Although prisons are very complex structures in which many factors take part in terms of performance and efficiency, and therefore the issues related to them need to be tackled through a multi-disciplinary approach, in this brief essay the attention will focus mostly on aspects that are inherent to the architecture of the prison, both at the urban scale and that of the building itself, with references as well to some issues which include management, organisational and social aspects within the penitentiary structure. Some penitentiary activities, in order to be carried out in accordance with the law or international regulations,⁹ need a specific spatial structure, which satisfies certain requirements and specific standards, especially in terms of size. All of this can be respected only if the prison is envisaged, both at the institutional and cultural levels, as a tool for rehabilitation and for providing opportunities, rather than only as a place of segregation and social exclusion.¹⁰ Translating these concepts into architectural terms, it could be said that if the prison continues to be envisaged only in terms of security and control, it will remain the institution that we know. On the contrary, if architects are given the opportunity to provide for aspects regarding the interior quality and comfort for the users of the structure, it will be possible ―as the examples show― to ascribe an active role to the penitentiary, including a healthy relationship with society outside the prison, which can thus become an asset for society at large. 

The hypothesis that is presented here derives from the assumption that the various types of detainees should be differentiated into structures that are designed based upon the different needs of the various segments of the prisoner population. This view is based upon the premise that architecture can, and must, contribute through appropriate projects to these varying types of custody requirements into which the penitentiary system can be subdivided. Although it would be preferable to rethink typological schemes and spatial organisation at all levels of security (from minimum to maximum), it is easier to begin by providing detailed indications regarding prisons belonging to the minimum-security circuit. Due to their lower levels of control, minimum-security institutions can more easily accept and adapt to new typological experimentation and to design solutions that are not as bound to the traditional rigid prison models which have been unimaginatively replicated throughout the territory.

As mentioned before, the themes included in the definition of a new architectural conception of the prison take into consideration aspects at the urban scale even before defining with precision the typological features of the building. Every State certainly has its own particularities and features, its traditions and customs, but if we pay attention exclusively to European nations, we can overlook the differences that characterise every social system and penitentiary model, and consider only those aspects that are essential and fundamental in all systems. This process of simplification is partly justified by the fact that the tradition on which the main penitentiary systems is based has a common origin, which has now been shared for decades through the adoption of international agreements and regulations, as well as by the fact that, at a general level, the respect for human rights and for the dignity of individuals is founded on universal tenets that are now shared worldwide. 

In view of this, it is appropriate to make a clarification regarding the penitentiary system in the United States, which presents features that are very different from those adopted by the countries belonging to the European Union. This makes it difficult to carry out comparisons or to import or export solutions between the two contexts. In the United States the situation of prisons is generally tragic, as it can be seen in the last report published by the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College in London,¹¹ which shows how detainee population has reached numbers of up to 2,200,000 people, with the second highest rate of detention in the world, 698.¹² The specific mechanisms through which penitentiary services are subcontracted to private entities, prefigures a situation that is very different from that of Europe, from the cultural, social and economic points of view. To this, it is added the fact that the death penalty is still practiced in some states of the American Union. These factors result in a fundamental ideological difference between Europe and the United States which, from its fundamental principles, has implications throughout all levels of the organisation and management of the penitentiary system. Thus, in order to seek new hypotheses for the development and enhancement of the penitentiary system, it is more convenient to focus on the European context. In this way certain positive tendencies may be highlighted. These are often still in an experimental phase, yet begin to show their first positive results.

The countries which present more innovations regarding the adopted penitentiary model are Norway, Denmark, Spain and Austria. Each country expresses these innovations in different ways. Some, like Norway and Denmark, have designed very modern and expensive structures, innovative in terms both of the spaces ―interior furnishing and decoration― and of the security and technological systems adopted, which collaborate with the proper carrying out of advanced penitentiary treatment methods. Other countries, such as Italy and Spain, have mostly aimed at the transformation of penitentiary models, only partially modifying the existing penitentiary structures. It is necessary, however, to bear in mind that Italy and Spain show a continuous presence of critical, and sometimes even emergency situations, whereas other countries, such as Norway, Austria and Denmark have consolidated good practices which have transformed them into ordinary practices for the design, management and organisation of penitentiary structures. The benefits of this approach are evident as it can be seen by comparing the data regarding the detention rate and the percentage of recidivism. In Italy the detention rate is close to 103, in Europe it is 128 and in the world 144,¹³ but there are remarkable exceptions, such as Norway, with a detention rate of 71, and Denmark with 61. The same disparity exists in the rate of recidivism:¹⁴ in Italy recidivism is higher than 67%, whereas in Norway the percentage of recidivism is between 16 and 20%. This same rate in the United States reaches a staggering 76.6%.¹⁵

These numbers cannot be ascribed only to the bettering of the spaces and of the quality of services within the prison, but research carried out on the Norwegian penitentiary system show that the architecture and quality of the spaces does play a fundamental role in addressing the challenge of creating a penitentiary system that is both efficient and useful to society. The words of the Director of Bastøy prison are in this sense exemplary: “In the law, being sent to prison has nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals.”¹⁶

These figures show how a new organisation of the penitentiary system is needed, beginning from its material structure. The question, however, must be addressed at the cultural level. The transformation of the cultural stance is necessary in order to bring about an interpretation of the prison sentence as an opportunity for the renewal and rehabilitation of the detainees, which then becomes expressed by the resulting penitentiary models through concrete elements such as work, education, interchange with the outside world, and the organisation of individual and collective spaces.

The arguments regarding the new idea of the prison refer to models for minimum and medium security penitentiaries, but nothing excludes the possibility of extending the elements in question to all types of prisons, while limiting as much as possible the construction of maximum security institutions. The aspects that characterise the new way to conceive the prison regard:

a) The location of penitentiary buildings in relation to the urban context and to the structures that intervene in the penitentiary system. The penitentiary building must be capable of establishing a relationship with its surrounding context and of generating interchange with the outside world so as not to become an impenetrable element, unresponsive to the stimuli coming from the city. The prison must no longer be conceived as a city within the city, as in the past, but rather assume the functions of an urban neighbourhood, and be placed in continuity with the surrounding urban fabric. This permits the creation, in precise and well-chosen points, of “moments of osmosis” between the inside and the outside, in a dialectical relationship with the active components of the surrounding social context.

b) The penitentiary structure, even when articulated into several buildings, must however be based on a compact typology so it can be inserted without discontinuity into the urban fabric. It must be conceived as a complex structure with entrance and exit flows, and must offer its non-residential spaces, especially next to the entrance, to the outside community, so as to allow the prison to become a place for supporting urban collective culture, ascribing to it a role as linkage between the inside and outside worlds. 

c) The elimination of the impenetrable wall as a necessary condition for overcoming the “fortress” effect. The re-thinking of the external wall, the boundary, as we are used to imagine it today, must be abandoned in favour of a more permeable solution, both from the visual and the material point of view. The substitution of the wall with a porous, inhabited perimeter, could confer to the boundary a greater “thickness” that allows organising within it spaces for penitentiary functions that are not strictly related to detention, capable of hosting the external community and make it come into contact with the “enclosed” community living in the prison. 

d) The prison building must adopt spatial solutions which follow more open custody models in which the cell is no longer the central element of prison life. The prison must no longer be a nondescript container of cells and must become a well-articulated structure capable of satisfying the requirements of collective as well as of individual life. There must be alternation and variation between spaces. The dimensions and measurements of the environments must be proportionate to the periods of time the spaces are occupied and to the number of users admitted to them simultaneously, as well as adequate for the specific functions to be carried out within them. The various sections of the structure must not be mono-functional, but rather tend to a multi-functionality, so as to alternate open spaces for social activities and closed spaces for the various activities envisaged by the rehabilitation treatment programmes. The dynamic succession of dense and rarefied spaces must be as close as possible to that of everyday urban normality.

e) The cell must lose its role of central place in prison life, giving way to a model of the prison organised on the model of self-sufficient residential units (residential nuclei). Within each residential unit the detainees can self-manage their time and organise the distribution of the responsibilities regarding their common areas, abandoning the model of undifferentiated distribution of cells. Residential units must present an alternation between individual spaces, for the moments of privacy, and collective spaces for moments of social interaction. The atmosphere within the interior space must reproduce, at least partially, the familiar effect of collective structures, ¹⁷ so that the organisation of space may play a role in the process of rehabilitation and help in fostering an attitude of social cooperation. 

f) The size of the spaces, beginning with the bedrooms, both in residential units and in other types of functional organisation, must respect the minimum dimensions established by national and international regulations of the C.P.T. and the European Court of Human Rights. The dimensional standards, as only regulatory tool, have been much criticised and doubt has been cast as to whether they provide an effective benefit to collective structures, either of a social or popular nature. Adopted in a deterministic manner, without additional criteria for choosing the minimum dimensions, they seem sterile and incapable of ensuring the levels of quality required by complex structures such as a prison. If the dimensional parameters are not determined in relation to the ways in which the spaces are used, and the duration of the usage, the resulting spaces will be inadequate for satisfying their purposes, to the point of becoming generators of anguish and depression. These parameters, however, can be kept as reference for penitentiary institutions, if they are then appropriately related to the ways in which the spaces are used.

g) The new penitentiary structure must overcome the model of confinement of detainees within the detention section even if it belongs to the open cell typology, and envisage differentiated levels of autonomy of movement for every detainee. Some institutions already use technological systems that envisage the use by the detainees of magnetic cards which give them access to certain functional areas of the prison, based upon their duties and treatment activities. This method of management of the internal flow, on the one hand can make the participation of detainees in therapeutic activities easier, thus helping them to fully express their personality, and on the other allow prison operators to better get to know the detainees inside the areas where they spend most of their time.

h) In order for work and education to have an active role in the process of re-education, it is necessary to provide adequate spaces which can take on the symbolic value of spaces for cultural and social emancipation, fundamental elements for a positive reinsertion into society. The educational and work programmes have proven to be essential for the reinsertion of the detainees and have a direct effect on lowering the rate of recidivism (Jovanic, 2011). Some studies have proven that education, work and detention are closely related and that offering the detainees the opportunity to better their work capacity and cultural quality means offering them an enhanced possibility to reconstruct their life after prison. ¹⁸ The classroom, as well as the workshop, must be conceived so as to favour learning and incentivize interaction and cooperation between detainees and operators, marking a distance ―as much as possible― with the features of closure which characterise spaces of reclusion.

i) Meals, such as lunch and dinner, must be held in common so that this activity assumes once again its usual and normal value as a moment of social interaction. For this reason, the appropriate spaces that respect regulations in terms both of hygiene and security must be made available. As we can read in the Final Document of the General Assembly on Criminal Enforcement, ¹⁹ the preparation and consumption of meals is of the utmost importance since it represents “one of the few elements that recall the everyday life outside the walls, in addition to being one of the few activities that the detainees can carry out autonomously: it is a way for reaffirming individual identity and for maintaining links to one's own family, as well as for interacting socially with fellow inmates.” Instead of providing common dining-halls where the entire detainee population eats at the same time, smaller areas can be devised where small groups of detainees can autonomously administer, prepare and eat their meals.

j) The interior furnishing and decoration and the treatment of surfaces, both horizontal and vertical, as well as various security systems in use today must be rethought in function of a lesser visual and material impact. The materials and the colours used must contribute to the creation of a welcoming and comfortable environment, with a good degree of way finding and with a lighting that is adequately related to the specific activities undertaken in each space. 

The above described 10 elements have been deduced observing examples carried out in Europe and North America. They seem to represent the main elements on which to base the design of a new typology of penitentiary institution. A penitentiary model that is different from the preceding models not only in name, but rather a structure which is truly new in its very essence, and which expresses through its architectural configuration the aims of rehabilitation and social reinsertion. The described elements express the idea of a prison centred on the opportunities for rehabilitation of the individual, and no longer only on segregation and exclusion. The limitation of freedom becomes the only element of punishment that the Rule of Law inflicts on those who transgress certain rules, and this new penitentiary model clearly represents this stance. At the centre of the new detention model is the detainee himself, who is considered as an active participant in the process of re-education. This cultural threshold permits a society to express a detention model centred on individual responsibility and on the possibility of self-management of part of their everyday life by the detainees. This represents the “jump” which allows a society to establish a properly functional penitentiary apparatus. A penitentiary system which is capable of rehabilitation rather than correcting, of including rather than isolating, and of creating a community which, however enclosed as a result of having committed a mistake, is part of the social structure, and as such exists permanently, notwithstanding the social re-insertion of the individuals who belong to it.

The Halden penitentiary complex, situated approximately 100 kms to the south-east of Oslo, was inaugurated in April, 2010, and is the feather in the cap of the Norwegian penitentiary system (Fig. 1). The project constitutes the most innovative example in the field of penitentiary architecture for the application of the responsibility regime, and the prison is configured as a detention facility for both the rehabilitation of inmates and behavioural research. Designed by the HLM arkitektur studio in collaboration with the Erik Møller arkitekter studio, Halden prison was built over a period of ten years and at a cost of approximately 200 million euro. The main objective for both the entity who commissioned the prison and for the architects who designed it was that of making the penitentiary institution resemble as much as possible the outside world, so as to establish a way of life based upon responsibility and self-determination. The 252 inmates are busy in work or study activities during the day and spend most of the time outside their detention rooms. The prison is organised into several separate pavilions immersed in the green of the garden, and within the pavilions the inmates are free to move and to organise their leisure activities together. 

The entire area within the walls is laid out as a garden, with trees, benches and jogging lanes, and is visited on a daily basis by the inmates whenever they have any free time. In addition to the detention sections, the workshops and the school, the prison includes a recording studio, a common kitchen and guest quarters for relatives who come to visit the inmates. In addition to the responsibility regime, Halden prison is characterised by the architectural solutions used; the architects in fact strived ―both regarding forms and the choice of materials ― to limit the alienating effects caused by detention, and to imagine a structure that would recall the least possible a detention centre. The prison wall was also the object of intense research, and was partially camouflaged with the use on the one hand, of a curved layout and tall trees and, on the other, through a series of murals and graffiti of high aesthetic quality painted by contemporary artists. Another element in the Halden prison that attenuates the sense of constriction and alienation is the abolition of all the traditional internal security devices (bars on windows, fences, armoured doors, etc.), which are replaced by technologically advanced systems. All the elements above described contribute to the establishment of a penitentiary institution that is respectful of both human rights and the individual personalities of the inmates. Halden Prison is a highly innovative institution for the qualified treatment and behavioural rehabilitation of the detainees and it looks ahead to the future and attempts to overturn the old principles and belief in segregation and suffering as part of the penalty. 

The prison can house 125 detainees subdivided into four separate sections. Each detainee has a single bedroom (Fig. 6), normally furnished, and has access to the common spaces present in the section in question: dining-room, kitchen (Fig. 7), living-room, garden and loggia. The prison also has a gym, a sports centre, covered gardens and terraces, in addition to the services and spaces for both recreational and rehabilitation activities. 

The Vordernberg Detention Centre, inaugurated in 2013, is not really a penitentiary structure, but rather a detention centre for illegal immigrants. This specific category of inmates (immigrants without a residence permit) is housed within the centre not due to a sentence passed by a court, but because it finds itself in a condition of illegality that must be resolved either through deportation or the granting of a residence permit. The structure is therefore designed to house, for brief periods of time, people who find themselves in this specific legal status. The structure of the detention centre is based upon the “comb” architectural model and is divided into two main areas: the administrative and management services (administration offices, immigration offices, consulate offices, etc.) are placed on the side facing the street and the entrance; on the opposite side is the housing area for the residents (Fig. 8), that includes the sleeping quarters and all the spaces for everyday life (living-room, dining-room, kitchen, toilets and bathrooms, etc.). The building, composed of two floors above-ground, includes seven residential sections, each of which has a garden or a terrace (Fig. 9). Open spaces are free to be used by residents upon previous notice to the surveillance personnel (Fig. 10). 

The critical interpretation of the conceptual elements and of the design approaches regarding the topic of penitentiary architecture proposed above, tries to “mend” the relationship between the theoretical conception and the actual building practice of the prison. The interpretation is developed from the idea that the architectural project, when it materialises in a built structure, is always the material expression of an abstract idea and of a specific vision of the world which manifests itself through the architectural consistency of the building and of the built spaces. This affirmation is even more true when it is referred to the design of institutional architecture, which, in addition to its own function, is called to transfer to society at large a series of meanings and symbolic values, as in the case of courthouses, schools, hospitals and shelters. Among these typologies, the prison is the one which represents in a more evident manner the gap between theoretical thought and concrete results.

Over the past forty years, penitentiary disciplines have undergone radical theoretical changes which, on various occasions, have attempted to modify in society the meaning and the role of the punishment, and consequently of the prison. The ideas, theoretical expression of the most recent regulations, had a marginal influence on the quality of the existing penitentiary structures. Therefore, the conception of the building focused on a severe incarceration regime and the refusal to accept the possibility of a more open prison remained mostly unvaried through time. The consequences of the disparity between the “theory of detention” and the “practice of incarceration” has resulted in the fact that Italian penitentiary structures are now so far behind that the European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg has condemned Italy for inhuman and debasing treatment of detainees.

In order to restore the rule of law in penitentiaries, institutions have determined different forms of intervention: some programmatic and others of a legislative or scientific and cultural nature. These interventions on the penitentiary building system are both of a quantitative and a qualitative nature. The first are aimed at the construction of additional structures, whereas the latter intervene on the articulation of the building system. The latter is developed according to new building typologies which respond to the new detention models, thus attempting to express the renewed cultural stance that interprets the prison as an element capable of being in synergy with other urban functions. The objectives set by the institutions, expressed through new theoretical developments, represent an ambitious and progressive project aimed at eradicating conservative and backward ideas regarding the role of prison architecture. It proposes a new disciplinary conception of the architectural project open to the academic and professional world in an attempt to solve and make effective the relationship between architectural design, building practices and management of the penitentiary structure. Today, the most difficult task faced by architectural culture is that of being more incisive and successful than before in putting into practice and making effective the theoretical principles that are the expression of the new idea of the prison.