Abstract
Two frameworks have been offered to provide general standards of practice for those designing custodial facilities. O-T-I design—open, transparent, and inclusive—is an early-stage theoretical framework tying perceptions of spatial authorities and the justness of their spaces to perceived “welcomeness,” while the S-L-S framework was introduced to connect correctional space, layout, and sensory landscape to overall psychological wellbeing. The purpose of these undertakings was to provide custodial architects a design guide to organize their work and policymakers a rubric by which to evaluate it. This chapter presents these frameworks alongside each other for the first time and draws broadly from theories of affective architecture to describe the practice of dignified design. Bridging partially between its orientation as a principled design concept and policymakers’ need for evidentiary support, here dignified design practice is juxtaposed against the experiential outcomes of past prison design as told through a set of interviews with former jail and prison detainees. Moreover, its promise is explored in qualitative interviewing with policymakers involved in recent reforms of jail and prison architecture. Finally, the chapter concludes by proposing a multimodal research agenda to develop dignified design practice and its standards in collaboration across academic disciplines and jurisdictional context.
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Notes
- 1.
The United States has two primary categories of facilities for penological custody: “Jails” hold individuals awaiting adjudication but likely to abscond, individuals serving carceral sentences of under one year, and individuals whose trials have concluded but who await transfer to a prison. “Prisons” house those with sentences longer than one year. Typically, jails are controlled by local jurisdictions while prisons are controlled by state or national authorities.
- 2.
SARS-CoV-2 is one of many coronaviruses, each distinguished by crown-like formations of spikes seen when under microscopic view (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020a). It was only discovered in 2019, in Wuhan, China, hence “the novel coronavirus.” It was officially named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, because this particular coronavirus (i.e. “CoV”) causes a form of severe acute respiratory syndrome and is related, but distinct from, the coronavirus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak (hence “2,” the second) (World Health Organization, 2022). Once contracted, its co-occurring conditions (i.e. syndrome) include fever, chills, coughing, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, aching, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, diarrhoea (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020b). This disease (i.e. the “dis” “ease” of experiencing this syndrome) was officially named “COVID-19” by the World Health Organization on February 11, 2020b (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020b; COVID stands for coronavirus disease). An infected person typically experiences one, several, or none of these (i.e. is “asymptomatic”). Even in the case where symptoms are lacking, the virus is extremely contagious, making the close quarters of a jail or prison a veritable petri dish.
- 3.
I use “American” to reference those associated with the United States. Though conforming to widespread use, I acknowledge that the Americas are comprised of two continents, North and South, and that the United States occupies only one piece of one of these.
- 4.
Here and throughout, I use the common British and European parlance of “custodial” over “correctional” as an adjective for carceral places.
- 5.
Here, “prosocial” refers to behaviour that supports and reifies social norms collectively believed to assure public, relational, and individual welfare.
- 6.
Equal dignity is among the first rights granted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, n.d.).
- 7.
Often erroneously conflated with “emotion,” affect is instead a positive or negative psychological state (i.e., mood) elicited when focused on another entity (Adey, 2008; Estrada et al., 1994). No universally accepted definition of affect exists, though it is described as more lasting than “emotion.” Emotions are short-term mental states, comprised of various combinations along arousal and pleasure scales (Dazkir & Read, 2012).
- 8.
This definition of “placial justice” represents a terminological evolution in St. John and Blount-Hill’s work. Earlier, they had encompassed the concept within the notion of spatial justice: “A spatial justice perspective considers how space can be designed to respect human dignity, enhance perceptions of fairness and facilitate substantive justice” (St. John & Blount-Hill, 2018, p. 29). Understanding spatial justice this way departed from traditional spatial justice theorists within human geography. For example, Soja (2009: 2) defines spatial justice as “fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them.” The use of placial justice was developed to avoid confusion and to focus on place rather than space.
- 9.
This refers to the story told in the Biblical verses of Luke 15: 11–24:
A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me’ …. Not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found’. (BibleGateway, 2020)
- 10.
At the time of the interview, interviewees assigned themselves a pseudonym. However, not all of these were captured in transcripts or recordings. I have assigned unique pseudonyms to all interviewees. In addition, light editing has been done for some quotations for clarity.
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Blount-Hill, KL. (2023). Towards a Dignified Design: O-T-I, S-L-S, and Experience in Carceral Space. In: Moran, D., Jewkes, Y., Blount-Hill, KL., St. John, V. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11972-9_12
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