Some prisons have been successfully transformed into whiskey distilleries, youth hostels, museums and boutique hotels. Others have been demolished, sometimes over the objections of local preservationists. But there’s a third option: Carceral sites can be reoriented as places that actively work to undo the damage wrought by mass incarceration. — Bloomberg

Van Buren’s most ambitious undertaking so far is the reimagining of a hulking 471,000 square foot Detention Center in downtown Atlanta. [...] Van Buren has been working with social justice organizations and a mayoral task force to transform the site into an “Equity Center” that will incorporate financial literacy, job training, access to legal services and other community needs. — The New York Times

A vote this week by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has put the city on a path to virtually end youth incarceration, the first major city in the United States to do so. — Next City

Mayor de Blasio’s recent pledge to close the Rikers Island jail complex within ten years was met with celebration by many — and skepticism by others. After 85 years in the public imagination, it has become hard to believe that the East River behemoth could ever really be slain. But the reality of a post-Rikers future is coming into focus [...]. Rikers is toxic, and its era is done. A change is on the wind, it seems, and the island’s aura of inevitability is finally dispersing. — Urban Omnibus

the world’s prisons are home to an estimated 10 million people globally and this number is rising. The world’s prison population has gone up 10% since 2004, and in some countries, such as Indonesia, the increase has been as high as 183% [...]

Architecture sends a silent message to everyone walking into any place. It tells you what to expect and where the limits of behaviour are. Prisons are the same. — the Guardian

space and building costs are just as much of guiding principles in designing real prisons as they are in Prison Architect. [...]

"Prisoners themselves are generally not included in the conversation where the prison construction budget is allocated to different priorities, so their needs come last and cell size is generally set at the legal minimum," Sperry said. "The legal standard only bars 'cruel or unusual punishment'—a cell can be punitively small as long as it doesn't cross that limit." — motherboard.vice.com

As long as the City of New York has owned Rikers Island, since the 1880s, it has been a place for the unwanted. For a time, pigs were raised for slaughter there. [...] was converted to a partial landfill, full of horse manure and garbage. The odor repelled its neighbors in the boroughs, and the refuse attracted a sizable rat population, which the city tried to contain by releasing wild dogs. [...] It took poison gas to kill off the rodents. Next the city moved humans to Rikers. — nymag.com

Faced with lawsuits and a growing mountain of damning research, New York City officials decided last month to ban solitary confinement for prison inmates 21 and younger. Just a few weeks earlier, the American Institute of Architects rejected a petition to censure members who design solitary-confinement cells and death chambers. [...]

What are the ethical boundaries for architecture? — nytimes.com