So, where are the good new prisons? There are a few celebrated worldwide jails, including Norway's BastГёy prison, on BastГёy island, whose wooden cottages look like the kind of place that you might even choose for a holiday were it on Airbnb, and where inmates are allowed to ride horses, fish and go skiing. Designers need to look at the purpose of prison, and the idea that you can simply 'warehouse' people is wrong.вЂќ вЂњBut it's enshrined in English law that courts punish and prisons rehabilitate.

вЂњPrison design is a hot potato and brings out a lot of emotion,вЂќ adds Cottam. The Learning Prison's emphasis was that prison surroundings may be spartan, but shouldn't be mentally and emotionally repressive. вЂњThey have chickens at Holloway,вЂќ she says. Cells should be like studies, they argued, with access to animals and gardens: an idea that has indeed been taken up. These views are shared by the social entrepreneur Hilary Cottam, who has done much research on prison design and in the 2000s worked with architects Buschow Henley on a project called The Learning Prison, which proposed a jail composed of a cellular structure of 11 вЂњhouse unitsвЂќ, each holding 36 prisoners in small communities. вЂњMore open layouts can improve inmate-guard relations and support a culture of progress rather than fear.вЂќ Closeness to family is also important, another reason for concern about the out-of-town jails, where travel times will be greater. Her study argued for more openness and, like Lyon, she believes that better staff-prisoner relations are a significant factor in preventing recidivism. Karin Beijersbergen of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, writing in the Crime & Delinquency journal, established the existence of six broad jail-design styles, from the late 19th to the 21st century: panoptical, radial, rectangular, courtyard, high-rise and campus more or less in that historical order. So, softening devices such as vinyl flooring, better insulation and underfloor heating aren't much use if a prison fails in the creation of safety. During the riots in Risley Prison, Warrington, which opened in 1964, people became trapped on landings. As Lyon says, some have poor sight lines, low ceilings, corridors and blind spots. Lyon says that there have been different stages in prison design, and those built in the 1960s through to the 1980s did focus on rehabilitation, creating spaces such as вЂњcommunal living roomsвЂќ. вЂњNo wonder they're universities of crime.вЂќ Alsop recommended giving prisoners more agency: their own keys to cells, meaningful jobs, better education and mixed age groups вЂ“ even allowing prisoners to paint their cells so as to achieve вЂњa sense of placeвЂќ вЂ“ and his HMP Paterson concept (named after pre-war prison reformer, Alexander Paterson) mooted a landscape surrounded by buildings: library, sports facilities, recording studio.Д«leeding-heart accusations arrived (вЂњThey all came out with the 'holiday camp' line,вЂќ Alsop recalls) so he stuck them with the UK's high 62 per cent recidivist rate: вЂњSchools should make you learn, hospitals should make you better, and prisons should help prisoners reform.вЂќ Alsop hasn't been asked to contribute a design for the nine new nicks and, according to Jewkes, will be unlikely to tender. вЂњThey bang up prisoners in these miserable places,вЂќ he says.

Ten years ago, Alsop made a project with organisation Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation), a company that promotes the arts within the penal system, and found all manner of spirit-crushing detail: beds just 6ft long, lavatories in cells two feet away from the bed. But she is not optimistic, and nor is architect Will Alsop of aLL Design. Maybe the nine prisons-to-be will be akin to Jewkes' desire for an вЂњarchitecture of hopeвЂќ. In a recent paper, Designing Punishment: Balancing security, creativity and humanity in contemporary correctional systems, Jewkes wrote that вЂњprisons send a clear message about punishment from the 'carefully scripted' construction of their faГ§adesвЂќ and that the new вЂњbland, corporate-lookingвЂќ prisons have no architect engagement with their вЂњclientsвЂќ or if you prefer, end users. But Yvonne Jewkes, professor of criminology at the University of Leicester, thinks that despite such humanising appurtenances, these edifices are more akin to the вЂњAmazon warehouseвЂќ typology, hardly вЂњcutting-edge architectureвЂќ, more a container model imported from the US: bland and technocratic, with a smell of fear and an assembly-line ethos.

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