The penitentiary machine: the ritual of incarceration and the decent space
The research invests in the psycho-physical effects that the environment of incarceration has on the users that experience everyday life in the Italian penitentiary system. The outcome is an inventory of design pills that aim to renew the project perspective as an ethical tool, which is capable of articulating the relation between space and people and its effect on people’s behaviour and the environment through humble but impactful changes.
National
Italy
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Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Giorgia Last name: Zin Gender: Female Age: 25 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Lando Landucci 23 Town: Padova Postal code: 35127 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 346 346 1262 E-mail:giorgia.zin@gmail.com
First name: Irene Last name: Bassi Gender: Female Age: 26 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Sandro Pertini Town: San Pietro In Gu Postal code: 35010 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 351 859 6932 E-mail:irene.bassi123@gmail.com
Criminal behavior is the visible outcome of personal or social pathological relations. In the penal sense, punishment is already foregone by the lack of freedom during confinement. However, the limitation should never occur on the psychological side. The attempt is thus to define an approach to prison design that fulfills the desperate need to restore the dignity of the inmate which should always be due as a human being. The outcome is a practical guide of several chapters, where each is a spatial study of a particular prison area. This way, the research can be completed and expanded by whoever wishes to change the degrading Italian penitentiary situation.
The chapter “The ritual of incarceration” focuses on the colossal impact that incarceration has on the new inmate. Shifting from the freedom of everyday life to segregation is traumatizing, and the existing reception spaces do not help. To maintain the dignity of the inmate or, eventually, re-acquiring it, it is fundamental that each action corresponds to a profound meaning, like an actual ritual.
The other chapter “The decent space” relies on the section, the living area of the prison. It is about how spatial disposition determines and influences how people live, and how they relate to each other, affecting the level of privacy, and the desire or need to avoid or relate with others.
Providing decent living conditions for all those people that experience everyday life in prison is the first step to reaching the primary aim of such an institution: a re-integrational place.
Prison
Dignity
Incarceration
Penitentiary
Inmate
The project originated from the desire to be socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable. In Italy, the prison is, unfortunately, currently considered a separate organ from society. Truth is that prison should be known, and within it, it should be possible to speak of social welfare: the project strives to create spatial conditions that favour the physical and psychic health of staff and prisoners, a feeling of security, a decent and dignified treatment that does not harm the dignity of individuals to favour social reintegration and the enrichment provided by interpersonal relations.
The value of environmental sustainability is given by the fact that the penitentiary institutions already present in the area are taken into consideration by investigating model types of spaces, offering improvements, and thus avoiding demolishing to replace, enhancing and using pre-existing structures.
The economic sustainability is given by the desire to establish a virtuous circle, which can break the high level of recidivism in Italian prisons, establishing a new relationship with the space that can be the instrument with which the prisoner can feel like a fully-fledged human being, aware of his dignity, so that he can carry out a course on himself that leads him to stop engaging in unlawful behaviour, relieving and emptying prisons that currently benefit from endless state funds, without any effectiveness, having a recidivism rate between 60 and 70 per cent.
Space determines and influences how people live and how they relate to each other. The penitentiary space configuration affects the relationship between detainees and officers, the level of privacy, and the desire or need to avoid or relate with others. The spaces and time of punishment shape the everyday life of individuals, their well-being, general treatment, as well as, re-educational treatment, and the possibility of aspiring to genuine social reintegration. It is necessary to ask how a space with these conditions can facilitate and foster, if not re-education, at least a quiet life.
Being forced to abandon the familiar environment of everyday life constitutes a real smack in someone’s life. Therefore, the moment of incarceration stands out as the first step of this unfortunate process. Losing habits, affections, and properties leave you with no more than silence and emptiness.
Through the ritual of incarceration, it is possible to offer the prisoner the time and space to face what is happening, predisposing him to a lesser impact than the current situation, making the beginning of the prison experience less damaging, and recognising him as a person worthy of care and dignity.
Nowadays, inmate located in cramped prison rooms is placed in an unfavourable situation, which provides an incentive to bring out the worst part of himself. It is evident how interpersonal relationships inevitably degrade. The very cohabitation mutates into a forced situation of intolerance when it could be an opportunity for mutual enrichment. For this reason, it is necessary to study behaviours in the section, improving the conditions of the cell it is possible to build positive and constructive relationships, that can make a difference in the re-education and reintegration process.
One of the main goals of the project is to bring design closer to one of the places where it is most needed, working closely with reality to understand its strengths and exploit them to the full. During our research, we came across the Peer Supporter program, a tutor activity. In prison, therefore, more stable inmates are placed side by side with others with more precarious mental stability to support them during certain activities. The feedback from educators is excellent: the supported inmate improves exponentially, while the other is brought to work on himself, implementing his relational skills.
This is why we thought that peer support is a fundamental part of the project to be preserved and increased. The idea is to support a prisoner who can explain to the newly arrived what awaits him, to reassure him as a person who has already embarked on the same path, providing a person who can become a positive reference within an unfamiliar system for the newly arrived. In the process of entering prison, after registration, there is the interview, where the skills of the prisoner also emerge, to incentivize and give back importance to the usefulness of the person, who finds himself in prison without a purpose, we decided to include a sort of placement agency, which works with the Peer Supporter program, to place two persons who have similar interests side by side, to provide an element of communion.
At the same time, it is decided to formulate a housing unit that is not single but at least double. Through field research, it became evident how crucial it is to have two people in the same unit for a basic safety issue: the roommate can alert the agents in the event of illness or attempted suicide.
The thinking tends to encourage this approach by bringing the Peer Supporter to share living spaces, to provide constant confrontation and growth, which is possible since the new housing module has the features to have an individual space and be able to enjoy sharing.
Prison is a total institution, such as university campuses, hospitals, and convents, but unfortunately, although all other realities are known to the public, the same is not true of prisons. It maintains a situation of detachment and distance between free people and those imprisoned.
An in-depth study of Italian prisons has led to the formation of the concept of a widespread prison, a widespread, smaller prison that can be brought closer to the city and its citizens. Field research has shown how people have little awareness of the subject of prison, and this is a proven reason why the institution is a marginal issue in society even when it should not be.
The widespread prison might be a great opportunity, where spaces become elements of interconnection between prison and external society. Both prisoners and free citizens will attend the new hybrid spaces, like the supermarket, the library, the sports ground, etc. In this way, the prisoner experiences a preview of the life that awaits him outside. After all, as the prison is allowed to be architecture, so the inmate should be allowed to be a human again, without his past to keep interfering with his dignity.
The key stakeholder for the project was the prison, which allowed us to come into close contact with its spaces, operators and inmates. Through several visits to the prison in question, it was possible to approach the project in a co-design dimension, understanding the difficulties in the common life of the person living in prison. The elements of disorientation, forced intimacy, living with strangers, and being totally deprived of a personal sphere were the themes that emerged most frequently. The possibility of experiencing the space gave us some fundamental keys to understanding, such as that of noise pollution, the pros and cons of the latest prison regulations applied, understanding how what on paper may appear to be an optimal enhancement, in reality, does not take into account at all the difficulties and dangerousness of certain situations, such as dynamic surveillance, which pushes the prison guards completely outside the section, or single cells, which are unrealistic because of the overcrowding problem, but also considering the high rate of self-harm, the cellmate is also used to report an illness or attempted suicide, unfortunately.
The project started with socio-historical research comparing legislative decrees concerning penal institutions and the corresponding socio-historical events from the Age of Enlightenment to the present day. The result has brought out that the evolution of the prison system goes hand in hand with the advancement of society.
Then, to proceed with the comprehension of the critical physical but moreover mental conditions of prison users it was necessary to have an idea of how our brain works, so we researched the psychological field and sociological too.
On a practical level, meeting detainees, prison agents, and professionals that work in prison was fundamental to deepening the previous expertise we got to know through the research on books. The confrontation with the users offered us precious information that was precious for the design phase, we can affirm that the design phase was more of a co-design experience where we manage to propose quick solutions to a list of different issues that concerned the prison’s interiors.
In most cases, studies on the prison environment propose long-term reflections in an ideal future where it is assumed that many of the current conditions have already been solved by no one knows who. Or another portion of projects, after starting from a very broad analysis of the matter, limits the proposal to a particular case study.
The conditions in Italian prisons need quick solutions that take care of economic and, above all, social sustainability.
Several foreign countries proposed modern penitentiary solutions that unfortunately not always are necessarily right. The famous Halden Prison, in Sweden, undoubtedly is an innovative institution, however, it underestimated the very important social aspect of sharing space with others. Trivially, it is possible to say that having a roommate is potentially a factor of growth and enrichment.
Cooperation between equals is an altruistic gesture that should be exploited to the full since it is clear that it helps to raise consciousness about how to live in a fair society, come out of individualism, and remember that helping others helps us.
In Italy, prison-building models are always the same and have always been repeated over the years. This detail is fundamental because the solutions we propose can be adapted to different local, regional, and even national cases. The truth is that prison-building models are repeated in Italy as much as abroad, so our design pills can be applied and expanded to a worldwide scale with the proper adjustments.
The challenge is to make it known that prison is in fact an integral part of society and that it is not a distant and unknown reality.
It is obvious to draw a parallel between the disenfranchisement of the prisoner from the community and the estrangement of the prison from the city.
Attualmente prisons are huge mechanisms that operate in solitary. The idea of splitting the monolith prison into several smaller buildings is already in place, but the fact that the new micro-city still is located far away from urban city centres is a paradox. In our cities, in our solid democratic republic, the rule of out of sight, out of mind prevails. Architecture and urban planning have a role in being able to provide a way to reconnect society with the prison. The possibility of having a widespread prison with a small size could potentially promote public awareness of the issue and allow inmates to hold a mirror up to the society where they still belong. The widespread prison might be a great opportunity, where spaces become elements of interconnection between prison and external society. Both prisoners and free citizens will attend the new hybrid spaces, like the supermarket, the library, the sports ground, etc. In this way, the prisoner experiences a preview of the life that awaits him outside. After all, as the prison is allowed to be architecture, so the inmate should be allowed to be a human again, without his past to keep interfering with his own dignity.
