Open Prison Architecture

Open Prison Architecture
Author: L. Vessella
Publisher: WIT Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 178466247X

As a part of the debate on penitentiary architecture, this book proposes a critical interpretation of the conceptual elements and design approaches involved. This proposal, more than others, may “mend” the relationship between theoretical conception and the actual building practice for a prison. The interpretation is developed from the idea that the architectural project, when it materialises in a built structure, is always the material expression of an abstract idea and of a specific vision of the world which manifests itself through the architectural consistency of the building and of the built spaces. The text presented here focuses on the creation of organisational-functional tools for open-regime minimum security structures and on the identification of architectural solutions in which the residential and domestic features of the structures prevail over the typological and distributive layouts typical of traditional penitentiary buildings. The analysis aims at identifying the main essential principles for an efficient design, such as: the location, size, spatial organisation, typology of housing space, and last but not less important, the rationalisation of the internal flows. The key elements identified are summarised into a series of general design criteria aimed at establishing an efficient relationship between the functional model and the typological structure, as well as between the building and the surrounding urban fabric.

Prison Architecture

Prison Architecture
Author: Leslie Fairweather
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1135142564

Current and future prison designs are examined in this book, within the government's prison building programme, and the confines of current penal philosophies and legislation. America has led the way in prison design, with two main types of architecture predominating: radial layouts (outside cells with windows) and linear blocks (inside cells with grilles). Now, 'new' generation prisons (central association surrounded by small groups of cells) look set to become the fashion. But are they a better answer, and should they be copied worldwide before we know? Architects and administrators show in this book the designs of these 'new generation' prisons and assess their impact. Most countries in central Europe also have a rising crime rate and a demand for new prisons. Contributions from significant architects from the UK, Europe and America comment on these issues. Other topics within the book are: setting current prison architecture and design against an historical setting; looking at penal ideas and prison architecture and design in the post-war period; the psychological effects of the prison environment; the influence of technology and design on security management; and how prison architecture and design can be more flexible and innovative.

Forms of Constraint

Forms of Constraint
Author: Norman Bruce Johnston
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Prisons
ISBN: 9780252074011

Rigorously documented and generously illustrated, Forms of constraint surveys prison architecture from earliest times to the present. Embedding his discussion of architectural detail in a history of social ideas about prisoners and imprisonment, criminologist Norman Johnston considers the architectural design and features of prisons in light of the purposes they were meant to serve. Johnston describes the preferred types of prison layout in various eras and locations. He assesses the success or failure of building elements in fulfilling goals such as prisoner isolation, segregation by gender or by severity of crime, adequate hygiene, rehabilitative activities, and surveillance of prisoners and guards. As goals and the consequent demands on the physical structure changed, new templates for the ideal prison emerged. Johnston traces the gradual rise of prison design as an architectural specialty and profiles the early figures and organizations devoted to the field, including William Blackburn, the first architect to specialize in prison design; John Haviland, architect of the influential Pennsylvania prison style; and Jeremy and Samuel Bentham, who conceived the much-discussed but never built Panopticon. He describes changes in prison design as architecture and penal philosophy leadership passed from one country to another. He also provides broad coverage of penal methods and prison architecture around the world.

Critical Prison Design

Critical Prison Design
Author: Roger Paez
Publisher: Actar D, Inc.
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2022-03-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 163840853X

The newly built Mas d'Enric penitentiary sparks a series of reflections on architecture's role in the problematic subject of prison design. The prison is an uncomfortable institution and its architecture is often subjugated to technocratic criteria. This servility forces the prison out of the socio-cultural realm where it belongs, thus erasing it from public discourse. "Mas d'Enric" is a new penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and posits architecture as a medium to critically rethink contemporary prison buildings. The discussion is enriched by contributions from a number of influential architects and architectural theorists, and is complemented by original work in film, photography, literature, sculpture and visual arts.

Carceral Geography

Carceral Geography
Author: Dominique Moran
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317169786

The ’punitive turn’ has brought about new ways of thinking about geography and the state, and has highlighted spaces of incarceration as a new terrain for exploration by geographers. Carceral geography offers a geographical perspective on incarceration, and this volume accordingly tracks the ideas, practices and engagements that have shaped the development of this new and vibrant subdiscipline, and scopes out future research directions. By conveying a sense of the debates, directions, and threads within the field of carceral geography, it traces the inner workings of this dynamic field, its synergies with criminology and prison sociology, and its likely future trajectories. Synthesizing existing work in carceral geography, and exploring the future directions it might take, the book develops a notion of the ’carceral’ as spatial, emplaced, mobile, embodied and affective.

Paths to Prison

Paths to Prison
Author: Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2020-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781941332665

Paths to Prison aims to expand the ways the built environment's relationship to and participation in the carceral state is understood in architecture. The collected essays implicate architecture in the more longstanding and pervasive legacies of racialized coercion in the United States.

The Environmental Psychology of Prisons and Jails

The Environmental Psychology of Prisons and Jails
Author: Richard E. Wener
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2012-06-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1107376017

This book distils thirty years of research on the impacts of jail and prison environments. The research program began with evaluations of new jails that were created by the US Bureau of Prisons, which had a novel design intended to provide a non-traditional and safe environment for pre-trial inmates and documented the stunning success of these jails in reducing tension and violence. This book uses assessments of this new model as a basis for considering the nature of environment and behavior in correctional settings and more broadly in all human settings. It provides a critical review of research on jail environments and of specific issues critical to the way they are experienced and places them in historical and theoretical context. It presents a contextual model for the way environment influences the chance of violence.

The Human Cage

The Human Cage
Author: Norman Bruce Johnston
Publisher: Walker
Total Pages: 68
Release: 1973-01-01
Genre: Prisons
ISBN: 9780802704245

Stateville

Stateville
Author: James B. Jacobs
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2015-07-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022621883X

Stateville penitentiary in Illinois has housed some of Chicago's most infamous criminals and was proclaimed to be "the world's toughest prison" by Joseph Ragen, Stateville's powerful warden from 1936 to 1961. It shares with Attica, San Quentin, and Jackson the notoriety of being one of the maximum security prisons that has shaped the public's conception of imprisonment. In Stateville James B. Jacobs, a sociologist and legal scholar, presents the first historical examination of a total prison organization—administrators, guards, prisoners, and special interest groups. Jacobs applies Edward Shils's interpretation of the dynamics of mass society in order to explain the dramatic events of the past quarter century that have permanently altered Stateville's structure. With the extension of civil rights to previously marginal groups such as racial minorities, the poor, and, ultimately, the incarcerated, prisons have moved from society's periphery toward its center. Accordingly Stateville's control mechanisms became less authoritarian and more legalistic and bureaucratic. As prisoners' rights increased, the preogatives of the staff were sharply curtailed. By the early 1970s the administration proved incapable of dealing with politicized gangs, proliferating interest groups, unionized guards, and interventionist courts. In addition to extensive archival research, Jacobs spent many months freely interacting with the prisoners, guards, and administrators at Stateville. His lucid presentation of Stateville's troubled history will provide fascinating reading for a wide audience of concerned readers. ". . . [an] impressive study of a complex social system."—Isidore Silver, Library Journal

Corrections and Collections

Corrections and Collections
Author: Joe Day
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-08-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1135040842

America holds more than two million inmates in its prisons and jails, and hosts more than two million daily visits to museums, figures which represent a ten-fold increase in the last twenty-five years. Corrections and Collections explores and connects these two massive expansions in our built environment. Author Joe Day shows how institutions of discipline and exhibition have replaced malls and office towers as the anchor tenants of U.S. cities. Prisons and museums, though diametrically opposed in terms of public engagement, class representation, and civic pride, are complementary structures, employing related spatial and visual tactics to secure and array problematic citizens or priceless treasures. Our recent demand for museums and prisons has encouraged architects to be innovative with their design, and experimental with their scale and distribution through our cities. Contemporary museums are the petri dishes of advanced architectural speculation; prisons remain the staging grounds for every new technology of constraint and oversight. Now that criminal and creative transgression are America’s defining civic priorities, Corrections and Collections will recalibrate your assumptions about art, architecture, and urban design.