Prison Design
A Garden Behind Jail Walls
Published October 04, 2009 @ 06:12AM PT
For 16 years, prisoners at Chicago's Cook County Jail have taken gardening classes and maintained a thriving garden behind the facility's barbed wire. Prisoners take a course to earn a master gardener's certificate and produce tons of fruits and vegetables on a 13,000-square-foot urban farm . For now, their harvest is donated to soup kitchens, but starting next year some of it will be sold to local restaurants. The goal is for the farm to become self-sustainable in the near future.
The project is an inspiring example of the educational and social enterprise opportunities behind prison and jail walls. Prisoners learn a tangible skill and interact in a thriving enterprise, and their chances at successful reentry are improved. Recidivism rates for participants in the program are 17%, compared with national averages between 55% and 70%. The farm produces local produce that can feed the homeless or be sold to restaurants to sustain future farming operations. Every prison and jail in the United States should have a farm or garden like this. There's no reason not to.
Designing Prisons with Humans in Mind
Published June 20, 2009 @ 04:46AM PT
Can a shiny new prison with floor-to-ceiling windows and private inmate balconies reduce recidivism? Would it fly with the public? A new prison in Leoben, Austria, is searching for these answers – and in the meantime taking a bold step in architecture and corrections policy.
Jim Lewis profiled the prison's architect, Josef Hohensinn, in a fascinating New York Times Magazine piece last week, and through an exploration of design he found some interesting truths about prison policy. An important piece of prison reform lies in architecture, because you can’t end the warehousing of human lives if prisons still look and feel like warehouses.
At the heart of Hohensinn’s vision for the building are some forward-thinking ideas about human interaction, crime and space. Carved on the concrete wall around the perimeter is a line from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the United States signed and ratified) that reads: “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.” (It's sad to consider that forward-thinking, but I think it's fair to say in this country)
