Prison architecture: An evaluation on current competitions in the 21st century

The concepts of crime and punishment have existed in every society since the beginning of human history. Punishment, which meant revenge, redemption and a warning at the beginning and whose definition expanded day by day, continued until the Middle Ages by means of sanctions against the body such as torture, deterioration of bodily integrity and death. The prison sentences, which remained in the background until that period, were executed in the Middle Ages, in places that were not intended to be incarceration properly and were used as a kind of waiting area until the time when the punishments, which mainly targeted the body, were to be implemented. With the development of humanist thought during the reform movements, ideas such as the restriction of freedom and the suspension of the rights of the individual were put forward instead of the death penalty. Thus, the body-punishment relationship has changed shape, prisons whose main purpose is to be imprisoned have begun to be produced, and the focus of punishment has shifted to closing the criminal and restricting their freedom. In this process, many systems have been proposed to isolate, silence, or keeping the prisoner under constant pressure. By the twentieth century, an understanding was developed that allowed the prisoners to communicate with each other and to be offered more personal space, by preserving the surveillance mechanism, and the quest began to get different models in prison architecture. Today, the issue of prisons is brought to the agenda again through international and national architectural competitions. It is thought that architectural competitions opened within the scope of prison architecture were organized because the architecture which produced in this area is insufficient and a qualified design became a necessity. Furthermore, in response to the still controversial question of whether the main purpose of prisons is punishment or rehabilitation, prisoners have already been punished by restricting their freedom, therefore it is necessary to ensure their rehabilitation through the place where they are closed. Hence, it can be said that there is a need for new approaches that will prevent re punishment of the prisoner through the place they are in and improve them by providing a livable environment. Based on this, the aim of this study is to prepare a basis for a discussion about new approaches in prison architecture by revealing how the issue of prisons is handled today, how the relationships between the actors are constructed, the different perspectives for the rehabilitation of the prisoner and how all these data are spatialized through architectural competitions.