Abigail Allely

“… This national understanding of crime furthers the gap between inmates and society, turning it into a chasm often too broad to cross over. Even when inmates are no longer held by the physical manifestation of this gap, they emotionally understand it through the distance from “normal” society experienced upon re-entry.

Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”. In what ways are our nation’s prisons shaping the people they hold? The architecture of a space implies the level of dignity and respect its designers and funders feel for its occupants. When you enter a space that hasn’t been designed with a respect for your needs, it is not always initially seen, but it is felt. 

There are currently at least  13 states without universal A/C  in their prisons. Many of these prisons reside in states which record the highest temperatures in the nation. Without this physical need met, there is a psychological understanding by prisoners that they must not deserve this kind of basic comfort, that they are unworthy of it. Many solitary confinement cells also lack access to natural light, the effect of which is known to be psychologically harmful to humans. If prisons are locking away already damaged people and further subjecting them to damaging environments, who wins? Where is the goal of reform then?

Many prisons have been designed with security as a primary goal. While this is an essential component, it is not the only one. Prisoners are sent to a specific prison based on their perceived tendencies toward violence, not their needs for treatment or rehabilitation. Prisons are designed for and labeled by their security level: minimum, medium, and maximum in state prisons, with 2 additional levels in federal prison. Because of this, not all prisons are equally equipped to treat inmates with drug and alcohol addictions, or mental health issues. As of December 2018, the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) reported that “74% [of women held by the DOC] were open mental health cases, 15% had a serious mental illness (SMI), and 56% were on psychotropic medication”. However, an inmate’s potential for change through treatment is outweighed by their present expression of disfunction. 

This issue of proximal treatment facilities isn’t exclusive to the prison system. It’s also seen in the methamphetamine crisis in many rural communities, which has in many ways flowed into the mass incarceration system because of the War on Drugs. In Policing Methamphetamine, Garriott states, “The closest thing to inpatient treatment available to those ensnared in the criminal justice system was the program at the regional jail, but it served only 8 inmates at the time, and access was competitive” (71). For many addicts in these communities their best chance at getting clean is by being arrested and hoping they receive one of those treatment slots. 

The idea of “spatial justice” has garnered discussion in recent years among elite academia. Here at Yale, there was a course offered in 2017 by the famous architect Frank Gehry, which centered around a project designing a more equitable prison in Connecticut. Also in 2017, at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Dana McKinney presented a thesis centered around the idea that design could help solve the cycles of mass incarceration and poverty. This shift in the conversation about architecture in the US holds great power to not only change the prison system, but to further refine how we look at the physical manifestations of inequality across multiple areas. Isabel Height has worked internationally for 35 years to advise countries on how they develop and build prisons. She once said, “Architecture sends a silent message to everyone walking into any place. It tells you what to expect and where the limits of behavior are”. 

There has been much discussion in recent years over Norway’s progressive prison system, with Halden Fengsel as its north star. Halden has been referred to as the world’s most humane prison by Time Magazine, but has also been accused of acting as a 5-star resort for criminals. On first glance you would think that a prison where inmates have private rooms, bathrooms, and even places to cook would be reserved for only non-violent or first time offenders. However, the opposite is true: nearly ½ of the population at Halden has committed a violent crime. Hans Henrik Hoilund, one of the principal architects for the Halden project said, “The most important thing is that the prison looks as much like the outside world as possible.” The easy contradiction to this would be that the situation many people come from doesn’t look as pristine, but I would argue two points in its defense. First, it’s based on the idea that prisons should prepare inmates for returning to society, which should always be a primary goal. Secondly, even if it doesn’t look like the reality that many inmates came from, or will return to, it gives them a vision of what their life could be like. Hope is a powerful motivator for change. Simply imagining how your life can be different after release is one thing, but having the opportunity to live it is something else.  

Privacy reinforces respect between prisoners and guards. At the Berwyn Prison in Wales, for example, prisoners are allowed to lock cell doors from the inside in order to give a sense of ownership over their space. Guards have been required to knock before entering to further this olive branch of mutual respect. It’s small gestures, and reinterpretations of existing design elements that have the opportunity to create a powerful shift in the psychological landscape of prisons. 

In what ways are our prison walls furthering stereotypes and limiting the potential for reform and hope? What message is a windowless cell spreading about the value the US places on human life, even one who has done harm to others? At the risk of putting too many quotes in close proximity to each other I add one more: “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails,” Nelson Mandela.

As nice as it would be, the institutional expression of inequality won’t be brought down by a single arrow. Just as there are both physical and psychological reasons people remain imprisoned, there is both institutional and individual fault in the cycle of mass incarceration. There is much work being done in the effort of reform, both in the prison system and in communities. As this work continues, we must keep asking, “where are the gaps?”. It’s through innovative conversations, like the discussion of “spacial justice” in the field of architecture, that strategic redesigns can be made in the system. “

Bibliography:

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, 2010.

Camacho, Alicia Schmidt. “Hailing the Twelve Million.” Social Text, vol. 28, no. 4, 2010, pp. 1–24., doi:10.1215/01642472-2010-008.

Collins, Jane Lou., and Victoria Mayer. Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom in the Low-Wage Labor Market. University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Garriott, William Campbell. Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in Rural America. New York University Press, 2011.

Hobbs, Jeff. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: a Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League. Large Print Press, 2015.

Walley, Christine J. Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 2013.