When you think of a jail, you don’t typically connect it to a hospital. Even though justice and healthcare designers deliver different building types, they often focus on the same mission: to create an environment that can have positive outcomes on behavior and state of mind. Both evaluate how design decisions can positively influence those who will occupy the spaces. Both consider healing environments that access ample natural light, good indoor air quality and connection to the outdoors as elements proven to benefit those within it. These elements, in addition to thermal comfort, acoustics, water, nourishment and community, make up the focus of healthy building design.
From a corrections or detention standpoint, the benefits of designing for dignity results in lower stress levels for the offenders and staff, which has the residual benefit of better behavior and an increase in the offenders’ ability to focus on rehabilitative programs offered.
Over the past three decades, the “tough on crime” mindset and direction of policy resulted in longer sentences for people who committed crimes, which frequently stem from mental illnesses. The justice process focused more on the crime and punishment rather than uncovering the underlying cause of what led to the crime.
As the aggregate cost of incarceration has continued to accelerate, policymakers and the public agree that this unsustainable focus requires a different approach than the strict incarceration policies of decades past. This shift values the closer relationships between mental health and corrections as well as the benefits of our collaborative approach.
Society’s Duty & Benefit
Society’s duty remains to protect the public as well as the inmate in a manner that benefits everyone in the end. Part of that societal benefit requires that inmates return to their communities with hope, purpose and resources to integrate and succeed in life. We are steadily moving away from the philosophy of incarcerating solely for the sake of punishment. By increasing access to appropriate treatment for behavioral health conditions during incarceration, we believe we will see a reduction in individual re-offenses and a chance for the formerly incarcerated to become societal assets rather than burdens. Designing for dignity encourages rehabilitation and signals to the building occupant that everything is in place — from walls to equipment to staff — to make that happen.
Holistic Design in a Detention Setting
Current design trends in detention facilities use a holistic approach that allows inmates to access rehabilitative programs and counseling services within a facility designed with a more normative and healing environment and a non-institutional aesthetic. These elements are critical to healing and restoring individuals with special needs resulting from dementia, Alzheimer’s or mental illness. While connections to rehabilitation programs and community support play an important and ongoing role in returning inmates to communities, their time within a detention setting can also improve those outcomes by integrating key design elements such as views of nature through skylights or secured courtyards.
In sleeping areas, acoustics are dampened naturally through volume and non-parallel roof forms. Use of acoustical tiles and other sound-absorbing surfaces create noise-reducing areas, resulting in calmer environments than typical, hard institutional surfaces. The overall effect respects the holistic approach to health and wellness for occupants in a natural way and adds to the possibility of restoring rather than diminishing the human being serving time.
By adopting policies, practices, technologies and design standards that respect the holistic experience as a health and wellness approach for inmates and staff, we maximize the potential for life-changing outcomes for individuals and their communities.
Andrew Cupples FAIA
DLR Group
700 South Flower St., 22nd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
acupples@dlrgroup.com
213-800-9400
