*cracks knuckles*

PRISON DESIGN THREAD

Keep in mind this isn't my area of expertise, I just find this particular topic interesting af. If you have anything you want to add, correct or ask go ahead!

So I became interested in prison design after reading 'Finally Fit for Purpose: The Evolution of Australian Prison Architecture' by Grant & Jewkes (2015). This article is the real deal & would recommend the read but I am just going to give some points I found of interest.

Grant & Jewkes make the argument that Australian prisons have a long history of uncritically implemented American systems of prison design/structure without actually abiding by the operating models that were to complement the structures themselves.

But 1st a side note. Quakers!

Did you know that Quakers created solitary confinement in the first place? The idea was that people would be able to be alone to repent & form a bond with God without the influence of others.

PS: 'penitentiary' comes from 'penance'

Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania was the first place to utilise solitary confinement. It wasn't long until the Quakers, who seemed to have good intentions with solitary confinement, realised that it was...way worse. That is destroyed the spirit of man rather than help.

Charles Dickens actually visited Eastern State and saw the cruelty of solitary confinement. Reports were made abt the observed effects of solitary. Quakers stopped doing it & are now one of the biggest lobbying groups fighting for the cessation of solitary confinement in the US.

The negative impacts of solitary confinement did not deter and in fact encouraged those who believed that soul-crushing punishment was cool, actually.

So you know...we still have it today!

Anyway! Back to Australia. Both the US and Australia were inspired by the UK in the late 1700's in terms of holding inmates in separate cells, forcing inmates to perform hard labor, religious practices and strict routines.

Things seemed to remain relatively stagnant until the mid 20th C when rehabilitation was the 'in' thing. The US were actually rivaling Sweden & other nations who we now consider to have quite 'woke' prisons.

Work was being done to create prisons using the research of social workers, architects, psychs etc., Rehabilitation and reintegration was recommended as the primary goal/approach to corrections.

During this era was the creation of the 'unit management' model. This wasn't just about architecture: it was a full program with the building just being one facet of it. Inmates were to be separated into ~100ppl who were housed around common living areas.

Each group had a unit manager, a psych, some case managers, correctional counselors, custodial officers. It was quickly observed that close contact between staff and inmates made for less tension & violence. Unit mgmt allowed for personalised services.

Promoting human dignity was pushed, and correctional officers were suggested to engage with inmates rather than manning prison towers. Personal development programs & encouraging meaningful activities was also promoted.

Unit management in its best form tried to cultivate the agency of inmates. Allowing them to make their own breakfast, having personal toilets. Access to a library. External views, etc. Despite what we think of the US, there were genuine efforts to use this model for a while.

Some jurisdictions in Aus were interested in implementing unit mgmt. Existing prisons were converted to the unit mgmt style, but the underpinning philosophies either were ignored, misunderstood or pushed back on.

The conversions had mixed results. While there were some decreases in violence - the lack of foresight and care when converting prisons resulted in actual communal spaces no longer existing in some cases. Sometimes the change to the layout meant that communal dining spaces-

no longer existed. Which you know, is completely at odds with the philosophy that underpins unit management. Apparently we got the 'yes let's have toilets in cells' memo, but that was basically it sometimes.

This is but the first example of Australia simply copy/pasting the architectural aspects of US prison design without considering that the structure was to be used alongside a particular form of service delivery.

And as people who study these sorts of histories probably know, for every step forward there's reactionary measures waiting just around the corner.

That will come tomorrow, probably. I'm tired, but I was personally surprised to find out US led the way here.

I'm back!

So the next notable generation after unit mgmt was this sort of 'triangular' model which is most notable in Chicago. It was to allow people to be detained within urban environments (there are many associated benefits w/ being close to family, courts, other services).

The tower isn't exactly pretty (tbh I like the triangle) but the layout was supposed to be better for both the inmates and the staff. Every cell had a view outside and faced a communal space that custodial officers would be in, and they didn't have to 'patrol' so much.

This is a basic floorplan of where the inmates are housed. The bottom floors were to be dedicated to services, programs and admin. Communal toilets were a thing of the past.

An important part of this model is that custodial officers were to operate in an almost informal capacity in the central living area while also having clear site into the cells. Officers weren't be be primarily there for surveillance but to communicate and respond to problems.

Some jurisdictions picked up on this model in AUS but due to prison officer & union pushback the informal/direct supervision in communal areas never happened. Once again we built the physical model, but never acted on the principles the justified the design in the first place.

It wasn't until the 1990's that Australia began to have any sort of guidelines on case and unit management at all. That's up to 20 years behind the US.

And so many of us dare to think our prisons are better here? Nah, son.

I want to emphasise once more how important the triangular model was in terms of location. Having multi-storey buildings that don't take up much land in central areas can improve so many outcomes. Day release is easier, maintaining community connection, visitation etc.

But in Australia we particularly seem to enjoy the next model of prison: the campus. The name kind of says it all, separated buildings for different uses, groups around communal spaces. Was intended to 'maximise freedom'.

One thing about campus style prisons: they're usually remote or far out in the suburbs. That removes so many of the benefits that were made with the triangular model that emphasized the importance of locality.

It's an ongoing issue that inmates are often unable to maintain connections to their community, nor are they able to to get many visitors. Legal representation also becomes an issue, which can impact due process rights.

Now the reactionary measure: so far we've seen a trend more towards 'more humane' prisons. This stemmed out of philosophies of rehab. But there was one doctrine that came out in the 70's that right wingers love to cite despite being later recanted: the 'nothing works' doctrine.

Although the doctrine could be arguably seen as a reason for prison abolition by some, it's largely cited by right wingers to swing towards 'just desserts' methods of punishment. If nothing works, then why not lock them up forever, too?

So we are at the ~90's. Life Without Parole is increased dramatically with the war on drugs and this creates a permanent prison population. Discourse is largely around 'risk' and 'danger' and containing that danger from the large community by whatever means necessary.

Despite bail and parole being seen as routine and best practice, we now wanted to keep people in until we were sure they weren't 'dangerous'. Spooky!

So now we have some modern day panopticon bullshit with CCTV.

Instead of direct, informal security methods we now put cameras everywhere, have guard "walls" and guards are very clearly armed. Perimeters were lined with cameras, patrol roads were implemented and razor wire was installed.

Australia *absolutely* embraced these innovations. We already enthusiastically implemented the campus model which does not necessarily have to include these extra security measures but it was easy to place on top of them. So, why not?

Not to be outdone by the US we determined that perhaps each zone within the campus be monitored and controlled. This creates a set of prisons within a larger prison. Good and cool.

As the tech was used as justification for staff cuts, officers were no longer always present manage conflict & now responded 'on demand'. This is to say an incident needs to have already broken out before being responded to. A far cry from the supervision of the triangular model.

The move from rehabilitation to just desserts is even more pronounced here when you consider that we totally neglected to use direct supervision in the first place, and then even less so with CCTV.

That's all for now. I have work to do. I hope you've found something new or interesting. I'll be back for more soon.

Okay - I have time for a few more tweets. To recap: We've had a brief background on solitary confinement, the US leading the way with unit management, the triangular model (both which were never properly implemented in AUS) and the campus model (Australia loves it, folks).

At this point all of these prison models were in some capacity intended to promote rehabilitation, for prisons to become more humane and with the exception of solitary: to promote agency of inmates.

Then we had the introduction of CCTV & barbed wire as discourse trended towards-

'just desserts' punishment. Life without parole created a permanent prison population. Inmates were considered to be dangerous and rehabilitation fell largely by the way side, particularly in AUS.

The next section of the 2015 paper by Grant & Jewkes introduced prison privatisation & supermax facilities. They commented that the latter was an ideological & political statement but I would argue that both of these prison types make the same/similar statement.

This is a thread I've made about prison privatisation in Australia (by no means exhaustive) if you're interested https://twitter.com/jsspcr1/status/1320539761199599616?s=20

I won't get into private prisons in this design thread as privatisation can be more or less ubiquitous (even in public facilities some things will be outsourced) and despite advocates of privatisation saying that it encourages innovation: there's no significant evidence of this.

In the Reagan era prison privatisation become terribly popular and spreaded to AUS. This period is where we got onto our 'just desserts' bullshit in a sustained way and phrases such as 'tough on crime' were/are used frequently in penal discourse.

Throwing back to earlier in this thread when I mentioned how Quakers, once learning how fucked solitary is stopped using it while other decided This Is Good, Actually? Well yeah, that's the bread & butter of the Supermax in both the US/AUS.

Despite deprivation of liberty theoretically being the punishment, discourse moved to how we could make this deprivation more painful. We still see some of what I'm about to mention today, but I found this description of the first supermax experiment (1970's!) in AUS haunting:

In the 1970's there was a supermax experiment in NSW that lasted two years where every aspect of the inmates life was controlled by officers: air con & water temperatures, lights & power, no windows in cells & steel mesh surrounding small exercise yards.

and finally,
"The cells were so identical, so uniform the Department
found it necessary to paint the control panel in each gallery a different colour
so the officer in charge would not be disoriented." (Carlton, 2007)

Despite this particular experiment being notably inhumane and abusive, Australia still thought most of it was pretty dope. We still have facilities with minimal natural light, identical cells, making environments as harsh as possible & strict regimes.

While there's no agreed upon definition of 'supermax' prisons, common themes arise. Inmates are in their harsh cells for around 23 hours per day. They're considered to be the 'worst of the worst'. The appeal of supermax arguably increased in a post-9/11 world.

Another theme is that inmates will receive their meals through ports in the door of their cell. Once again, think back to the decades of work done to promote agency within prisons and now...this.

So next I'm going to talk about the more or less 'current landscape' of Australian prisons. The Grand & Jewkes paper is very enthused about some of the programs in Australia and I want to give credit where credit is due, but I also want to bring it home with:

1. How these prisons - even those considered to be 'best' - look. I'll post photos & very recent stories about the horrors of the conditions of prisons (typically where there are higher populations of Aboriginal peoples because this is a colony after all).

2. How even our 'best' prisons compare to other, more 'woke' models. Scandi prisons are always good for this.

3. How punishment extends into every day spaces. How those in poverty & non-white people are punished by design.

Anyway that's all for today. Once again feel free to add/correct/ask for clarification/chat about anything. I hope you've learned something new or have found something you want to look further into. <3

Back again! So the 2015 paper I was drawing from congratulated individual prisons around Australia for implementing specialised programs based on 'special demographics' within the prisons. That's a good step I guess - that it's finally recognised that individuals are in prisons?

These sorts of programs have been pushed for a very long time? 1 of the prisons mentioned in the paper was the West Kimberly Regional Prison in Western Australia which from reading the paper alone, told of this state-of-the-art, culturally sensitive prison for Aboriginal peoples.

I won't claim to know what kind of consultation went into the design of this prison as well as service delivery, but there were some red flags. The main point of the prison was that units surrounded a football field, because football is a huge part of Aboriginal identity.

Again I have no place to comment on this except that I question consultation practices and worry that once again Aboriginal peoples have been pigeonholed and I mean, it's clear that there is no questioning about *why* these people are being put in prison in the first place.

What use is a football field without the government trying to address systemic racism, generational trauma, stolen land, etc. ?

But what is very telling is that despite people championing this 'woke' facility...well, I'll show you some pictures.

Keep in mind that temperatures in this area range from under 5°C to over 40°C & there's a pattern of 2 distinct seasons.

From a '17 report on West Kimberly overcrowding meant makeshift beds on unit verandas & common rooms (no AC). Some people had to sleep on the floor.

Oh my god sorry I just came across a recommendation in the report saying, 'Hey can you folks start giving...brand new undies to new prisoners and make new ones available for purchase to? Thanks.'

HOW IS THIS A RECOMMENDATION AND NOT THE FRIGGIN LAW?!

Despite this prison regarding itself on design that would foster culture and place importance on maintaining community connections: a large proportion of inmates are from East Kimberly and often never received visits due to distance (common theme with campus structures in general

For a while WKRP allowed inter-prison video links (?) but those stopped. The report noted that there's been no real action taken to facilitate Skype calls with 'e-visitors', something that many other facilities have provided.

Ooof sorry I am actually feeling sick reading this report. I was just trying to focus on the design elements on prisons in Australia but kind of as I've mentioned: design can facilitate improved outcomes but service delivery goes a long way and we've constantly underperformed.

I will post the link to the full report in the next thread if you want to make yourself angry and sick about something else other than the US election. But this recommendation made me feel dizzy:

'Even people approved for external work under section 95, and other minimum-security prisoners, are shackled to wheelchairs and medical machinery on medical escorts. This is unnecessary and demeaning.'

That's enough for me today hey.
Fuck prisons.

https://www.oics.wa.gov.au/reports/113-2017-inspection-of-west-kimberley-regional-prison/?doing_wp_cron=1604537125.6643500328063964843750

A link to the report.

I'm out for now. Jesus.