Prison Design for Life, Not Life Sentences
Steen Gissel, architect of Norway’s Halden Prison discusses the tension between security and humanity
The town of Halden sits in Southern Norway near the Swedish border and boasts birch forests and wild berry picking, a popular summer concert series, and the world’s most humane prison. Norway’s criminal justice system is rooted in the ethos of the normality principle: the belief that life inside prison should emulate life outside prison as closely as possible. If form follows function, as the design adage goes, then the function of Halden Prison, opened in 2010, balances security with humanity. The result is a built form that rises from an underlying belief that confinement is punishment enough.
In the wake of renewed advocacy and calls for increased social justice reform, correctional officers from prisons in Oregon, California, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and more are looking at Halden Prison as a model for how to restructure their own carceral environments.
Steen Gissel, architect at Danish firm ERIK arkitekter, who designed Halden Prison in collaboration with Norwegian firm HLM, video-conferenced in from his studio in Copenhagen to discuss Scandinavia’s philosophy on incarceration and how, despite becoming globally renowned for its humane practices, Halden is still at its core, a prison.
Question:
Halden Prison balances maximum freedom within an environment of maximum security. What kind of tension did that create in the design process?
Steen:
You often see prisons that are more or less in one big building because that's logistically much easier. [Halden] is more of a campus design, [which is] a logistical nightmare. Every time an inmate has to go from A to B, someone will either have to follow them or they have to go through the [metal] detectors. There will be cameras everywhere. [The Norwegian Department of Justice] wanted the normality of living in one building and going to work or going to school in another building. That was a very deliberate choice that they made. And they knew exactly what they were doing. You end up in this architectural version of the uncanny valley.
Question:
I’m not familiar with the uncanny valley reference. What is that?
Steen:
Uncanny valley is [a concept from] people that work with robot design. If a humanoid robot is made from glossy white plastic, you're fine with it. If it looks exactly like a human, you would be fine with it. But if it looks close, but not quite, it becomes creepy.
The prison does look kind of like a university campus in the pictures but when you get up close to a window, you can see how thick the glass is. You get close to a door and you can see that's a pretty substantial steel door frame. And that becomes kind of strange. You are definitely very much aware this is not a dorm room. Certainly not a dorm room that I would like to live in.
Question:
You’re saying that despite the sleek design, you never forget that you're in prison…
Steen:
Not for a single second.
Everything is bolted down. Everything is designed so that you cannot attach anything to it. Shower heads are integrated into the walls. You cannot hang yourself from the shower head, which is one of the things you have to take into consideration when designing prisons. Doors open out of the room so that they are harder to barricade. It may look like it comes out of an IKEA catalog, but I can assure you it doesn't.
And then there is the whole regime thing. I mean, you are confined to ten rooms and one kitchen, and every time you want to go from A to B you go through the metal detectors and all that. It will never be like living in a normal dorm room.
Question:
This campus-style prison—as a manifestation of the normality principle—was a priority for the Norwegians, even at significant financial cost. What drives this philosophy?
Steen:
[In] many places around the world, you can be sentenced to life. That is not a possibility in Norway. If we sentence people to life, there's the mindset that, okay, we just lock them up and throw away the key. If it's 21 [years, the maximum sentence in Norway], well then we better start resocializing or educating or doing something.
Question:
So this informs how people are cared for in the wholeness of their lives behind bars?
Steen:
Only we don't have a single bar anywhere.
Question:
Touché. I’m glad you brought that up. No bars. And the windows are quite large—why was this a priority?
Steen:
You wanna give people the possibility to open a window because that gives you a feeling of having control of your own environment. It's just a flap with, like with a grate behind it. You can open it all the way, but you can't even stick your hand out. It would actually be nice to have bars in front of the windows so that you could properly open [them]—but that kind of sends the wrong signal.
Halden makes use of cork and wood materials which help absorb sound, a contrast to traditional prison materiality of concrete, linoleum, and steel, seen across the United States, which amplify sound (Vox), and by effect, stress, discomfort, and poor health (U.S. Department of Justice).
Question:
This was your first prison design—what surprised you along the way?
Steen:
You spend your whole education learning how to do things so they are pleasing. And then suddenly you have to do the exact opposite. That was quite a steep learning curve. And [it was] depressing. You learn about all the horrible things [like] having to design a shower head so that people won't hang themselves.
We got these risk assessment reports every couple of months [where we’d learn] that now, the risk of an inmate locking himself up in his room and setting fire to himself has gone up by 12%. That was probably the weirdest kind of feedback I've ever had as an architect.
Question:
The philosophy guiding Halden sounds a lot like the social determinants of health here in the US, with a priority on education, physical environment, employment, and social support networks. How much was health and wellbeing part of the design conversation?
Steen:
I don't really recall talking about health back then when we were doing the project, but it's obvious that if you treat people humanely, that is a healthier way of living. Maybe the client was aware of that, but we didn't focus on it at all. It was more about the philosophy of what the punishment is supposed to be: it's just incarceration and everything else should be as normal as possible.
Question:
Incarceration is very much a community issue, in that the experiences imprinted on a person working at or visiting a prison carries into the community. How did you take into consideration designing for non-prisoners who use the space?
Steen:
If you create an inhumane environment for the inmates, you also create an inhumane environment for the staff. If you create visitation facilities that are horrible, you end up punishing some nine-year-old girl visiting her dad. Is that reasonable? She didn't kill anyone… I presume.
Question:
There is a significant social incentive to treat people well while they’re in prison, so they come out well—and the built environment can support this. Does it work?
Steen:
Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates anywhere in the world. So we know that this system works.
You have to think about what is it that you want. Do you want to satisfy your own need for punishing this person? Or would you like to live in a society with a lower crime rate?
Interview edited for length and clarity.