An Architecture of Hope makes the case that the built environment is not a neutral container for punishment but an active force in either degrading or restoring the people held within it — and that this insight applies as much to a home as to a cell.
About This Book
Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes, recognised as the world's leading expert on rehabilitative prison design, writes from two converging crises at once: the professional battle to reform a punitive carceral system, and the deeply personal experience of being stranded alone in a half-finished renovation during lockdown after her partner of 25 years departs. The parallel is not incidental — it is the book's argument. Drawing on her research into prison environments worldwide, Jewkes moves through cells, communal spaces, staffrooms, and architects' studios to ask what conditions allow a person at their lowest point to begin again. With 11.5 million prisoners globally, most of whom will re-enter society, the design of incarceration is not an abstract ethical question but a practical one with consequences for everyone.
Key Features
- 336 pages of intertwined criminological research and personal memoir, examining rehabilitative architecture through both institutional and domestic spaces
- Published by Scribe Publications
What You'll Discover
- How spatial design — light, scale, materiality, access to nature — directly affects the psychological state of incarcerated people and shapes outcomes upon release
- The gap between punitive prison environments and rehabilitative design principles, and what architects working in this field are doing to close it
- Why the question of who we want living next door to us is inseparable from the question of how we design the places where people serve their sentences
- How the experience of inhabiting a damaged or unfinished space mirrors and intensifies psychological rupture — and what it takes to rebuild both
About the Author
Yvonne Jewkes is a criminologist and the world's leading expert on rehabilitative prison design. Her work sits at the intersection of penology, spatial theory, and human wellbeing, and she has spent her career challenging the assumption that punishment and degradation are architectural inevitabilities.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 336
- Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.5 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781914484780
- Publisher: Scribe Publications
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and designers working in justice or civic contexts, criminologists and policy researchers, students of spatial theory and environmental psychology, and anyone interested in how the built environment shapes human recovery and dignity.