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

by Richard E. Wener

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781139411059
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/18/2012
Series:	Environment and Behavior
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Richard E. Wener is Professor of Environmental Psychology in the Department of Technology, Culture and Society at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, where he co-directs the Sustainable Urban Environments program and is a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers University Center for Green Building. He is a Fellow of Division 34 of the American Psychological Association and has served as president of Division 34. In 2010 Professor Wener was a Fulbright Fellow at the Vienna University of Technology. For more than thirty years Professor Wener has studied the way correctional architecture affects facility operations and the behavior of staff and inmates. This work began in 1975 with evaluations of the first of the 'new generation jails' - federal Metropolitan Correctional Centers in Chicago and New York. He has since conducted evaluations of dozens of prisons and jails and several large nationwide surveys of correctional facilities. He has consulted in the area of facility design and planning for adult and juvenile detention and corrections facilities. He was also part of a team that studied conditions of confinement to support revisions of American Correctional Association standards for the design of jails and prisons. His writing has addressed design and management features which serve to reduce violence, vandalism and stress in correctional settings by understanding the lessons of successful direct supervision facilities. Professor Wener's articles have appeared in journals such as Environment and Behavior, the Journal of Environmental Psychology, the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Corrections Compendium, American Jails, Transportation Research (Part F), Transportation, the Journal of Applied Social Psychology and Psychology Today. He has served on the editorial boards of Environment and Behavior, the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research and the Journal of Environmental Systems.

Table of Contents

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.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"...There is no competing book that provides comparable coverage to a commensurate range of annotated citations, and this makes Wener’s book a useful reference work.... there are interesting photographs scattered throughout the book, and they add richness and flavor to his review."
—Dr. Hans Toch, University at Albany, State University of New York, PsycCRITIQUES

"...How do prisons and jails shape their occupants? Until now, this reasonable question has rarely been subjected to broad analysis. Wener (environmental psychology, Polytechnic Institute of New York Univ.) has studied correctional buildings for three decades and has had a role in a new form of prison design called direct supervision (DS).... discusses such environmental prison issues as noise, light, access to nature, and the effects of isolation.... Recommended..."
—R. D. McCrie, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, Choice

Editorial Reviews

"There is no competing book that provides comparable coverage to a commensurate range of annotated citations, and this makes Wener’s book a useful reference work … there are interesting photographs scattered throughout the book, and they add richness and flavor to his review."
Dr Hans Toch, University at Albany, State University of New York, PsycCRITIQUES

"How do prisons and jails shape their occupants? Until now, this reasonable question has rarely been subjected to broad analysis. Wener (environmental psychology, Polytechnic Institute of New York Univ.) has studied correctional buildings for three decades and has had a role in a new form of prison design called direct supervision (DS) … discusses such environmental prison issues as noise, light, access to nature, and the effects of isolation … Recommended …"
R. D. McCrie, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, Choice

"The Environmental Psychology of Prisons and Jails contains 49 photographs, diagrams and other figures, an index, and detailed reference sections at the end of each chapter. [It] is well-written and the author serves himself and his readers well with the historical context he establishes throughout the volume. 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

From the Publisher