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  • Prison architecture design and technology

Prison architecture, design and technology

With new, giant prisons being built to house up to 2,500 inmates and the prison population at nearly 86,000, arguably there has never been a more important time to study prisons and punishment. Why is society's cultural attachment to the prison seemingly unshakeable? Are new, modern prisons more effective and more efficient than old Victorian gaols? And what are the most pressing challenges facing the Ministry of Justice as it contemplates commissioning nine new prisons (five of which are to be constructed by 2020)?

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), this research project sought to determine the impact that the architecture, design and spatial organisation of prisons has on the experience of imprisonment, on the behaviour of those who occupy and move through carceral spaces and on prison staff. Professor Yvonne Jewkes was the principal investigator for the project entitled 'Fear-suffused environments’ or potential to rehabilitate? Prison architecture, design and technology and the lived experience of carceral spaces', collaborating with Dr Dominique Moran from the University of Birmingham. In addition, the project secured funding for a Postdoctoral Research Associate (Dr Jennifer Turner) and for a PhD studentship (Ellie Slee). The PhD studentship extended the reach of the project to a new and different group – members of local communities which surround prisons – to gain insight into the largely unexplored subject of the specific impact of prison architecture and aesthetics on those who live within the immediate vicinity of prisons.

Project timescale

The research project commenced on 1 January 2014 and ended on 30 June 2017.

If we create prisons that provide opportunities for education and meaningful work and also promote values such as empathy, trust and hope, we have a real chance not only of transforming lives, but of reversing the inexorable rising tide of prisoner numbers that we have seen in the UK over the last 35 years.

Project objectives

This research project addressed two overarching questions:

  • how are penal aims and philosophies (that is, what prison is 'for') expressed in prison architecture and design?
  • how effective is prison architecture, design and technology (ADT) in conveying and delivering that penal purpose?

The study sought to meet its objectives by:

  • studying the process of designing new prison buildings in order to understand what it is that architects are asked to deliver and how they achieve this
  • studying ADT's impact and effects on a range of end users and in relation to a number of measures, including:
    • prisoners' quality of life and wellbeing
    • perceptions of penal legitimacy
    • compliance with the regime
    • prisoner-staff relations
    • staff work satisfaction

The project focused on newly built UK prisons and contrasted these with prisons in Norway and Denmark, where penal philosophies differ greatly from those in the UK. The ultimate aim of the research is to improve understanding and influence future prison design strategy.

Read Professor Yvonne Jewkes' article in The Conversation

 

Project images

Yvonne-Jewkes-prison-3

Wandsworth prison, UK

Yvonne-Jewkes-prison-cell

Wandsworth prison, UK

Yvonne-Jewkes-prison

Halden prison, Norway

Yvonne-Jewkes-prison-2

Halden prison, Norway

Project findings and impact

The project is ongoing; findings, output and impact will be updated in due course.

During the project, Professor Yvonne Jewkes and Dr Hannah Thurston contributed to the Rehabilitation by Design study, calling for new prisons to provide conditions similar to living conditions in society.

Professor Jewkes spoke at Australia’s University of Melbourne, where she is a visiting Honorary Professor, on 24 November 2016. Both the UK and Australia are following the USA in building larger prisons while countries in many parts of Europe are adamant that smaller prisons are preferable. Drawing on the findings of her current research, Professor Jewkes discussed the rationales behind current prison expansion and modernisation programmes.

The Symposium on Prison Architecture and Design in the Context of Reform marks the end of this major, international ESRC-funded research study. Reflecting the scope of the three-year study, the symposium will focus on prison planning, design and modernisation in England & Wales, Scotland, Norway and Denmark. Speakers and delegates will be a mixture of academic researchers with a particular interest in prisons and imprisonment, architects who have designed custodial facilities, prison managers and senior corrections and justice personnel.

RIBA-flyer

Find out more about this upcoming symposium on 2 June 2017 at the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Research team

Professor Yvonne Jewkes

Dr Jennifer Turner

Output

Jewkes, Y. and Moran, D. (in press) ‘Criminology, carceral geography and prison architecture’, in A. Liebling, S. Maruna and L. McAra (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Criminology 6th edition, Oxford: Oxford University

Jewkes, Y., Moran, D. and Slee, E. (in press) ‘The visual retreat of the prison: non-places for non-people’, in M. Brown and E. Carrabine (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Visual Criminology, Abingdon: Routledge

Moran, D., Turner, J. and Jewkes, Y. (2016) ‘Becoming Big Things: Building events and the architectural geographies of incarceration in England and Wales’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Moran, D., Jewkes, Y. and Turner, J (2016) ‘Prison architecture and carceral space’ in Y. Jewkes, B. Crewe and J. Bennett (Eds.) Handbook on Prisons, revised 2nd edition, Abingdon: Routledge

Grant, E. and Jewkes, Y. (2015) ‘Designs on punishment: evolving models of spatial confinement in Australia and the USA’ The Prison Journal 95 (2) 223-243

Moran, D. and Jewkes, Y. (2015) ‘Linking the carceral and the punitive state: Researching prison architecture, design, technology and the lived experience of carceral space’ Annales de Géographie 702-703: 163-184.

Jewkes, Y. and Moran, D. (2015) ‘The paradox of the “green” prison: sustaining the environment or sustaining the penal complex?’ Theoretical Criminology

Moran, D (2015) ‘Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration’ Ashgate, Farnham

Jewkes, Y. (2015) ‘Fear-suffused hell-holes: the architecture of extreme punishment’ in K. Reiter and A. Koenig (eds.) Extraordinary Punishment: An Empirical Look at Administrative Black Holes in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, London: Palgrave

Jewkes, Y. (2014) ‘Afterword: Abolishing the Architecture and Alphabet of Fear’ in Mathiesen, T. The Politics of Abolition Revisited, Oslo: Norwegian Universities Press

Moran, D. and Jewkes, Y. (2014) ‘Green’ Prisons: Rethinking the ‘Sustainability’ of the Carceral Estate Annual Special Issue Social Geography ‘Criminality and carcerality across boundaries’: Geogr. Helv., 69, 345-353.

Turner, J. (2014) Introduction: Criminality and Carcerality Across Boundaries Annual Special Issue Social Geography ‘Criminality and carcerality across boundaries’: Geogr. Helv., 69, 321-323.

Jewkes, Y. and Moran, D. (2014) Should prison architecture be brutal, bland or beautiful?, Justice Matters, 2 (1) 8-10.

Jewkes, Y. and Moran, D. (2014) ‘Bad design breeds violence in sterile megaprisons’, The Conversation, 31 January 2014

Jewkes, Y. (2014) ‘Punishment in black and white: Penal ‘hell-holes’, popular media and mass incarceration’, Atlantic Journal of Communication special issue on ‘Reframing Race and Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration’ 22 (1): 42-60

Jewkes, Y. (2014) ‘An Introduction to “doing prison research differently’, Qualitative Inquiry 20 (5)

Jewkes, Y. (2013) ‘Penitentiary systems in the era of Internet services’, Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Science, 5 (3) 125-133.

Jewkes, Y. (2013) ‘Penal aesthetics and the pains of imprisonment’ in J. Simon, N. Temple and R. Tobe (eds.) Architecture and Justice, Farnham: Ashgate

Jewkes, Y. (2013) ‘On carceral space and agency’, in D. Moran, N. Gill and D. Conlon, (eds.) Carceral Spaces: Mobility & Agency in Imprisonment & Migrant Detention, Farnham: Ashgate

Presentations

Jewkes, Y, (2017) Symposium on Prison Architecture and Design in the Context of Reform, 2 June

Jewkes, Y. (2016) Keynote speaker, Westminster Legal Policy Forum Keynote Seminar, London, ‘Priorities for prisons policy in England and Wales - the context for reform’, 18 April

Jewkes, Y. (2016) Keynote speaker, EuroPris – Prisons of the Future workshop, The Hague Netherlands, ‘Prisons and humanity’, 3 March

Jewkes, Y. (2015) Invited speaker, University of Birmingham Law School, ‘ Prison architecture, design and technology and the lived experience of carceral space’, 27 November

Jewkes, Y. (2015) Plenary speaker, International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) Melbourne, Australia, ‘Designing punishment: balancing security, creativity and humanity in contemporary correctional systems’, 30 October 

Jewkes, Y., Moran, D. and Turner, J. (2015) Presentation/workshop to NOMS Wales, Wrexham, North Wales, 14 April 

Turner, J. (2015) ‘Getting the green light for a grey area: the relationship between security, aesthetics and well-being in custodial space’ at Health and Wellbeing in Prison Populations Workshop, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, 11 September.

Jewkes, Y., Moran, D. and Turner, J. (2015) Chair and panellists: A conversation: criminology and carceral geography at The Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, Porto, 2-5 September.

Jewkes, Y., Moran, D. and Turner, J. (2015) ‘Prison architecture, design and technology: “fear-suffused environments” or potential to rehabilitate?’ at The Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, Porto, 2-5 September.

Turner, J., Moran, D. and Jewkes, Y. ‘Shaping ‘inhabitation’: the complexities of prison design and prison building’ at The Nordic Geographers Meeting, Tallinn, 15-19 June. 

Turner, J., Moran, D. and Jewkes, Y. ‘Components of the carceral: The lived experience of prison design’ at The Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, IL, 21-25 April (with Dominique Moran and Yvonne Jewkes).

Moran, D., Turner, J. and Jewkes, Y. ‘Becoming big things: Building events and the architectural geographies of incarceration in England and Wales’ at The Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, IL, 21-25 April.

Turner, J., Moran, D. and Jewkes, Y. ‘From piss pots to paint pots: Prison design and carceral space’ at ESC Working Group, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, 27 March 2015.

Jewkes, Y. ‘Designing prisons, competing perspectives: who is the “client” in the commissioning process?’ KRUS (Correctional Service of Norway), 22 January 2015.

Jewkes, Y. ‘Prison Architecture, Design and Technology’ Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, London, 28 January 2015

Jewkes, Y. and Moran, D. ‘Designing punishment: competing tensions in prison architecture, design and technology’, CCR, University of Sheffield Law School, 3 December 2014.

Jewkes, Y. and Moran, D. ‘Prison architects as moral agents: is it possible to design a ‘healthy’ prison?, ASC conference, San Francisco, USA, 19 November 2014.

Jewkes, Y. ‘The visual aesthetics and an-aesthetics of prison architecture and design’, ASC conference, San Francisco, USA, 19 November 2014.

Moran, D. ‘Troubling Institutions: Prisons and the Design of Carceral Space’, Troubling Institutions workshop, University of Glasgow, 11 November 2014.

Jewkes, Y. ‘Fear-suffused environments: the visual aesthetics and an-aesthetics of prison architecture and design’, ESRC Visual Criminology seminar series, Keele University, 24 October 2014.

Jewkes, Y. ‘The architect’s dilemma: Should new prisons be brutal, bland or beautiful?’, ANZSOC conference, University of Sydney, Australia, October 2014.

Jewkes, Y. Griffith University Brisbane, Australia, ‘Prison architects as moral agents: is it possible to design a ‘healthy’ high-security prison?’, 29 September 2014.

Moran, D. ‘Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration’, Presentation to the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, March 2014.

Jewkes, Y. ‘The new architecture of incarceration: humane punishment, hidden pain?’, International keynote speech, Informa Prison Planning & Design conference, Melbourne, Australia, December 2013

Jewkes, Y. ‘Prison architecture, design and technology: a comparative approach’, European Society of Criminology conference, Budapest, Hungary, September 2013.

Media

Dominique Moran at the Curious Connections: Design and Punishment event at the Tower of London [14 April 2015] 

Yvonne Jewkes on The Design Dimension, BBC Radio 4 [broadcast Tuesday 18 November 2014] 

Yvonne Jewkes in The Conversation  

Yvonne Jewkes in The Independent, How to build better prisons: New designs and a new look at their purpose [7 December 2015]

Partners

Dr Dominique Moran, University of Birmingham

Dr Jen Turner, University of Leicester

Funder

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), £728,214.

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