Blog: Can youth prison design help reduce reoffending?

Cells, bars, locks, barbed wire, high fences: most prisons are generally pretty harsh places. But adolescent mental health researcher Sanne Oostermeijer and architect Matthew Dwyer have award-winning alternative design guidelines – that focus on improving adolescent health and well-being and could lead to stronger, more cohesive communities.

Do you think a prison without locks and fences would work?

In answering that question, Sanne Oostermeijer says we need to consider what we want a youth justice detention centre to be able to do.

“Really, what we want is to divert young people away from a life of crime, or further entrenchment in the justice system,” she says.

“We want to help young people achieve their life goals without engaging in crime or inflicting harm on people.”

But many youth detention centres in Australia are built in a way that Sanne says is “counterproductive” to that aim of reducing crime and rehabilitating young people. Australia’s youth justice detention centres tend to leave young people harmed, disconnected and unprepared for life after release. Part of the solution lies in the physical environment, which impact on procedures, young people’s well-being and relationships between staff and residents.

“When you look at important factors within a young person's life that help them choose a different life path away from offending, we see that education and school are really important; connections to the community and to their family,” she says.

“Large-scale [detention] facilities are often pretty far away from a young person's community. That actually is counterproductive in maintaining or building those elements that play such an important role in in helping a young person develop a different life path.”

Furthermore, Sanne says the visible design of a high-security facility – cell bars, high walls, locked doors – reminds a young person they’re being punished, and “reinforces the idea they are a criminal”.

The majority of young people in detention in Victoria have experienced trauma, abuse, or neglect, and around half experience mental illness.

Sanne says a correctional system must acknowledge the broader social and psychosocial factors at play in a young person’s life – not to excuse behaviour, but to help hold people to account in ways that are holistic, therapeutic, and effective.

And she’s drawn up the plans to help that happen.

In 2018, Sanne and Matthew’s best practice design guidelines for youth justice facilities in Victoria won the Victorian Design Challenge. They visited several best practice facilities across the world, and have studied how the design of these facilities (such as size and location) contributed to the positive outcomes they achieved. Such facilities can minimize some of the significant harms and negative impacts well-known to persist in the conventional forms of youth justice detention.

Their design guidelines includes elements like a small number of beds, to better replicate a home environment; a semi-open and unlocked layout, with constructive and respectful relationships between staff and residents providing security; gardens and natural light, to promote therapeutic outcomes; and a central location in the community – not a far-flung location difficult for families to visit – which is well-connected to opportunities for school and work.

“When we look at best practice facilities we see that small-scale, local, or community-integrated facilities are actually much better equipped to build and maintain those elements that play such an important role in a young person's life,” Sanne says.

“When we think about the sort of large-scale or high-security facilities that we usually see, we're communicating to that young person that they're being punished. But I think even further than that, we’re communicating that they're a criminal. So, that really reinforces for a young person – who's still developing their sense of self, their identity –that idea that they are a criminal. Which, when we think about what we want from custodial facilities, we want to divert them away from a life of crime. We want them to be able to imagine themselves as a normal, healthy young person with the ability to achieve their life goals.”

Sophie Raynor