Interview
Dominique Moran
Professor in Carceral Geography in the School of Geography,
Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of
Birmingham
From your research-informed perspective, what do you see as the enduring challenges of operating within outdated prison infrastructures, and how do these affect the daily lives of inmates and staff?
DM: The basic challenge here is that existing prisons – in terms of their design, location and operation – inevitably reflect the priorities and imperatives of past prison systems. Given extended build times, even brand-new prisons can already represent ‘old’ ideas about what prison is ‘for’; and what we want it to ‘do’. So we are always trying to deliver today’s version of imprisonment in facilities that were built with a different version in mind, and in many prison systems, with a variety of ages and styles of buildings, we have different degrees of ‘mismatch’ between those old and new ideas. Of course, we sometimes circle back to ‘old’ ways of doing things.
Because buildings shape behaviours, we tend to build again and again prisons whose designs we know ‘work’, in that our staffing models have developed within them. Given the cost of new builds, it can feel risky to deviate too far from what we know.
Prison infrastructures inevitably become outdated. As living standards in the world outside prisons change and improve, prisons can’t always keep pace, and there are often issues of cost of refurbishments, and challenges of prioritisation of living conditions for incarcerated people when government budgets are tight. This is especially the case when it’s difficult to prove a connection between the nature of prison environments and the sorts of outcomes that are delivered in and by these buildings. In a recent research project about the UK’s Victorian-era prison estate, (undertaken with Matt Houlbrook, Yvonne Jewkes and Jennifer Turner) we found that these old buildings have persisted in operation in part because they were so robustly built in the first place.
But today the robustness of their construction – with very thick brick walls, for example, creates challenges for installation of in cell sanitation and technology. Their central urban locations – a real plus for maintaining family contact – often mean that the scope to expand workshop or education provision is limited.
However, for the UK’s Victorian-era estate, the real challenge is overcrowding, which exacerbates all of the other drawbacks of these buildings, and makes for a stark contrast between the experience of incarceration in an older and a newer prison. But there are positives in the design of the Victorian-era estate. Staff working in them often appreciate the clear sightlines of the radial, galleried design, which mean that they – and incarcerated people – can feel safer than they do in prisons with less ‘visible’ accommodation.
The relative lack of staff office space also means that prison officers are inevitably out ‘on the wings’ and in contact with incarcerated people, meaning that they frequently have a very good understanding of the challenges they are facing, and are well-placed to provide support. Victorian-era prisons in the UK often serve as ‘Local’ prisons, which means that they hold both people awaiting trial or sentencing, as well as people serving short sentences or reaching the end of longer sentences.
In this environment, new staff quickly become familiar with most of the things that can happen during a prison sentence, and for many this experience acts as something of a ‘fast track’ method of effective training. Many incarcerated people also appreciate the confidence and expertise of staff who have trained in this environment.
The enduring challenges of these environments are on the one hand very tangible – the outdated accommodation and the limited scope for improvement. But they are also intangible: in our project we learned a lot about latency of the Victorian prison – the ways in which, through its persistence, it continues to influence the contemporary – and the future – prison system.
In light of these challenges, what prison design principles and practices with proven efficacy can be applied in modern infrastructure to create environments that better support rehabilitation? And what can be done within the limitation of older facilities?
DM: Probably the feature of the Victorian-era estate in the UK that is most appreciated by staff is the visibility of the radial wings – the ability to see what is happening both along the length of the wings and up and down the galleried landings. However, contemporary research into the design of prisons and the wellbeing of incarcerated people and prison staff has shown key benefits from design features that Victorian-era prisons tend not to exhibit.
For example, we now know that the more green space a prison has, the lower its levels of self-harm, violence and staff sickness absence (even when we control for things like facility size, security level, age and gender of population, level of crowding, un/sentenced status, etc). It’s also highly likely that
broader research findings about the benefits of natural light (to maintain circadian rhythms and support good sleep), and noise attenuation are applicable to prisons as well. Where we see prison architects applying these research findings, we see very different prisons.
On a recent trip to visit new prisons in the Australian state of Victoria, I was privileged to see some of the work of architecture practice Guymer Bailey, which has consistently sought out the latest research findings and worked hard to put these into practice.
In terms of what can best be done within the limitation of older facilities – for me this is really a question about appreciating the limits to what is possible or feasible within our budgetary constraints and the material realities of some of our older and more challenging buildings.
We must provide safe, clean and humane accommodation, and we must limit the extent to which sharing of cells is necessary – and I recognise that the latter of these points is a broader one that is more about sentencing policy and the overall purpose of prisons.
The ways in which these buildings are deployed is key. For example, in a recent policy brief from our Victorian prisons project, we advocated for consideration of a partial re-role of some of these buildings. One way to reduce the impact of their poorer-quality living conditions is to limit the amount of time spent in them, for example by deploying parts of some Victorian-era prisons within the Category D ‘Open’ estate, where prisoners spend part of their day outside of the prison in preparation for release. This deployment of the Victorian estate would maximise the benefits of an urban location that offers
some of the opportunities for purposeful activity that cannot be provided within these prisons themselves, and would also reduce the likelihood of cell-sharing, and improve access to workshop accommodation for those people still held within ‘closed’ conditions.
Looking ahead, what are some key areas where research and new prison infrastructure innovations could most effectively contribute to the evolution of correctional facilities?
DM: There’s so much potential here, and the key thing from my perspective is closer dialogue between researchers and those who can make use of their work – by which I mean policymakers, built environment professionals and custodial practitioners. It’s imperative that researchers understand the practical challenges faced in prison design, and partnership working can be extremely effective.
For me, some key areas moving forward include refining our understanding of the ways in which prison environments influence wellbeing. We know that there is a relationship here, but determining exactly which features of the built environment support wellbeing, and how, is still something that we can work
on. We know that green spaces in prison support wellbeing, but for example in my work I’m trying to get closer to understanding optimal green space exposure, to inform recommendations about how much green view is needed from cell windows.
Another key area is in translating research findings into usable information. Here, partnership working is essential. At the moment I’m working with Landscape Architect Emma Widdop and urban ecologist Jonathan Sadler, in partnership with the UK Ministry of Justice and Kier Build, to develop a Design Guide for safe and biodiverse green spaces in prison. The intention is that this document will translate research evidence into a form that can directly be used in the design of new prisons and potentially the retrofit of older ones, to increase the green footprint of prisons whilst maintaining the necessary security.
Recent developments in building monitoring also offer significant opportunities to understand the effectiveness of design. I was fortunate enough to speak at a recent EuroPris Sustainability in Prisons event in York, UK, where there was a fascinating discussion of Digital Twinning technology which uses virtual models of prisons to optimize energy use and reduce carbon emissions, and which has the potential to offer a means to understand, in some detail, what the living environment of prison is like in terms of metrics such as temperature, noise and so on. Of course this can’t tell us everything we’d need to know, but the technology has enormous potential.
There are also areas where research evidence is scant, but the operational need is significant, and here I’m thinking of prison environments and neurodiversity. We know that neurodiversity is common in prison – more so than in the background population – and prisons are probably almost uniquely ill-suited places for people who struggle in loud, busy and stressful contexts. We could collectively do much more to understand how the prison environment could better support the wellbeing of neurodiverse people.
Dominique Moran, DPhil.
Professor in Carceral Geography in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham
Dominique Moran, DPhil., is Professor of Carceral Geography in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. Prof Moran has researched in prisons across the UK, Scandinavia and Russia, and provided advice to prison administrations in contexts as
diverse as the UK, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Colombia. She is author of Carceral Geography (2015) and the Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design (2022). She is an Oxford graduate with a BA and D.Phil in Geography, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a member of both the European Society of Criminology and the Global Prisons Research Network.
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