Correctional facility design: past, present and future.

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Correctional facility design: past, present and future.

Editor's note: A previous version of this article was presented at the 1999 American Society of Criminology Conference in Toronto, Nov. 17-20.

The correctional facility serves as a central feature in the complex criminal justice system. Throughout history, prisons and jails have functioned to incapacitate and reform offenders (Johnson, 1996). The architectural design of correctional facilities has been documented and studied since the inception of the earliest forms of criminal sanctions. Nevertheless, relatively few criminal justice scholars have pursued this topic as a research interest. Therefore, the field of corrections lacks empirical research, as well as the development of a robust body of theory, to accompany this crucial component of correctional policy.

Architectural design is an integral part of policy-making because a correctional facility's construction should reflect and aid the implementation of current correctional philosophies and goals (Dunbar and Fairweather, 1998). However, inconsistencies in incarceration goals provide correctional practitioners with diverse designs (Clements, 1998), many of which are models virtually untested in the criminal justice system. Because of such wide variation, it is important to examine designs that have worked in the past, as well as current designs that promote positive outcomes such as reduced violence and crowding. From this analysis, a framework can be devised to guide the design of future correctional facilities. Thus, this article has three purposes: to examine the rationale and patterns of historical designs, to assess the features of current prison and jail designs, and to evaluate issues and future directions in the design of correctional facilities.

A History of Design: Early Structures

It would be impossible to date the earliest use of prisons as a means to detain, punish and rehabilitate offenders (Johnston, 1973), "as we have been confining [inmates] almost as long as we have laid claim to being civilized" (Johnson, 1996). Early examples of places of confinement, such as cages within fortresses, subterranean portions of buildings and abandoned castles (Johnston, 1973), tended to be crude because the structures served other purposes prior to their use for incarceration. Early structures in Greece and Rome were stone quarries, and a large system of dungeons was built below the main sewer of the Roman Empire, which became known as the Mamertine...

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