Will New York’s new jails be places where visiting families feel welcome? Will the jails provide space for police officers and medical staff to train together? For detainees to confer with lawyers? For therapeutic assistance and recreation?

Outside as well as inside, will they be scaled to their surroundings, will the city be open to other sites and will the buildings architecturally represent, as borough landmarks, our civic ideals and values? — The New York Times

The height of the new jail towers was later slashed from 45 storeys to a maximum of 29, but the damage had been done. The images of these brutish concrete silos symbolised a rack’em and stack’em approach, attracting criticism from both prison reform advocates and the communities in which these fortified slabs were to be planted. — The Guardian

In a 4-1 vote, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed today to cancel a $1.7 billion design and build contract with McCarthy Builders that it had approved in February.

“The contract with McCarthy Builders for a custody facility does not fit this board’s vision of a care-first model,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis. — Curbed

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