While the global threat from flooding is on a dramatic increase,  prisons in the UK are severely ill-equipped to deal with the potential dangers that can arise from a natural disaster. Prisons are also failing to address recidivism amongst inmates, with many inmates doomed to a cycle of re-offending, being offered no alternative future.

Polarity Prison addresses the need for a flood resilient design for prisons, creating a proactive, rather than reactive, solution to natural disasters. As well as this, Polarity Prison offers a new model for prisons based on personal responsibility and communal civility. By redesigning the prison typology, it begins to question what prisons are and what they can be: should prisoners be domineered and alienated further from society or should prison attempt, through rehabilitation, to address the root causes of what incarcerated them in the first place?