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Book Review: Prison architecture: Policy, design and experience

As Stephen Shaw notes in his concluding chapter to this volume which has stemmed from a 1998 symposium on prisons architecture, this subject has been of little interest to academics, reformers and administrators (with one or two exceptions, such as the editors of this volume). This, I think, is a great pity. For academics, as Robin Evans (1982) beautifully illustrated, the architecture of nineteenth century prisons is just as an important key to understanding their place in modern society as their internal arrangements. Indeed, given the symbolism attached to the display of premodern and early nineteenth century penal arrangements in Foucault’s (1978) Discipline and punish, it now seems regrettable that this theme was not followed through in the book’s subsequent exposition of the birth of the prison. For historians, prison architecture has the potential to be understood as an important feature of our cultural heritage as, in relation to the United Kingdom, Allan Brodie and colleagues (Brodie, Croom and Davies, 1999) have skilfully demonstrated. For reformers and administrators there is much to be learned from past architectural and design mistakes. The now notorious Risley prison, built in the north of England in the 1960s, was intended to throw off the dark, gloomy legacy of Victorian prisons building. Smaller cells became the order of the day in this era of prison building, based on the assumption that their inhabitants would spend most of the day outside of them – working, learning, training and so on, as befits the expectations of a humane prisons programme in a civilized society such as Britain. If the architects at work on these designs are not to be blamed for the subsequent cramming of three, sometimes four prisoners into one of these cells for up to 23 hours a day as a result of the unanticipated growth of the prison population in the 1970s and 1980s, they must surely take some responsibility for not bothering to ask pertinent questions about sanitary and hygiene arrangements when these prisons were being designed. In addition, architectural design is of considerable importance to situational crime prevention within the prison, as Weser notes: ‘when inmates feel safe, the likelihood of violent behaviour is lessened’ (p. 52). But here too, ‘there has been little discussion of the role of design in influencing the likelihood of inmates’ violent behaviour’ (p. 48). So will this book kindle interest where there has been so little before? I am not sure, unfortunately, particularly in relation to the stimulation of academic interest, since the standard of papers presented here is something of a mixed bag. There is a tendency in some for the obvious to be stated; for example, ‘personal safety is of prime importance to inmates, staff and other prison users, and its provision is a basic duty of the prison authorities . . .’ (p. 45). Elsewhere, important issues are raised, but because of the rather narrow range of contributors (an imbalance perhaps between academics and those from the policy and prison building and design sectors) are not developed as they have the potential to be. For example, the chapter by Derbyshire on ‘Architects and prison experience’ notes that in the United States, ‘since many of the federal prisons are located in city centres, the architects take great care to establish an attractive public interface, balancing the need for the building to look approachable with the necessary symbols of incarceration and acknowledging demands of civic pride in sensitive urban design’ (p. 56). Does this mean, then, that there is a greater tolerance for the visibility of prison in urban America than in the rest of the English-speaking world, where prison building PUNISHMENT AND SOCIETY 7(1)