Rehabilitative prison design is possibly the last subject most readers would expect to find fascinating, but Jewkes has woven stories of her work in that field with that of restoring a house and even rebuilding her essential self.
The prison design field is easy to understand. Jewkes, Professor of Criminology at the University of Bath, also has an interest in Down Under. She is an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne and been involved in prison design in Australia and New Zealand.
While rebuilding her own self-esteem, as well as making her 200-year-old townhouse habitable, Jewkes continued her role as the world’s leading expert in rehabilitative prison design.
This is no light read, detailing Jewkes’ work around the world visiting old and new prisons, talking to prisoners, and trying to persuade officials that bleakness and ugliness imposed on prisoners just limits their potential and chances of rehabilitation.
She believies that some people deserve to be in prison, but also that prisons are a statement of failure.
Surveying nations around the world, she states that in England and Wales 131 people in 100 000 are imprisoned; in Australia, 167; New Zealand, 164, Norway, 56; but the US has 629 per 100 000 of the population in jails. In Finland, jails were overflowing in the ’80s, but reforms meant inmate numbers came down to 51 per 100 000.
Jewkes is realistic enough to question the boundaries between trying to improve the lives of society’s most marginalised and damaged people and simply perpetuating prison institutions, but with softer edges.
An Architecture of Hope starts an important discussion on that topic.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yvonne Jewkes is Professor of Criminology at the University of Bath and Honorary Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She is the world’s leading expert on rehabilitative prison design, and a reluctant house renovator. Passionate about the potential of architecture to improve the quality of all our lives, her research has taken her to prisons as diverse as those in Norway, Spain, and Japan.
Meanwhile, her role in helping to design corrections facilities in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand has been rewarded with two prestigious prizes that celebrate the ‘real world’ impact of academic expertise.
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