| Prisons are intriguing institutions in our society. They appear frequently in popular culture and history yet in reality we view them with disdain or indifference. Prisons have become a dichotomy of fascination and ambivalence. In Ohio, the stated goal for prisons is to lower recidivism; however, prisons, both in programming and architecture, focus almost strictly on incarceration and neglect that goal. In the architecture of institutions, much of the time and money spent is on security and monitoring while little care is put into how the space affects the users. Architecture has the opportunity to provide people with light and air and beauty, to affect those who inhabit it. What better way to study this impact of architecture than in an environment in which the users are forced to inhabit? This thesis combines the study of the interrelationship between people and their environment with the design of justice architecture. The prison typology has seen models evolve throughout time; some of which consider the impact of the built environment on users more than others, yet we still place prisoners in crowded, unstimulating environments that are detrimental to their well-being. This is counter productive to the goal of lowering recidivism. Specifically, this thesis studies the effects of built form and architectural experience on health and rehabilitation of inmates, recognizing the psychological impacts of an environment on the user and therefore the enhanced effect on those in the penal system in the United States. As a result, an adapted prison model is proposed combining the discipline and security measures necessary in corrective buildings with architectural approaches to align with the goal of the penal administration, where architecture is used to facilitate rehabilitation, reduce recidivism, and ease reentry into society.;Keywords: prison, architecture, recidivism, reentry, rehabilitation. |
