INTRODUCTION

Currently, the architecture of prisons for women does not generally correspond to the needs and characteristics of the female prison population. This situation becomes more apparent in the light of the Bangkok Rules. Nevertheless, there have been remarkable improvements in this field, which, if applied on a large scale, would introduce relevant improvements in women's accommodation conditions.

This chapter will first provide some background on the architecture of female prisons and on some characteristics of the female prison population (section 2). The Bangkok Rules as they relate to prison design are then described (section 3). Next we explore some of their consequences for the architecture of buildings for women (section 4). Lastly, we weigh up the good and bad practices in the field, in order to identify the main elements in need of improvement (section 5).

BACKGROUND

It is quite common in the penitentiary field to hear comments like “we would build the kind of prisons we always build and then we would look to see how to alter it for women”, or “there's a tendency to build male facilities without urinals and call them female facilities”. A prison is stereotypically masculine, so the physical and architectural elements that define it (walls, bars, cells and so on) are typical of buildings intended for men. As a consequence, most women's prisons are designed with these preconceptions. Regardless of whether the architectural program states the particular characteristics that a facility for women must meet, most of the time, the decisions on design are made resorting to solutions and forms that are typical of men's prisons.

However, the criminological characteristics of female offenders differ from those of male offenders. In general, they have been charged with non-violent crimes, have a record of abuse and addiction, precarious employment and a low level of education. Also, they have low self-esteem, are sentenced to short terms in prison, and most of them are mothers of children aged under 18. Women also show a different reaction to the prison environment: when they are under stress, they tend to be more cooperative rather than competitive, and they suffer emotional distress more frequently than men. These and other characteristics make the behavior of and the risks faced by female prisoners markedly different from those of men. Consequently, architectural solutions need to be different as well.