Sociology

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Browsing Sociology by Author "Elton, Margot"

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    Blueprints and Bars: An Exploration into the Effects of Architecture Upon Rehabilitation in Correctional Institutions
    (2007) Elton, Margot; Hohenstein, William
    The United States Criminal Justice System claims to aim for rehabilitation of all inmates who pass through the prison system. However, only approximately 1 out of every 12 inmates is offered the type of extensive counseling and programming needed to promote reformation. In addition, the Federal Bureau of Prisons only spends between 2 and 3 dollars a day per inmate, not enough to provide inmates with anything more than the bare necessities. These statements beg the question: what is the true aim of the prison system, rehabilitation or simple incarceration? To fully understand the mentality of incarceration in the United States, the evolution of penological philosophy is traced from First Generation through to Third, or New, Generation prisons, looking at the manners in which these philosophies incorporated ideas of rehabilitation into the functionality of the prison institution. In conjunction with an examination of rehabilitation in correctional facilities, this paper considers architecture in the context of corrections. In the last two hundred years, prisons have been constructed in a variety of architecture styles— radial, circular, octagonal—in an attempt to find the design most conducive to inmate rehabilitation. This paper examines the most important designs in history, John Haviland’s Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, in order to discover which aspects positively affect reformation of inmates and which create more problems than they solve. Following this is an examination of architectural issues important to consider when designing a prison, from lighting and noise level to inmate respect and the problem of inmate alienation from society. Finally, an ideal prison design is proposed, using the research compiled throughout the paper. This design takes many of its ideas from the Judicial Center of Leoben in Austria, and works to create a corrections facility that promotes the Third Generation penal philosophy as well as inmate rehabilitation.