Jail is a lousy place to spend the night. But if architect Ken Ricci has his way, jails could be designed in a more humane manner, which he believes could go a long way toward preventing people from lapsing back into criminal behavior once they get out, a view supported by some city leaders and jail officials.
Ricci, a principal of Ricci Greene Associates, based in Manhattan, wants to improve “justice design,” which includes jails, where accused criminals bide their time before arraignment, and courthouses, which are often under the same roof.
He also builds a fair share of juvenile detention centers, but doesn’t design prisons, where convicts actually serve out their sentences, since they adhere to more cookie-cutter designs, he said. Though he declined to provide exact figures, the firm’s Web site lists 79 recent projects, including county, state and federal facilities, some in New York. The list features plans for jails and courts in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, including upgrades, enlargements and new structures.
Ricci, who’s probably the country’s most active justice design architect, has had the same vocation since graduating from architecture school in 1964. He witnessed a boom in jail and prison construction in the 1990s, but at the end of the decade, “facilities fatigue” crept in among officials. Although these jails and prisons were new, they were still overcrowded, and city officials threw up their hands in resignation. By 2000, requests for proposals for correctional facilities, both nationally and locally, had dropped by a third, he said.
Since the turn of the century, however, his business has ballooned. The build-it-and-they-will-come approach has faded; now it’s about taking the jail that’s there and changing up the layouts, making it less violent, Ricci said.
Corrections officials are “recognizing that the old ways don’t work — that overcrowded facilities are dangerous ones,” Ricci said. “Our approach considers human dignity.”
One change seems to be making the exteriors of jails more stylish, almost like academic buildings. Consider the $34 million Bridgeport Juvenile Detention Center currently under construction in Fairfield County, Conn.
Its glass-and-brick façade will mask a juvenile detention center and a 40,000-square-foot courthouse paired with a 40,000-square-foot, 80-bed detention facility. Like many of Ricci’s projects, the detention area will feature acoustic lay-in tile and carpeting, to muffle loud noises. Eighteen-foot windows will grace common areas with natural light.
His firm employed a similar approach at an $30 million juvenile jail in Linden, N.J., scheduled to open in January 2008. It’s also 80,000 square feet and will feature five 16-bed blocks; breaking up detention areas into smaller blocks cuts down on rowdiness, Ricci said. The U-shaped layout is supposed to allow guards to better keep an eye on their charges, officials said.
Juvenile prisons, though, can cost 25 percent more to build than adult versions because they are generally smaller and can’t benefit from economies of scale, Ricci said. The security systems and glazed glass required in any jail or prison puts their cost far above a comparably sized apartment building in that market; Bridgeport’s prison will cost $400 a square foot, versus about $200 for a multifamily residence, he estimated.
The U.S. today has 3,163 jails, according to the American Jail Association of Hagerstown, Md., which aims to improve jails on behalf of employees and inmates. New York, meanwhile, has 75 statewide, with 38,508 beds; the city’s share of that is 13 jails with 17,372 beds, according to 2007 association figures. (Even though some call themselves “prisons,” they’re really just short-term holding centers.)
Everywhere, the number of jails is dropping, as small ones close and larger ones absorb their capacity, reflected somewhat in the national numbers.
In the five-year period from 2002 to 2006, municipalities added 56.5 million square feet of detention facilities, according to Tim Boothroyd, an economist with McGraw-Hill Construction, a research group that tracks building trends. But in the preceding five-year period, from 1997 to 2001, municipalities added a whopping 103.9 million square feet.
What’s more relevant is how much space towns devote to detention facilities versus other public buildings; they comprised 33 percent of all public construction from 2002 to 2006.
In terms of square footage, detention facilities beat out police stations, firehouses and post offices by a ratio of three to one, Boothroyd said.
When he does have a chance to build new, Ricci likes to relocate jails into downtown areas. Part of his “green” justice design strategy is to cut down on the transportation of inmates between court and jails, he said.
Also, if downtown jails look like “junior colleges,” they can actually enhance a streetscape, he said, and if sealed properly, contraband can be kept out, which should please neighbors.
“Studies show that downtown jails don’t lower property values,” said Ricci, echoing comments from a talk titled “Arrested Development” that he gave in October at the National Realty Club in Midtown.
But not everybody in the real estate community is convinced that jails are a good addition to their backyards.
One flashpoint is in Downtown Brooklyn at the former Brooklyn House of Detention, which closed in 2003 after 47 years because it was outdated, according to brokers.
Some in the city government want to enlarge and reopen it as a jail, while others see a development opportunity. Six months ago, officials met with developers to discuss options at the Atlantic Avenue site, said Elan Padeh, chief executive of the Developers Group, a Dumbo-based residential brokerage whose clients include some of those developers.
If those condos were to sit next to a reopened jail, though, buyers may shy away.
“Sales are about perceptions, not reality,” Padeh said. “Buyers think, ‘Will I hear screaming?'” A hotel, with more transient occupants, might work better, he added.
In Brooklyn and elsewhere, jails are still needed to process the 25 million people who pass through them every year, which is “a massive amount of humanity,” said Ken Kerle of the American Jail Association.
But they need a rethinking, he said.
“We’re trying to lower the recidivism rate,” Kerle said, “and improving the jails is a first step.”