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IS IT TIME TO THROW AWAY THE KEY TO PRISON ARCHITECTURE?San Francisco-based architect Raphael Sperryhas an unusual mandate for designers: Hewants to put a stop to building new facilities,prisons to be exact. Sperry is the current pres-ident of the Architects/Designers/Planners forSocial Responsibility (ADPSR), which was estab-lished in 1981 with the mission of promotingenvironmental protection, social justice and

similar issues. In 2003, he also organized thePrison Design Boycott Campaign to encouragearchitects to quit building prisons.

Even in the politically charged San Franciscoclimate, there is the problem of getting peopleto sign on to Sperry’s ideas. Elsewhere, likeLos Angeles, where architects have a reputationfor largely staying away from political issues,that problem is magnified. Undeterred, thethirtysomething Sperry is passionate abouthis prison perspective, and though some say

his idea is idealistic and unrealistic, these arepoints he takes in stride.

“I don’t expect that the architects whodesign prisons are going to stop,” Sperryadmits.“I do think that they’re going to run outof work, because we are going stop buildingprisons, so I think they would be well advisedto start making transition plans.”

Others believe Sperry could betaking a different tack. Bill Prindle,senior vice president and director ofthe justice division of HOK, suggeststhat Sperry may be taking thewrong approach. HOK, which hasbeen involved in a number of prisonprojects, does not see the buildingtrend stopping any time soon.

“Where Raphael and I differ,” Prindleexplains, “is that I think the targetsare the public policy makers; it’s reallyan issue of public policy rather thanbricks and mortar. I think his target isoff, but I think his intent is admirable.I think he’s raising some really goodpoints that ought to be part of a

broader discussion on crime and delinquencyin the United States. But I think his target, asin other architects, is probably misplaced. Itwould be more effective going after publicpolicy matters.”

But Sperry isn’t limiting his supporters toarchitects. He started the anti-prison buildingmovement with a reasonable goal of just 500signatories, and he reached out to anyone whowould listen. Ultimately, Sperry is keeping hisgoals realistic. Though he has hit his initial

mark, he since has set the bar higher: He hopesto gather as many signatures as there arepeople designing prisons, a number he believesis somewhere between 500 and 2,000.

Prindle said he sees no future for Sperry’smovement if it continues in the same direction.

“I admire him. I think he’s a very conscien-tious, educated guy; he certainly has passionbehind it,” Prindle says. “I see a little of myself20 years ago in him. He’s raising a great subjectthat needs to be aired in the public realm andcan get more discussion, but I think the targetis ineffective in the long run.We’re not going tobuild ourselves out of crime and delinquencyissues, those are really societal issues that haveto be taken care of on the neighborhood levelunder a broad public policy.”

Michael Fuller, a project manager and seniorassociate at HOK, is unapologetic about thefirm’s projects. In his opinion, it is more aboutimproving facilities than simply refusing tobuild more.

“HOK is really looking for innovative ways todeal with the issues that arise out of the kindsof populations we find in prisons now, whichis where a lot of the difficulties are arising, notjust in the numbers of people going to prison,but also the kinds of people we're trying todetain,” Fuller explains. “There are a hugenumber of sex offenders now, for example,that require relatively minimal security;they're not particularly violent offenders, butthey're also prey to other prison populations.So there has been some effort to look at alter-native ways of providing detention facilitiesfor that population.”

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Santa Ana Police Department, HOK.

St. Louis County Justice Center, HOK.

Photography by Christopher Frawley.

Continued on page 64

He continues, “You want to create environ-ments that encourage good behavior. Andthere are things that we design into buildingsto do that. For example, in many cases it’srequired that you have direct supervision.Sometimes you can have remote supervision,but in most cases you have to have directsupervision, so you also want to look at waysthat you can efficiently plan a facility so thatyou don't have to have a separate supervisorfor every type of detainee—you have visualand audio separation so that a single personcan monitor several of the groups from acentral location.”

Among other architects, Sperry finds morecommon ground. Beverly Prior of Beverly PriorArchitects and the Academy of Architecture forJustice may not have signed Sperry’s petition,but she does see it as a valid conversation.

“When I first shared this with people at theAmerican Institute of Architects (AIA), therewere some people on the committee whodidn’t think I should touch it,” she says.“‘There’s no way you should be part of a dis-cussion like this; we need to ignore it, notgive him any energy,’ they said. There wereothers, me being one, saying that it’s healthyto have this kind of conversation—we shouldbe participating in this.”

She was not alone. In September 2005, theAIA found the issue important enough to haveFrank J. Greene, a principal of New York’s Ricci-Greene Associates and the co-chair of theAIA/NY Chapter Committee on Architecture forJustice and member of the Steering Committeeof the National AIA Academy of Architecture forJustice, issue a response to Sperry’s proposal.

“America may not need more prisons,”Greene wrote, “but it desperately needs betterones. The differences between a state-of-the-art correctional facility and ones built before1970 are enormous. Old jails and prisons …were at best warehouses and at worst factoriesfor producing hardened criminals. Newdirect-supervision, program-intensive facilitiesare safe for inmates and staff, humane intheir treatment of the incarcerated, and lessexpensive to operate.”

Of course, prison design is a longstandingissue of debate. As early as 1791 British philoso-pher Jeremy Bentham offered Panopticon orThe Inspection-House an “idea of a new princi-ple of construction” rooted in the notion of

omniscience. Consisting of 21 letters to a friend,Bentham’s manuscript begins with thesepowerful words: “Morals reformed - healthpreserved - industry invigorated - instructiondiffused - public burthens lightened - Economyseated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordianknot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied -all by a simple idea in Architecture!”

It can be argued that no simple idea inarchitecture has yet to deliver all of Bentham’spromises. But one thing is for certain, noamount of discourse—or advancements inarchitectural design—has preempted thecrime rate or correlating prison population. Infact, according to the Justice Department’sBureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. prisonpopulation has risen more than 600 percentsince 1977. At the end of 2004, there were 2.3million persons, approximately 1.9 percent ofthe population, behind bars, and the numbersonly seem to be on the increase.

As such, Sperry realizes that discontinuingprison construction is not imminent. He does,however, carry a larger directive.

“Our message of the prison boycott isusually perceived as very negative,” Sperry says.“There is a correspondent component to ourmessage of doing community developmentas a way to achieve a higher level of publicsafety that is impossible with prisons as wellas other important goals. The idea is thatpeople commit crime a lot out of desperationand out of lack of different opportunities, andwe have a lot of communities that fail theirresidents because they leave them withouthope and without opportunity, and it wouldtake a major national program to build aresurgence of those communities.”

“And we’d like architects, designers andplanners to be engaged in that. I think buildingprisons detracts from the opportunity to dothat, not only because prisons are reallyexpensive and there’s a limited constructionbudget, but also because the mentality thatlicenses the world’s largest per capita prisonpopulation is incapable of envisioning thesekinds of safe, prosperous, contented communi-ties for everybody. We need to do work tochange the mentality to one where people lookout for their neighbors and want everybody tosucceed and are engaging in projects together,making our country and our world a moresustainable, prosperous, beautiful place. I think

that’s what architects overall want. Saying“no” to prisons is a very important part of that.Saying we’re going to make prettier prisons, it’snot part of that. It’s neither here nor there.”

HOK’s Fuller maintains that it’s not a designquestion that is going away.“I think that fromthe point of view of a bigger picture, we wouldargue that it's not just a matter of, ‘Do youbuild more or less?’ but how do you buildfacilities that are responsive to the kinds ofcrimes and populations we are finding. Itwould suggest to me that it's not necessarilyan issue of building more, but building theright kind of facilities.” He also concedes thatan architect’s role ends with the punchlist.“Once we build the facility, it's out of our hands.But there's a tremendous amount we can doduring the planning and the design to encour-age those kinds of good environments.”

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