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Prisons With a Human Face
| Article
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20163 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1992 |
1,876 Words |
| Author
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Shira Rosan
Shira Rosan is a practicing architect and architectural writer
currently living in New York. |
Amid a general construction industry slowdown, one area that has not lost the momentum it picked up in the 1980s is the construction of correctional facilities. The National Council on Crime and Delinquency predicts that the number of inmates nationwide will reach two million by 1995. Since 1986, five billion dollars have been spent by municipalities, counties, states, and the federal government on the construction of prisons and jails. For such an investment, what are we asking for and what are we getting? To bring perspective to this question, I will look at the history of incarceration and examine four recent jails and one prison to see how architects are responding to the issues involved.
There is a historical American ambivalence toward crime, reflected in ambivalence toward the treatment of criminals. As a nation of immigrants with differing cultural norms, we are a society of law, not consensus. But the immigrants who formed our national character were attracted here by our tradition of individual freedom. Flowing through the American character is a strong dislike of coercion, including an undercurrent of admiration for the outlaw.
Little wonder, then, that we seem unable to decide even on the purpose of incarceration. Revenge, punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, and the protection of society have all been put forward as the corrections system's primary justification. Some of these purposes are complementary, some contradictory. An emphasis on any one of them influences correctional attitudes and administrative methods, and therefore correctional architecture.
Until the sixteenth century, incarceration was largely reserved for those awaiting trial; it was rarely used as punishment. Punishment was physical--including flogging, maiming, or death--or, for political crimes, exile. The Enlightenment brought about the idea that criminals should be treated more humanely; this attitude culminated, in the United States, with Article VIII of the Bill of Rights, forbidding "cruel and unusual punishment." Imprisonment seemed to satisfy this requirement, and the modern prison system was born.
Although early prisons consisted of large undivided rooms where prisoners were confined regardless of sex, age, crime, or character, the prison reform movement of the 1820s created what are now known as first-generation prisons: Linear cellblocks with single cells back-to-back on corridors radiated from a central control and administrative unit. The visual and physical separation of guards from inmates distinguishes prisons of this
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