Justice in Design initiative to explore how to design a modern jail

The New York City Council, the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, and Van Alen Institute recently launched the Justice in Design initiative.

The project team, consisting of architects, environmental psychologists, and incarceration experts will explore the future of jails in New York City. The team will examine how to design a modern jail, focusing on interior and exterior design elements to provide for neighborhood integration and safer, more humane facilities, according to a news release.

The team will research how jails impact the health and well-being of people inside them and the communities in which they sit. “These guidelines aim to lead to policy changes toward new and healthier models of justice in New York City,” the news release says.

The project team will hold three community design workshops to provide the public with an opportunity to collaborate with an inter-disciplinary team of designers, social psychologists, incarceration experts, and urbanists.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.