The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design (Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology)

Review

“Asking the question ‘what works in prison design’ and often in response chronicling what doesn't, this comprehensive volume provides a detailed and nuanced review of the progression of penal architecture over the last two hundred years culminating in recent designs centred around a utopian vision of the rehabilitative institution. With a mirage of individual perspectives carefully selected and combined into this wide-ranging handbook, it is set to become a key reference source for researchers, architects and custodial jurisdictions going forward.” (Alex Newman, RAIA B.Arch BA Arch, Director, Xsquared Architects, Australia)“Prison design is a moral maze, plagued by questions such as whether such a thing as a good prison is even possible. Yvonne Jewkes and Dominique Moran, Britain's pre-eminent prison scholars team up with experts from the US, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill and Victor St John to edit a compendium of cross-disciplinary knowledge that explores these questions withrigour and insight. Historically, prison design has been selective about the critical theories that it has attempted to incorporate so that even well-intentioned strategies have meant that human misery is baked into the architecture of one of the least adaptable types of building. By bringing together contributions from a much broader range of knowledge than ever before a new, more intellectually agile approach emerges that offers practical methods of inquiry rather than solutions. Like all good design, the further one takes this inquisitive approach, the more sophisticated and responsive the outcome will be. Throughout, the question of whether designing an inherently harmful space in a better way is a good or bad thing is at the fore. Whatever the reader's conclusion, they should not reach it before reading this book.” (Roland Karthaus, Associate Professor in Architecture, University of East London, UK)“The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design offers a broad and varied set of perspectives on the design of detention environments. It includes many chapters that need to be read by anyone who is a designer of prisons, or who hires and sets policy for such facilities. Chapters by important scholars address difficulties encountered in historical and current prison design (such as That Time We Tried to Build the Perfect Prison, What works least, Architecture and Design of the Communist and Post-Communist Prison) as well as thoughtful essays on positive approaches (The Creative Prison Revisited, Designing a Rehabilitative Prison Environment, Guidelines for Designing Health-Promoting Correctional Environments). The various sections of this volume consider why detention facilities are the way they are, how they can be evaluated and studied, and how they can be made better. They include primary data from case studies as well as literature reviews and conceptual models. Issues critical to environment and behavior in total institutions are addressed,such as the importance of access to nature for people in restrictive settings. Since incarceration is often the end product of the way western legal and justice systems operate, an important chapter also considers an alternative approach of rehabilitative justice. Questions about designing for youth and considerations of gender in detention facilities have been too little considered in the design-research literature, so the attention given to these here is very welcome. Youth facility issues are the focus of three chapters, and another discusses “gender inconsiderations of carceral space.” This book offers the kind of thoughtful discussion about difficult issues that goes beyond simple prescriptions for spatial layout and features, in ways that should be important to anyone who is interested in how we incarcerate people - which is really all of us as citizen-owners of these facilities.” (Richard Wener, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Environmental Psychology, Tandon School of Engineering,New York University, USA and author of The Environmental Psychology of Prisons and Jails)

From the Back Cover

This handbook brings together expertise from a range of disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts to address a key question facing prison policymakers, architects and designers – what kind of carceral environments foster wellbeing, i.e. deliver a rehabilitative, therapeutic environment, or other ‘positive’ outcomes?The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design offers insights into the construction of custodial facilities, alongside consideration of the critical questions any policymaker should ask in commissioning the building of a site for human containment. Chapters present experience from Australia, Chile, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – jurisdictions which vary widely in terms of the history and development of their prison systems, their punitive philosophies, and the nature of their public discourse about the role and purpose of imprisonment, to offer readers theories, frameworks, historical accounts, design approaches, methodological strategies, empirical research, and practical approaches.Dominique Moran is Professor of Carceral Geography in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. Yvonne Jewkes is Professor of Criminology at the University of Bath and Honorary Visiting Professor of Criminology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill is Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, USA. Victor St. John is Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Saint Louis University, USA.