending rates begins with the convicted's ability to reintegrate into society once released. At Storstrøm Prison, inmates are placed into units that consist of four to seven cells. Each unit has a living space and a shared kitchen. Inmates prepare their own meals, which encourages them to continue daily mundane tasks even while incarcerated. These units create smaller social hubs within the large facility that are meant to feel more like a university dormitory than they do a prison cell. Each individual cell comes with a fridge, a tv, a wardrobe and most importantly, a large window. These dorm-like spaces aid in bridging the gap between prison life and the outside world, and in doing so, help inmates prepare for their post-incarceration life. To encourage mental and physical health, both indoor and outdoor sports spaces were created. Both the living quarters and exercise facilities encourage and empower inmates to have agency over their lives, despite being locked up.

Another example of a campus-style facility is the West Kimberley Regional Prison. Located in Derby, Australia and designed by TAG Architects and iredale pedersen hook architects, architects in association, this facility is a culturally appropriate Indigenous prison. The site was designed more like a surveilled community rather than a prison and boasts a community-oriented feel. Inmates are given self-care responsibilities that one would normally assume in the outside world. Rehabilitation is integral to this design, and access to training and educational programs allows inmates to develop employable skills they can use once released. This facility was also designed to encourage visits from the local community. Warm and inviting visitor spaces were created to encourage frequent visits from family and friends. In turn, the increase in community engagement decreases the feeling of isolation among inmates.

Colors Matter

The lack of humanity is so stark in correctional facilities that it's no wonder such high rates of emotional, mental and physical health problems exist within these compounds. C.F Møller Architects chose a color palette that breaks away from the hues typically found in correctional facilities. Blues, oranges and even wall mosaics work together to minimize the institutional feel. Structurally integrated art and artwork are also found throughout the compound.

The design team prioritized natural light and ensured that each prison cell has its own source of daylight (while maintaining strict security). Views of the surrounding Danish countryside can be seen throughout the facility and encourage this connection to the outside world as well as aid in establishing a healthy circadian rhythm. The prioritization of natural light minimizes the need for abrasive fluorescent lights often used in correctional facilities and ultimately, creates a healthier living environment.

Building Storstrøm Prison cost over $100 million and can only hold 250 inmates. Although an exemplar of compassionate design, this model is difficult to imagine in countries with soaring incarceration rates and strapped budgets. Many professionals in the correctional industry believe prisons should never exceed one thousand inmates. When facilities are smaller, staff members have a better chance of responding to individual needs and personalities. Smaller prisons reduce the degree of isolation and anxiety amongst incarcerated members and equally, strengthen the harmony between staff and inmates.
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Unfortunately cost, politics and security take center stage over humanity. However, if the mindset shift moves toward rehabilitation and decreasing re-offending rates, positive changes can be made - and it is clear that architecture plays an important role. Justice reform is certainly an intrinsic part of erecting real change and properly addressing this system of mass incarceration. However, reimagining traditional prison models and exploring different spatial possibilities through design can aid in reestablishing a healthier prison space.

Part of the Architizer team, Francesca covers a broad scope of topics related to the built environment. Trained as an art historian at McGill University, Francesca is interested in architectural conservation and the ways designers are using historical spaces to better society today. Francesca is based in Toronto, Canada.

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Prison Design: How Architecture Can Help Restore the Humanity Lost in Correctional Facilities

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For its 11th season, Architizer has created a suite of sustainability-focused A+Awards recognizing designers working toward a better future. Start your submission today. Dating back to Ancient times, prisons have long been a form of punishment in human society. Today, the correctional industry is vast, complex and far from perfect.

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Summary:
This article writes about the difficulty designing a prison can bring.
Reflection:
Architects must try to create an efficient space to house inmates, all while trying to positively affect the psyche of those inside. This is easier said then done when taking into account budget and other outside factors.

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Prison, judicially speaking is a facility or institution that executes the legal penalties and orders that a person encounters upon committing a crime. Architecturally speaking, prison is an unusual building or a structure, constructed with the purpose of housing people (who happen to be judicial convicts) in unique ways that affect the psyche of those residing.

The conflict lies in the intent and consequences of this bizarre social housing facility. The noble intention of the judiciary for this kind of building is to transform a convict or accused positively by imposing regulations and discipline. Architecture's job is to carve out spaces that serve this intended function. But, the results say otherwise. High recidivism rates around the world and decline of mental health of inmates is an actuality we can't escape.

Imagine, walking into a room, 6ft X 2ft in size that has no colour on its walls, no window, fluorescent light bulb buzzing above your head, no fresh air, and consider getting locked in it for hours together. A dreadful adventure it shall be. But it is only half of a grotesque reality that a fraction of the population lives in for months, years and some for a lifetime. This reality manifests itself in the structures we call prisons.

These structures get constructed without much thought given to satisfy their design and spatial requirements. Rarely do these buildings meet the operative and functional requirements, let alone the psychological ones. Majorly because the individuals relocated to prisons are not considered part of the mainstream of society. Prisons stand at the peripheries of a city when it comes to infrastructure development. The question is - Why should prison and its design be of any more importance when it least concerns the free individuals that constitute society? Why should we architects and learners of architecture concern ourselves with prison design? And how is this issue relevant? To enquire this, we must look into whichever architectural features create a prison environment and how that affects those who live on both sides of a prison wall.
"In nonincarcerated space, walls tend to function as supports for embodied personhood: constitutive limits that carve places out of pure depth, both stabilizing and continuing the dynamics of stable embodied consciousness. Walls offer protection and privacy; they mediate between inner and outer space. But what is the experience of walls like in a supermax unit, where the walls have no windows and the door does not open from the inside - where the white or gray ganzfeld gives the eyes almost nothing to "gear" into, just a smooth homogeneous surface or, in older prisons, a pockmarked surface carved with traces of other inmates, now absent." To Learn About The Effects Of Architectural Attributes
We have known since forever that architecture has psychological impacts on the human mind. The built environment we live in affects our subconscious consequentially, whether we are aware of it or not. It must be of sincere interest for architects to understand whichever attributes of architecture produce what effects on human consciousness as it might make us better designers of the built environment for everyone.
To Achieve A Lower Recidivism Rate
It might seem revelatory (but is not) that prison architecture is of significance and consequence not only for prisoners but also for those of us who walk in the free world. The architecture of a prison commands those in-housed, very subtly - suggests the movement of a specific kind, creates undesired feelings and emotions. If the architectural attributes are designed to isolate inmates, restrict social practices and prevent community living, it is unwise to expect civil conduct from the same people upon getting acquitted. A building with hostile architecture cannot act as a correctional facility. Individuals that depart from such places after completing their sentences are yet again a threat to those living outside.
To Strengthen Staff - Prisoner Relationship
Inmates and the prison staff must be able to cultivate a healthy relationship with each other. To do that, policies and design of the prison must subscribe to the idea of normalcy among the incarcerated. To see an inmate for who s/he is - a fellow human with social and psychological needs. Sociologists and activists are voicing their ideas and suggesting alternative approaches for the prisons. Architects, in case, decide to join the league and contribute design-based prepositions, then it may lead to something concrete in terms of change in the life of inmates.
To Prevent Prison Violence And Help The Staff In Management
Research has shown that isolation breeds anger and violence. Architecture and authorities separate inmates from each other and staff by using both physical and psychological barriers to prevent violence. The intent and actions are contradictory. The custom of keeping the most violent prisoners in complete isolation is debatable. It has its fair share of risks and rewards. Architecture plays the critical role of a gatekeeper if nothing more, of the brutal punishment system. Instead, if architecture allowed for cordial relationships to develop, by providing spaces, openings and ambience, then as per previous research, violence in prisons could lessen.
To Protect The Human Rights Of Those Incarcerated
Relationship between isolation and violence could be disputable, but the undisputed fact is that prisoners, whether serving a sentence or waiting for trials, are all denied fundamental human rights. Healthy living conditions - water, food, sanitation, air and light are in short supply. Architecture cannot change the judicial perspective and attitude towards the incarcerated, but its role in site selection, proper operational facilities is the most critical. The correctional facility that is a mess is merely a training centre to survive in the worst living conditions.
To Care For The Mental Health Of Inmates
The most crucial and overlooked aspect of incarceration is the mental health of inmates. Architecture is also a partner in sinking the mental health of the prisoners, along with brutal and torturous discipline practices. "Part of the difficulty was architectural - the physical qualities of the unit produced memory loss, hallucinations, and blindness." If architecture can push individuals into depression and other mental disorders, it is very much capable of doing the reverse. This very potential of architecture and design must be of interest to architects if nothing more.

Architecture is not the cause of all prison-related issues, but it sure is one part of the problem and, for that alone, design in prison architecture matters and needs constant research and fresh approaches.
Sources:
Lisa Guenther, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 182.

Stephen Dillon, "Nothing stirred in the air," Places Journal , October 2020. <https://placesjournal.org/article/the-architecture-of-a-high-security-prison/>

Priyamvada is an architect, writer, and artist. She is passionate about the discourse around architecture both as a profession and as an art form. This brings her to architectural writing. She is an invested learner of film criticism, architectural theory and is attempting to practice abstraction through her paintings.

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Why design matters in Prison architecture

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Prison, judicially speaking is a facility or institution that executes the legal penalties and orders that a person encounters upon committing a crime. Architecturally speaking, prison is an unusual building or a structure, constructed with the purpose of housing people (who happen to be judicial convicts) in unique ways that affect the psyche of those residing.

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Summary:
This article published in October 2020 by Christele Harrouk speaks on how the U.S. is finally accepting that the prison system is unjust. The American Institure of Architects of New York has taken action by no longer allowing “unjust, cruel or harmful spaces of incarceration within the current United States […] such as prisons, jails, detention centers, and police stations”.
Reflection:
While U.S. prisons are still far from those in countries like Denmark and Sweden, actions are being taken to try to improve the new construction of incarceration centers. Architects will hopefully accept this new rule and help to create better environments.

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The Board of Directors of AIA New York has recently released a statement discouraging the design of criminal justice facilities that uphold the current system. Taking a stand against designing unjust, cruel, and harmful spaces of incarceration, AIA NY solicited architects to reflect on the broader social implications of their work.

Stating that " for too long, architects have been complicit in upholding intrinsic racism within the American criminal justice system [...] good design alone is not enough to remove or overcome the racism inherent within the criminal justice system", the AIA NY is taking actionable steps to address the current situation. Noting that architects are not responsible to alleviate an unfair structure and that it is beyond their scope of work, the Board of Directors has called upon American professionals of the field to no longer design " unjust, cruel or harmful spaces of incarceration within the current United States [...] such as prisons, jails, detention centers, and police stations".

We [...] urge our members to shift their efforts towards supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies based on prison reform, alternatives to imprisonment, and restorative justice. -- AIA New York.

Related Articles:
The decision, effective until more comprehensive policy changes are made on a national scale, the application of the law occurs without racial bias, is completed with several initiatives by AIA New York. The measures will include examining architecture's role in the criminal justice system, limiting construction of new criminal justice facilities, focusing on large-scale justice issues, advocating the cause so that fellow chapters adopt similar positions, etc. Read more on the AIA NY's policy here and discover AIA's code of Ethics and Professional Conduct here.

While we recognize that the United States is not the only country with a flawed justice system and that architects have been complicit in bias and mistreatment abroad as well, we hope these changes in chapter policy will further advance racial justice within our city, state, and country. -- AIA New York.

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AIANY Calls on American Architects to Stop Designing Unjust Spaces of Incarceration

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The Board of Directors of AIA New York has recently released a statement discouraging the design of criminal justice facilities that uphold the current system. Taking a stand against designing unjust, cruel, and harmful spaces of incarceration, AIA NY solicited architects to reflect on the broader social implications of their work.