Forms Of Constraint: A History Of Prison Architecture - University of Illinois Press - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, August, 2001 by Leslie Fairweather

By Norman Johnston. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. 2000. $34.95

There are many detailed books on specific periods of prison architecture, and there are brief overall histories as chapters in other publications. This latest book from Professor Johnston is a rarity in offering a valuable panorama of the subject in one scholarly volume, from very early makeshift pits and dungeons, to the more community based prisons of today. As he admits, no individual researcher could cover all countries in detail because of the sheer scale of the massive building programmes, especially during the past century.

The book is necessarily biased towards American prisons, as most major initiatives have sprung from the United States to be copied or adapted throughout the world. Europe is mostly well covered, but he also provides useful details of countries where information is more difficult to track: Poland, Greece, Russia, China, Japan, and some of the Latin American countries. With his background in sociology and anthropology, Johnston is adept at relating punitive strategies and goals to prison design in each period. This often proves to be a thankless task as the two do not always coincide in practice.

Like most of us who have beaten similar tracks, he is not optimistic about the future. He considers that until we can reconcile warring public attitudes between those who believe in reform and those who urge more rigour and unpleasantness, the task of prison architecture will remain only 'modestly ameliorative'.

He does not mention the influence of private prisons in Public/Private Partnerships that account for all new institutions in the UK, but not in America. They could have a marked impact on design not always, some believe, for the better.

Designers of prisons would do well to heed his final salutary words '... in the future, architects must assume some responsibility for the unintended indignities and consequences fostered by their works'.

This book is an excellent introduction for those who seek one single reliable, wellresearched and well-illustrated volume. It is also a fascinating treasure-trove for those more professionally involved with the history of prisons, their development, and their future.