Archinect - News

WXY replaces juvenile detention center in The Bronx with affordable housing

2019-11-11T21:00:00-05:00

WXY architecture + urban design, Body Lawson Associates, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) have broken ground on a $300 million redevelopment plan that will replace the defunct Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in The Bronx with up to 740 units of affordable housing and a slew of community-serving uses.

Phase one of the project, the phase currently under construction, aims to bring 183 units of affordable housing earmarked for "extremely-low," "very-low," and "low-income" families, according to New York YIMBY. Within the total, YIMBY reports, 18 units will be made available to people who have previously experienced homelessness.

The site is marked by a collection of public plazas and tree-filled passageways. Image courtesy of WXY architecture + urban design.

Ultimately, over 17,000 square feet of retail, 56,000 square feet of light industrial uses, and 53,500 square feet of community facilities will be included on the site of what once was a decrepit ...

Private prisons, including ICE detention centers, are now illegal in California

2019-09-17T12:33:00-04:00

The recently passed AB-32 bill in California prevents the state from "entering into or renewing a contract with a private, for-profit prison to incarcerate state prison inmates, but would not prohibit the department from renewing or extending a contract to house state prison inmates in order to comply with any court-ordered population cap," according to the legislative text.

Under the bill, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations will phase-out the department's existing contracts by 2028.The bill, once signed by California Governor Gavin Newson, is set to go into effect on January 1, 2020.

The Guardian reports that move would close all four of the state's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, which are run by private prison company GEO Group. The news comes as debate within the architectural profession intensifies regarding the moral and ethical implications of designing such facilities. The private prison business is booming under Pres...

American Institute of Architects denounces "misuse" of detention center buildings

2019-07-22T16:41:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architect (AIA) has issued a statement denouncing the inhumane conditions that have been discovered over recent weeks across the country at the detention centers where undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers are being detained.

The conditions as described by numerous media reports and congressional fact-finding missions to detention facilities make clear that these buildings are not designed to handle the sheer numbers of people in them nor do they sustain the health, safety, and welfare of their occupants, many of whom are women and children. Above all, the misuse of these buildings and the impact on occupants in them are contrary to our values as architects and as Americans.

Pointing to the organization's Code of Ethics, AIA urges that "the built environment promotes and preserves the health, safety, and welfare of every individual, and fosters universal respect for human dignity."

In addition, AIA argues that architects are well-prepared to "promote t...

Under Trump, the private prison business is booming

2019-07-15T15:55:00-04:00

In the 2018 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 396,448 people were booked into an ICE detention facility, up 22.5% from a year earlier, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Between October and January, apprehensions along the southwest border rose to 201,497, up a third from the same period a year ago.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the private prison business is booming as a result of the hardline immigration policies of President Donald Trump.

Despite the growing controversies surrounding the government's treatment of detained migrants in increasingly makeshift and inadequate facilities, the industry's growth is expected to continue.

According to WSJ, in a recent research note surveying the business dealings of private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group, investment bank SunTust Robinson Humphrey writes, "We expect criminal alien populations housed by the private sector to increase due to heightened enforcement and increased border apprehensions.”

WSJ also writes that over the last year, with new facilities going up from California to Mississippi, private prison companies have fared better financially than many other industries, even amid an overall market rally.

Amid "concentration camp" debate, government moves migrants from Texas border site

2019-06-24T17:07:00-04:00

After the discovery of inhumane living conditions at a south Texas temporary detention facility made headlines last week, the United States Department of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has moved to relocate upwards of 300 detained migrant children to other sites.

The Associated Press reported last week that while lawyers with the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis inspected the facility to assess the detention conditions at the site, they discovered children caring for other children, children who had not bathed in days, inadequate food provisions, and a collection of other standard of living violations.

Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic, told the AP, “In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity."

According to the AP, the government allows for the children to be held by the Border Patrol for no longer than 72 hours, after which they must b...

Former Internment Camp becomes Immigrant Shelter

2019-06-12T14:11:00-04:00

The Trump Administration has opted to use an Army base in Oklahoma to hold growing numbers of immigrant children in its custody after running out of room at government shelters. Fort Sill, an 150-year-old installation once used as an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, has been selected to detain 1,400 children until they can be given to an adult relative, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As of April 30, 2019, the department of Health and Human Services has taken 40,900 children seeking asylum into custody along the southern border, a 57% increase from 2018, according to Time.

The surge in detainees has overwhelmed existing and new temporary detention facilities in southern border states, so the department has had to make use of a variety of improvised facilities as it undertakes the lengthy, disorganized, and laborious process of reuniting these children with their family members.

That includes holding children in a repurposed former Walmart superstore in Brownsville, Texas, detaining asylum-seeking families in a makeshift, dirt-floored outdoor camp located underneath a highway overpass in El Paso, Texas, holding 1,500 migrants in a private prison in Louisiana known for documented cases of inmate abuse and medical neglect, and now, shuttling temporary detainees to Fort Sill, a military base in Oklahoma that was used during World War II as an internment camp for Ja...

The Architecture of Juvenile Detention in America

2012-04-11T11:45:00-04:00

On any given night in the U.S., there are approximately 60,500 youth confined in juvenile correctional facilities or other residential programs. Photographer Richard Ross has spent the past five years criss-crossing the country photographing the architecture, cells, classrooms and inhabitants of these detention sites.