Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has a history of social advocacy and activism in architecture and beyond. Established in 1981, and with over 400 current members, the group has worked in support of affordable housing, peace efforts, and green building. The group is also engaged in advocacy for just rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.

More recently, ADPSR has taken up a Prison Design Boycott Campaign, refusing to participate in the design and construction of prisons until the corrections field is re-evaluated and reformed. While some architects and officials understand the goal of the boycott, many others wonder about the group's underlying message.

The Corrections Connection spoke with Raphael Sperry, the President of the ADPSR and the Director of the Prison Design Boycott Campaign, about the group, it's true goals, and asked him to clarify any misconceptions about it.

Q: What are some misconceptions about your organization? Do you think people understand it?

Sperry: A lot of people are under the impression that this [boycott] campaign is about letting people out of jail. That is not a fair characterization of our position at all. [Our message] is that people can be reintegrated into society and that the prison system is actually moving people in our society away from true safety. Design professionals should be providing housing, child-care and health-care facilities, improved public spaces, and safe neighborhoods, but resources for these social necessities are consistently denied to fund punitive policies like the “war on drugs” or three-strikes [laws].

The core issue that we're trying to address is that there are over 2 million people in prison -- which is far out of line with the rest of the industrialized world. We think the number of people in prison is a huge problem with our legal system, and shows an American approach to using extended prison sentences for issues that are better addressed in other ways.

We believe, and actually, there have been studies that show, there is a bit of an ‘If you build it, we will fill it' idea in the United States. Part of the reason so many people are in prison is because architects are lining up to build more and more facilities. Nobody asked if this was sustainable, or if it was what we wanted or needed. It was just done. People who don't like that view try to characterize our position because it's easier, I think, than actually listening to us. 

Q: Corrections facilities are overcrowded; how can you address overcrowding without building new facilities?

Sperry: It varies with each system, for instance one of the first things that California could do is work on parole violations. They could work on parole reform. There are a lot of things that [prison systems] can do, whether it's community sentencing or drug court. A new prison costs tens of millions of dollars and takes three to five years to come on line. There's a lot that you can do within the justice system that would happen a lot faster and cost a lot less than building new facilities.

The other thing about overcrowding is that the crime rate has gone up and down in the past 30 years. That number fluctuates. And the best predictor of prison populations is the amount of space you give people – they will fill the amount of space that you build.

You have people like low-level drug users, and three-time shoplifting offenders -- those are a lot of the people in prison. When you continue to build more prison space, prosecutors continue to put people into these facilities for smaller and smaller offenses.

Q: What made you want to become so involved in this cause?

Sperry: My own viewpoint changed when we started doing research into prison systems. We didn't realize what the demographics were going to be like -- the legal system, the injustice that is imbedded in it. I didn't know about those things at first but when I researched them, I became much more upset. I experienced that myself and so did other people in our organization.

I think prisons are an area that most people don't know much about. Popular culture never presents a structural analysis of the role [prisons] play in society. [Society] is always looking at it one individual at a time, which is not the way to understand the institution as a whole.

Q: What sort of an impact do you think your organization has can have?

Sperry: The first impact we're having is raising awareness, especially among architects and planners. A lot of facilities that are built are not direct supervision facilities because many people do not want something that is designed to be humane. The research we've done shows that some people want facilities designed that aren't harsh. But a lot of prison operators, and some of the American public, want harsh facilities. That's not acceptable.

A lot of people feel like it's right for prisons to be harsh. I think it's right to challenge them on that level. We want to send a message to the public in general about what's appropriate for prisons and what is not.

People in corrections are noticing this. We've had a sheriff that was pretty supportive [of our views]. He thought this boycott was a viable way to encourage alternatives [to incarceration]. His sheriff's department does a lot with alternative sentencing, and he understood where we were coming from.

People who like to treat offenders harshly -- they don't like our message. You can talk about prison conditions, but the facilities themselves are not the major issue we're focusing on. I recognize that the design of direct supervision facilities provides better conditions for people in prison as compared to the older facilities with long hallways, but the actual design [of a facility] isn't at stake when the number of people in them is this large – and that's the real issue.