What is it about?
This paper explains the psychology of biophilia, love of life, and biophilic design; meaning humans innate psychological and physiological responses to nature and the patterns, forms and materials of nature. From this perspective, current prison design with sterile surrounds devoid of any aspect of nature, can be understood to be innately stressful environments which are not conducive to mental health and rehabilitation. Utilising many of the principles of biophilic design in prisons can alleviate this, reduce stress and improve mental health of prisoners, potentially also reducing recidivism rates.
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Why is it important?
Globally, there is an increase of mental health issues in prisons and corrective institutions. Many prisons are struggling with increasing numbers of inmates and recidivism. As mental health issues are also increasing in many global cities and mental health facilities are not coping, prisons are becoming the default mental health institutions. Biophilic design taps into humans innate psychological and physiological responses to nature which are proven to reduce stress, improve both mental and physical health, improve cognitive functioning, reduce violence and facilitate learning abilities. There is a great need for this in prisons so inmates are given a improved chance of learning new skills and better behaviour, and recidivism rates can decline.
Perspectives
This publication can help readers understand the great influence that the environment has on humans and how the typical prison and prison cell of sterile, hard surrounds impacts negatively on a human's health. Reducing stress through employing nature and the patterns of nature leads to better behaviour and abilities to learn better behaviour and new skills. Research has shown that even videos of nature can lead to more compliant prisoners, even with serious offenders in isolation. With the understanding of the need for prisoners to be aided along a more progressive path of life through fostering a love of life, it does not make sense that attempts at rehabilitation of offenders occurs in such stressful environments. This publication seeks to help address this issue and inspire change in prison design.
Jana Soderlund
Curtin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Improving Mental Health in Prisons Through Biophilic Design, The Prison Journal, November 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0032885517734516.
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