1.1 Introduction
The basic reason for the existence of prisons is that society, which expresses its wishes through the means of courts, finds it necessary to separate and isolate some people, who have broken the law. The concept of this segregation is as old as society itself. Conventionally, prisons have been used for punitive purposes only and it is only recently that public opinion has come round to accept the notion of using imprisonment to reform and rehabilitate the inmates.
The word “prison” immediately evokes a stream of images: stark, forbidding walls spiked with watchtowers; inmates banging on the bars of their cells; the suspicious eyes of armed, uniformed guards. It seems to be the natural end for a convicted criminal, a permanent institution stretching from the pits of the medieval dungeon to the current era of motion detectors and surveillance cameras. But centuries of development and debate lie behind the prison as we now know it – a rich history that reveals how our ideas of crime and punishment have changed over time. Penalties other than incarceration were once much more common, from such bizarre death sentences as the Roman culleus (sealing a convict in a sack with an ape, a dog, and a snake, and throwing the lot in the sea) to fines, various corporal punishments, and forms of public ridicule1. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the full-blown prison system – and along with it came the idea of prison reform.
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There has always been a constant tension between the desire to punish and the hope for rehabilitation, and the prisons have evolved from the rowdy, squalid English jails of the 1700s, in which prisoners and visitors intermingled, to the sober and stark nineteenth-century penitentiaries, whose inmates were forbidden to speak or even to see one another, and finally to the “big houses” of the current American prison system, in which prisoners are as overwhelmed by intense boredom as by the threat of violence.
On looking back in history, certain evolutionary tendencies are noticed in the pattern of modifications. There has been subdivision of the institution into a series of functionally organized sub-units, each with a certain degree of autonomy. This may have been done to facilitate tighter security. But it was also to provide spaces in which to try techniques of treatment based on human interaction. The external similarity of prisons with other buildings has also been increasing. This can be interpreted in two ways. Negatively, as an attempt to hide the fact that the inside was unchanged, and positively, as an attempt to integrate the prison into the urban fabric.
In India, the incarceration philosophy from Mauryan to Mughal times was punitive in the main, and relied on the harshness of the sentence and rigours of imprisonment to check criminal activity in society. The penal system became systematic under British rule, and this was in itself an improvement over the largely arbitrary procedures that prevailed earlier. The classification of rigorous imprisonment and simple imprisonment as spelt out in the Prisons Act of 1894 signifies a slight shift towards a humane attitude towards inmates in the colonial times. However, it is unfortunate that even after independence, no major legal processes were immediately initiated to review the prison-punishment policy and that the existing Jail Manual today is largely a replica of the Prisons Act of 18943. Such a review actually ought to have been a priority, following a change of authority from colonized to a sovereign democratic state.
A study of the existing prison population in India and probable future trends shows that the overwhelming majority of the prison population is not even convicted. The inmates are mostly under trial or even uncommitted to trial, with only a few criminals in their early criminal careers. As mentioned earlier, several committees have conducted studies on various associated subjects, such as classification, management, security, staffing and activity programmes, and they have even formulated a Model Prison Manual. However, none of these studies have accorded the built form the importance it deserves. As a result, prisons based on concepts prevalent in colonial India are still being constructed all over the country.
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Professor Cato English 1101 18 September 11 Prison Inmates Should Be Allowed To Take College Courses Prison inmates should be allowed to take college course because having an education helps reform the inmate into a useful member of society. Education is useful in helping the inmate acquire the life skills necessary to make a life change for the better. Studies have shown that inmates who ...
When imprisoned, men and women do not cease to be human beings. Therefore the material and moral standards by which society lives must apply to them as far as possible. As a consequence to this fact, it follows that what happens to people in custody must always have regard to their likely conditions during as well as after release. Apart from the humane and secure containment of inmates, the prison environment should provide controlled conditions in which they can move towards a better understanding of themselves and learn to accept and deal responsibly with the consequences of their own behaviour4. The design and architecture of the prison can certainly play a pivotal role in this respect. Needless to say, if prisoners are held in drab surroundings for extended periods of time, their mental (and physical) condition degrades. This certainly does not mean that they be given luxurious settings. But this is where the architect steps in. He can attempt to strike a good balance which satisfies not only the primary requirement of security but also the secondary requirements in such a way that all inmates can have a sense of dignity even in their containment. Since the inmates are to be reformed, it becomes essential to provide them with a built environment that gives them a chance to introspect, and not an environment that leads to a loss of self control, self confidence and self esteem. A traditional jail environment cultivates a fear hate syndrome, which means that the inmates and the staff hate each other and at the same time are afraid of each other. This happens because of the fact that in the traditional jail setting, the basic inequality between the prisoners and the staff is emphasized, and there is undue subjugation of the personality of the inmates.
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Why do we choose to break the law? It's socially accepted, most people break the law in a minor way, perhaps by speeding or J-walking. Unfortunately some people go to far and end up in prison. At that point society is divided, where is the line that separates us? What affects the outcome of what side of that line you are standing on? Education? Environment? Genetics? What would cause one subject ...
1.2 Purpose of prisons
The purpose of prisons can be broadly categorized as punishment, deterrence, isolation, reformation and reintegration. Though society has become benign, rational and more concerned with the rehabilitation of the offender, prisons still act as agents of punishment on behalf of the society. The very existence of prisons prevents the general public from indulging in unlawful activities. This is due to the fact that most people have a fear of being imprisoned, which is considered a social stigma. Also, a convicted prisoner is deterred from taking to crime after his sentence is over. Looking at statistics, out of a hundred prisoners released, seventy do not come back for the second time5. The idea behind isolation of the criminal is to prevent contamination of law-abiding members of society and also to protect them from potential danger to their lives or property. Reformation has received a major emphasis in the recent years with advances in penology. The concept of reformation begins with the fact that deviant human behaviour has specific physical, moral, mental, social, vocational or academic causes. Therefore, if the cause for the errant behaviour can be ascertained, the offender can be treated by suitable psychological therapy and counselling. Reintegration of the offender is only a more practical and realistic extension of the reformation philosophy. Like the reformative model, it views the offender as needing help and at the same time realizes that errant behaviour is often a result of disjunction between the offender and society. Reintegration thus attempts to bring the offender close to the society by exposing him to the positive elements of a free environment.
In the past, the prison architect was confined by relatively simple criteria, within which he was left wide discretion to select the specific architectural solution to a general demand that undesirable offenders be segregated from other members of the society. Today, the demand placed on prison architecture has been made much more specific. The architect has to design suitable structures for the function of integrating treatment offered in the outside community areas such as hostels, recreation facilities, clinics, etc. In this case the design is not specifically prison architecture. It overlaps to varying degrees with a more general community service architecture. The design must cater to offenders subject to limited temporary control. The design must also cater to categories of offenders who have to be kept under constant control so as to avoid their escape or unwanted contact with members of the community. Architecture can thus affect the development, efficiency and usefulness of community-prison interaction. On the surface at least the prison architect is faced with contradictory demands, that of physical control, and that of creating opportunities for community interaction. The problem is a serious one, but not insoluble. Appropriate solutions can be developed after a serious study.
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Prisons are expensive buildings. Security considerations make them so. It is worthwhile to make imaginative efforts to ensure that capital costs and recurring expenditure required for construction and operation of prisons be utilized for objectives other than merely detaining inmates. There has to be scope for education, training, opportunities for physical and mental growth of prisoners leading to their integration within society as productive, responsible citizens. Prisons have a complex structure and they must be designed after taking into account several factors, such as
– secure accommodation
– segregation of various categories of inmates
– sanitation and hygiene
– daily routines of inmates
– opportunity for exercise and physical activity
– medical services
– education and religion
– social behaviour and factors influencing it
Designers need to become aware of the problems associated with correctional facilities. With a better understanding of inmates, staff and user needs, they can develop a model prison that runs efficiently and for the welfare of the users. Designers need to look into the post occupancy evaluations or do them in order to find out which facilities work and which do not6. Not many such evaluations have been done till now, so there is a potential for designers to come up with a list of guidelines along with those provided by the existing Jail Manual. Provision of an effective atmosphere is necessary to reach the ultimate goals of the correctional facility.
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However, in spite of all jail reforms, one major factor which hampers their smooth functioning is overcrowding. An increasing inmate population coupled with declines in correctional spending, have resulted in prison overcrowding which quite often exceeds the facility’s maximum capacity. Prison overcrowding has many negative effects upon inmates. Research has demonstrated that overcrowding in prisons creates competition for limited resources, aggression, higher rates of illness and suicide7. There are, however, various methods to reduce prison overcrowding. Among the more influential are prison design and reducing the prison population by developing community based alternatives to incarceration.
While prison conditions have improved considerably in many ways, the present correctional system is still struggling to cope with some of the same problems experienced in the past. Taking the case of Tihar Jail in Delhi, one finds that it houses about 9000 inmates whereas it was designed for only about 3000. Even in developed nations like the United States and Canada, not only are institutions operating at maximum capacity, but some even exceed capacity. Increasingly, inmates are forced into double bunking in single cells or living in open dormitories. A recent study in Canada indicated that 12% of those inmates sharing a single cell felt threatened by their cell-mate8. Many critics, including corrections officials have viewed such conditions as degrading and dehumanizing for inmates and contradictory to the current correctional reforms which emphasize maximizing the opportunities available to inmates.
1.3 Need identification
An obvious solution to overcrowding in prisons is the construction of more of them. In India, the majority of prisons are still built only on one level. This causes two problems. One, precious land resources are used up at a rapid pace, and two, even though the maximum permissible ground coverage is utilized, only a fraction of the permitted FAR is used. The key to using the FAR optimally naturally lies in building vertically, rather than horizontally. There are also other advantages of such high rise prisons. They are necessarily secure because of their height. They afford ease of classification and segregation with no loss of centralized administration and supervision. Finally, where space is restricted in a city, which phenomenon is now apparent throughout the country, such a prison can fit on a small site, which can be guarded efficiently. However, at the same time, apart from thinking in terms of high rise prisons, one must not neglect the other issues which are crucial while designing prisons.
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I therefore intend to identify and study some of the important issues of prison design in the Indian context.
1.4 Objectives of study
1. To study the evolutionary history of prison architecture, along with various prison concepts and systems all around the world.
2. To study some crucial factors which are relevant while designing prisons.
3. To attempt to analyse these factors as a guide to prison design.
1.5 Scope of study
Since this is only an undergraduate level dissertation, the scope of study shall be restricted to the aspects of segregation & isolation, sanitation and opportunities for exercise and work. The detailed case studies shall be conducted by selecting ‘live’ examples. Also, it would naturally be beyond the scope of this dissertation to study open prison systems. Therefore, only conventional closed prisons shall be considered.
1.6 Limitations
While studying the historical background of prison architecture, I shall be restricting myself to the models abroad. This, in my opinion, is reasonable because the state of Indian prisons today is a result of the colonial influence. I shall be unable to study aspects of medical facilities, education and religion within prisons, as they are entirely independent subjects in themselves. Prisons are a highly classified subject as far as the authorities are concerned. Particularly in the Indian scenario, there is a lot of bureaucracy and red-tape which has to be gone through in order to get access to prisons and their drawings. Also, photographs of the interiors of prison campuses are not permitted by law, so it should therefore be understood that the study would be carried out by using non-classified data. I shall have to rely purely on declassified literature and other secondary sources.
1.7 Methodology
In order to fulfil the objective of studying the evolutionary history of prison architecture, along with various prison concepts and systems all around the world, literature shall be collected from various libraries and the internet. The data so collected shall be logically presented in an easy to follow manner.
To identify crucial factors which are relevant while designing prisons, case studies of prisons shall be undertaken. For this purpose, Tihar Ashram, New Delhi and Jaipur Central Jail, Jaipur have been selected. Also, interviews with architects and officials of the CPWD (Central Public Works Department) and the Home Ministry shall be conducted. Their valuable inputs shall be analysed and correlated with the findings of the case studies.
With the assistance of the guide, all the data acquired and experience gained shall be critically analysed and an attempt shall be made to identify issues involved in prison design.
