The Environmental Psychology of Prisons and Jails
Creating Humane Spaces in Secure Settings

This book distils thirty years of research on the impacts of jail and prison environments.

Richard E. Wener (Author)

9781107477735, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 December 2014

316 pages, 49 b/w illus.
23 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.4 kg

'Graduate students and professionals in the fields of architecture and design, social work and psychology, and criminal justice and criminology, as well as those entering correctional training academies, will benefit from this volume, not just as a guide to 'best practices', but also as a base for further investigation.' Russ Immarigeon, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

This book distils thirty years of research on the impacts of jail and prison environments. The research program began with evaluations of new jails that were created by the US Bureau of Prisons, which had a novel design intended to provide a non-traditional and safe environment for pre-trial inmates and documented the stunning success of these jails in reducing tension and violence. This book uses assessments of this new model as a basis for considering the nature of environment and behavior in correctional settings and more broadly in all human settings. It provides a critical review of research on jail environments and of specific issues critical to the way they are experienced and places them in historical and theoretical context. It presents a contextual model for the way environment influences the chance of violence.

Foreword
Part I. Overview: History of Correctional Design, Development, and Implementation of Direct Supervision as an Innovation: 1. Introduction
2. Historical view
3. The development of direct supervision as a design and management system
4. Post occupancy evaluations of the earliest DS jails
5. Effectiveness of direct supervision models
Part II. Environment-Behavior Issues in Corrections: 6. Correctional space and behavior
7. Prison crowding
8. The psychology of isolation in prison settings
9. The effects of noise in correctional settings
10. Windows, light, nature, and color
Part III. A Model and Conclusions: 11. An environmental and contextual model of violence in jails and prisons
12. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Psychology: emotions [JMQ], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Prisons [JKVP1], Crime & criminology [JKV], Violence in society [JFFE]