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The Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) promotes and fosters the exchange of information and knowledge between members, professional organizations, and the public for high-quality planning, design, and delivery of justice architecture.

Stakeholder Engagement in the Creation of Humane and Restorative Correctional Spaces

By Heather M. Ligler posted 11-04-2014 09:34 PM

  

How can projects for correctional facilities be created that encourage collaborative processes to engage stakeholders at all levels in creating spaces that promote restoration? 


Designing Justice Designing Spaces_Image 1: From the San Bruno Jail Workshop: student Anthony is drawing a plan of his designs for a healing pod. Photo credit: Lee Romney.

The “Stakeholder Engagement in the Creation of Humane and Restorative Correctional Spaces” panel at this years conference will present two collaborative projects that aim to answer this question. Both projects focus on opportunities to creatively involve a variety of people in the design of correctional spaces, including prisoners, prison staff, students, visitors, and academic researchers. This concept of learning-by-doing stresses that participation at all levels is an important aspect of overcoming the limitations and imagining more for environments defined by criminal justice.  A preview of both projects is presented below in anticipation of their discussion at the panel Friday November 7th at 11am.



Iowa Correctional Institution for Women
_Image 1: ICIW Warden Patti Wachtendorf (center) with landscape architecture class in a new outdoor classroom. Photo by Bob Elbert.

One project is a case study of a multi-year collaboration between the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women and Iowa State University to create gardens and landscape environments at the prison. Julie Stevens and her landscape architecture students have designed and built these healing and restorative projects working directly with the ICIW. 



Iowa Correctional Institution for Women
_Image 2: View of all three multipurpose classrooms on new prison campus. Photo by Bob Elbert.

A second case study, Designing Justice Designing Spaces, is lead by Deanna Van Buren and Barb Toews. They have visited institutions, architecture firms, conferences and communities across the country to develop a toolkit for collaborating with incarcerated populations. Enjoy the Q&A below with Deanna and Barb that aims to highlight the tools, processes, format and outcomes of their workshops

 Q1: How have you designed your own tools and processes for stakeholder engagement? 

This project has brought together tools and processes from the architecture/design field and the social sciences to explore the way in which restorative justice theory could be used to inform the design of correctional facilities, courthouses, and other justice buildings. Our workshops include readings about restorative justice and architecture/design, large and small group discussions and design work. With each activity, participants explore justice questions as well as the metaphorical and literal design elements of justice spaces that participants choose.

Most of the workshop tools are not necessarily new tools but we are using them in unique ways, and with participants who are not architects or designers. Participants learn design tools such as visual diaries, collages, diagrams, perspectives and montages, and model-making (with paper or blocks). One of our favorite new tools are peace and justice design cards. Each card features an image that could represent peace, conflict, justice and injustice. Student—alone or in groups—select cards that speak to their visions for new types of justice spaces. When possible, we invite participants to bring personal items that also speak to these visions.   


Designing Justice Designing Spaces_Image 2: Collage created by men incarcerated in a San Francisco jail. The left side presents our current criminal justice system. The right side represents a criminal justice system based on love.



Designing Justice Designing Spaces_Image 3: Restorative courtroom, created in a class held at a men’s state prison in Pennsylvania and which included both incarcerated and non-incarcerated participants.


Q2: Can you walk us through the framework for one of your workshops and highlight some outcomes?

While more time is ideal, a typical prison-based workshops are approximately 12 hours in length, over several days or a week. We open the workshop with a design activity (often a group collage) to introduce workshop themes and invite active participation right from the start. In that first session and each subsequent one, participants receive restorative justice readings and prompts to guide visual diaries entries, each of which is completed outside the workshop itself. In each session, then, we discuss the assigned reading and apply learnings through design work. With each session, participants learn and practice a new design tool. Toward the end of the workshop, participants work in small group to design a restorative justice-oriented space, using all the tools learned in class. We have also had the opportunity to do several semester-long courses which use much the same approach.

The best outcomes of these workshops are the truly amazing design concepts participants create. Whether it is a space in which to hold a victim offender dialogue, reentry campus or redesigned jail yard, participants’ work speaks to a desire for a more restorative and healing approach to justice and the possibilities for an architecture that supports that approach. We also see participants experience great pride in their work, challenge themselves to work together, and push their own boundaries and understanding of who they are and what they are capable of doing. We have also heard from many participants that the opportunity to do creative work gave them inspiration and energy and even “voice,” something they had not experienced in a long time. 

Designing Justice Designing Spaces_Image 4: Space in which to let out angry and sadness, created by an incarcerated woman. From left to right: lying on the grass looking up at the stars with family, visiting Puerto Rico with father, and spending time on a beach boardwalk with family.

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