The Importance of Health and Design in Restorative Justice
Christopher Liddle,
Chairman, HLM Architects
Lord Nigel Crisp,
Independent Crossbench Peer, House of Lords
(Click to download full paper)
Research, history and previous experience informs us that carefully shaping the internal environment has measurable effect on the behaviour, well being and emotional outcomes of the building user/inhabitant.
The Architecture of Incarceration and its response to the custodial environment is perhaps the most challenging example open to research and debate through active and effective design input. The paper will address the following key points:
Congress debate:
- Enhancing organisational image and perception through effective design
- The importance of shared and communal spaces within custodial environments with positive improvements and outcomes in health and wellbeing
- The right level of healthcare provision within the facility
- The medium and long term advantages of a well-designed internal environment in micro and macro economic terms
- Sustainable health and parallel personal educational development through design
A key objective is to create custodial facilities where a combination of dignity and care, education, community and overall environment contribute to the ultimate goal of rehabilitation in society and the prevention of re-offending.
Additional points addressed by the paper will include reference to:
- Restorative justice programmes, which seek to encourage rehabilitation are a viable alternative to building more prisons
- Such programmes use restorative approaches as a means of building self-esteem and encouraging prisoners to take responsibility for their own actions. The programmes aim to resolve complaints and restore calm. They also aim to encourage victim awareness and often use and promote victim-offender mediation
- To design an environment that combines functionality with the promotion of good health, custodial design must make reference to exemplars in both the education and healthcare sectors
- In practical terms, designs that promote prisoner health can only be achieved through research-based design and the use of prisoner reference groups from which to get feedback.
Keywords: Architecture of Incarceration
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