Architecture and Justice

Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm

Jonathan Simon, Nicholas Temple

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317179375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of criminology, international law, philosophy and architectural history and theory, this book examines the interrelationships between architecture and justice, highlighting the provocative and curiously ambiguous juncture between the two. Illustrated by a range of disparate and diverse case studies, it draws out the formal language of justice, and extends the effects that architecture has on both the place of, and the individuals subject to, justice. With its multi-disciplinary perspective, the study serves as a platform on which to debate the relationships between the ceremonial, legalistic, administrative and penal aspects of justice, and the spaces that constitute their settings. The structure of the book develops from the particular to the universal, from local situations to the larger city, and thereby examines the role that architecture and urban space play in the deliberations of justice. At the same time, contributors to the volume remind us of the potential impact the built environment can have in undermining the proper juridical processes of a socio-political system. Hence, the book provides both wise counsel and warnings of the role of public/civic space in affirming our sense of a just or unjust society.

PART 1
Prisons and Prison Cells

1

The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Prison Architecture1

Yvonne Jewkes

INTRODUCTION

This chapter synthesizes perspectives from the field of critical organization studies with those from criminological studies of prison design and the lived experience of imprisonment. It brings together these distinct areas of scholarship in order to consider the proposition that prison spaces are layered with meaning and that prison design has a profound psychological and behavioural influence on prisoners, prison staff, and the communities in which prisons are located. Mindful of Elaine Scarry’s call for an intrinsic link between ‘beauty and being just’ the aim is to explore meanings conveyed by carceral spaces and to reflect on both the monotonous, anaesthetizing effects of penal architecture and design, and the potential civilizing, rehabilitative role they can play.2 The chapter is in two parts. First, it will first consider ‘space as symbol’, or the multifarious penal philosophies that can be seen reflected in the form and fabric of prison buildings, and ‘space as practice’, or what ‘aesthetics’ means within a penal setting. Then the chapter will discuss some of the difficulties facing those who want to rethink prison design, and will examine the competing discourses influencing contemporary prison architects. It will explore the idea that, while most penal institutions are commonly (and accurately) characterized as sites of control, abuse and neglect, prison designers might consider adopting an emerging philosophy – ‘humane architecture’ – which has recently transformed many public institutions, including hospitals and healthcare centres. Given that its advocates believe that humane architecture has a rehabilitative impact on patients, it begs the question of whether it might have similarly positive effects on prison inmates. However, prison architects face a particularly acute challenge, for not only must they design institutions which fulfil the client’s brief (the clients for the most part being government ministers and private security companies, both of whom will prioritise value for money and security imperatives before anything else) but they must also meet public expectations about what a prison should look like. Prison designs which enhance dignity and promote rehabilitation through a normalized aesthetic may not appear sufficiently punitive to a public with an appetite for punishment.3

PENAL AESTHETICS: SPACE AS SYMBOL AND SPACE AS PRACTICE

The architecture of incarceration traditionally has been inscribed with symbolic meaning that seeks to secure the acquiescence of society at large as well as that of convicted offenders. Whether gothic cathedral, monastic citadel or castellated fortress, the purposefully scripted exteriors of eighteenth and nineteenth century prisons incorporated symbolism that had a ‘see and beware’ function, warning the community at large to refrain from committing crimes lest they too should end up within the monstrous institution’s imposing walls. Indeed, the internal life of inmates was a secondary consideration to the symbolic meaning transmitted by the external façade to society at large and inside these splendid palaces was a highly restricted economy of space as prison accommodation became increasingly enclosed and claustrophobic. Arguably no other type of building employs the concepts of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ quite as dramatically or self-referentially (in the sense that one interpellates the other) as the prison, and the penal philosophies of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – based on principles of austerity, isolation, silence, remorse and reform – are evident in the juxtaposition of the prison’s cathedral-like exterior and the minuteness of private interior space within. Echoing Jeremy Bentham’s (1791/1843) famous belief that morals could be reformed, health preserved, industry invigorated and instruction diffused ‘all by a simple idea in architecture’, Daniel Nihill, Governor and Chaplain of Millbank Penitentiary in the mid-nineteenth century, proclaimed that good behaviour among his prisoners was maintained ‘with the passive instrument of the building itself’.4

The conceptualization of the prison cell as a restricted subterranean space, a place of death or entombment, is common in academic studies of imprisonment. The disparity between the upward gaze toward the vast, vaulted, chillingly austere exterior5 architecture and the downward gaze into the darkness of the coffin-like cells is beautifully illustrated by the following quote from a twentieth century prisoner:

The whole is an enormous enclosure of space, top-lit from secular clerestories, and, at the far end of the halls, by gargantuan round-headed windows rising atria-like from floor to ceiling…One feels like some rare exotic bird, trapped in an intricate gilded cage; a metaphor not inappropriate as the hammer beamed roofs frequently resound to the flapping of real birds, curious and unfortunate enough to have found their way into these vast basilicas of human discontent. It is once inside the cell that the prisoner really begins to feel the oppressiveness of these city fortresses…more often than not, living space for 23 hours a day, seven days a week, averages 800 cubic feet; that is, 8 x 13 x 9. Roofs are shallow arches, so it easy to imagine oneself on the Orient or Trans-Siberian Express taking some never ending journey to the edge of the world. These cells look like gutted sections of railway carriages without the panoramic windows. The only window in evidence here is sunken into the back wall, too high to look out of, and usually double-barred. Standing underneath this aperture, one glances up at Oscar Wilde’s ‘little tent of blue the prisoners call sky.6

Of course, the paradox of their external splendour and internal squalor is still keenly felt by the thousands of inmates still held in them but, ironically, the aesthetic qualities of Victorian prison buildings have never been more appreciated by the free community than they are two centuries after their construction. The British government is considering selling off many large Victorian prisons such as Pentonville, Brixton, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs; a venture that is estimated to be worth £350 million. It has not been revealed what these prime sites might be turned into, but one can well imagine that if converted into apartments with the façades kept intact, they are likely to appeal to the kind of affluent young professionals who stay in the boutique hotel housed in the former HMP Oxford. Here, the aesthetics of imprisonment are considered so desirable that rooms have been converted from the old cell blocks with views of the prison’s former exercise yard, as well as a ‘luxury suite’ in the governor’s house. The hotel group’s publicity material leaves the potential guest in no doubt about the ‘charms’ of staying in a former jail:

Perhaps the most striking of all Malmaison hotels, Oxford is as close to staying in a prison as it gets (without the real thing of course). Your eye will go immediately to the original heavy metal studded doors, while once you enter the main atrium and see the wrought ironwork stairs and three inch thick steel doors, you could almost forget that you’re on a break – and not actually doing time.7

Ironically, here, the aesthetics of incarceration are considered highly desirable but for earlier occupants of HMP Oxford and, indeed, for most prison inmates, penal aesthetics might more accurately be described as anaesthetics, whereby the senses are blunted or depressed.8 In the UK, anaesthetic design is perhaps best exemplified by the prisons established in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Albany, Long Lartin and Gartree; all of them functional, featureless and concrete. As Peter Wayne puts it:

[P]erennially water-stained walls; crisscrossed with miles of razor-wired fencing; and sheltering under the ultimate anti-escape devices – highly strung threads of orange, red and yellow balloons to stop invasion by helicopter; an archipelago of identical…blocks.9

Many of these prisons were established at the height of penal welfarism and they echo the austere styles of high, progressive modernism.10 Whether their design simply reflected what was considered to be humanely functional and most likely to meet the therapeutic goals of punishment at this time, or whether it was a knowing strategy to reassure the public that penal welfarism did not equate to leniency, is open to debate. Either way, they share a melancholy and sometimes brutal external appearance while, inside, they are characterized by bland uniformity in colour, texture, lighting and levels. Even more recently, since the early 1990s, the introduction of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has paved the way for contracts to be awarded for the entire design, construction, management and finance (DCMF) of a prison, and new penal institutions have been built with the imperatives of efficiency and security in mind, while keeping costs to a minimum. Prisons operated by Serco, G4S and Kalyx all share a countenance that is antithetical to their Victorian predecessors, yet not as stark and sombre as the post-Mountbatten (1966) prisons. Dull, unassuming and uniform in appearance, the typical hallmarks of prison exteriors built in the last twenty years are vast expanses of brick, few (small) windows and no unnecessary ornamentation or decoration. In general they look rather like private hospitals, no-frills chain hotels, or the kind of nondescript corporate HQ you might expect to find in a business park.11

Prison historian Sean McConville asks whether it is morally acceptable for ugliness, vulgarity or mere indifference to be part of punishment given that one of the core values of our civilization is a belief in the beneficent effects of beauty.12 His conclusion is that, like supporters of the separate system a century ago, we are spared the need to make decisions about prison aesthetics but now, in addition to ‘the passive instrument of the building’, we have a ‘routine grinding of politics, administration and public expenditure priorities’ overseen by an ‘impersonal’ and ‘dispassionate’ system, that counteracts the need for petty vindictiveness.13 While this is true, the restrictions of cellular confinement remain unchanged even in the most recently-constructed prisons, and many prisoners are ‘doubled-up’ in rooms which are no bigger than cells with sole occupancy. Indeed, Henri Lefebvre’s comment that ‘space commands bodies, prescribing or proscribing gestures, routes and distances to be covered’ seems particularly apposite in the context of the cramped cells, gated wings and walled exercise yards of a ‘typical’ closed prison.14 We may no longer subject prison inmates to the treadwheel or prevent them from communicating with each other but the disciplinary power underpinning nineteenth and early twentieth century institutions, is retained within the architectural logic of prisons and continues to influence penal design, despite being abandoned in penal policy and practice almost a century ago.15

The designing of prisons that blend in with their characterless environs may be, in part, an attempt at counteracting the controversy and NIMBY-ism that inevitably arise when proposals to build a new priso...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword by Baroness Vivien Stern
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 PRISONS AND PRISON CELLS
• PART 2 COURTHOUSES AND COURTROOMS
• PART 3 CIVIC AND SOCIETAL ORDER
• PART 4 PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS OF PROPRIETY
• Index