Does trauma-informed architecture help rehabilitate juvenile criminals?
July 11, 2024
CATEGORY: COURTS
From top left clockwise: Judge Sheila Calloway; Todd Orr, Alexandra Serralles, and Karla Iannicelli from DLR architecture firm
Source: The Tennessean
Read time: 1.8 minutes
This Happened
A juvenile court judge and three associates from an architectural firm penned an editorial outlining their vision to provide services to juvenile criminals instead of incarceration. This includes plans to redesign the interiors of juvenile court buildings to replace the “damning architecture of yesterday.”
Who Did This?
Judge Sheila Calloway was elected Juvenile Court Judge in 2014 servicing Nashville and Davidson County. In her bio, she prides herself on challenging traditional perspectives in the legal system. She gave a TED Talk in 2017 advocating for restorative justice where criminals are viewed as victims of life experiences who just made some bad decisions.
Todd Orr, Alexandra Serralles, and Karla Iannicelli are employees of DLR architecture firm. DLR is a large firm with 33 offices, specializes in government buildings, and champions the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement. The DLR site includes posts such as “How Design Can Decarcerate the U.S.”
The Premise
The editorial outlined their plans to redesign three buildings in the juvenile justice campus to help heal the wounds of adolescents who committed serious offenses based on the premise that “we don’t believe that young people are hardened, irredeemable criminals but are vulnerable individuals deserving of support and rehabilitation.”
The Family Services building, where parents learn how to care for their children, is modeled after a living room and kitchen, instead of brick boxes, so that individuals do not feel isolated from the community. The Respite and Assessment Center will provide therapy, social services, and shelter for homeless youth instead of jail. The “pre-trial housing” will resemble college dorms rather than “cement, steel, and barbed wire” of jails.
The editorial claimed that juveniles committed crimes in part because they were victims of trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and it is scientific fact that trauma damages child development. They intend to break the “abuse-to-prison pipeline” by providing “services instead of incarceration.”
Analysis
The terms of progressive agendas are typically couched in humanitarian compassion—extraordinary promises of a better world where everyone is equal in capacities. They can also act as a balm of moral self-inflation, capable of convincing individuals that the evidence is what they assert, not what is proven.
Despite the chorus of advocates for the toxic stress and ACEs agenda who claim the science is settled that trauma damages the brain and derails child development, it is not proven. In fact, the evidence far more often has disproven it (see here and here).
The restorative justice agenda emerged as an alternative to traditional retributive justice in the 1970s. But after studies trickled in, a report in 2019 summarized the consistent lack of positive results.
It is not surprising that these agendas merged within a relatively new offshoot of trauma-informed architecture. There are neither negative nor positive studies of trauma-informed architecture.
Interior design change may seem like a trivial concern. The importance of it, however, is a constant symbolism of an intellectual framework driven by a misguided understanding of criminal behavior and human nature.
You can subscribe to our email newsletter by clicking on Trauma Dispatch in the menu bar at the top of this page.
Read time: 1.8 minutes
This Happened
A juvenile court judge and three associates from an architectural firm penned an editorial outlining their vision to provide services to juvenile criminals instead of incarceration. This includes plans to redesign the interiors of juvenile court buildings to replace the “damning architecture of yesterday.”
Who Did This?
Judge Sheila Calloway was elected Juvenile Court Judge in 2014 servicing Nashville and Davidson County. In her bio, she prides herself on challenging traditional perspectives in the legal system. She gave a TED Talk in 2017 advocating for restorative justice where criminals are viewed as victims of life experiences who just made some bad decisions.
Todd Orr, Alexandra Serralles, and Karla Iannicelli are employees of DLR architecture firm. DLR is a large firm with 33 offices, specializes in government buildings, and champions the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement. The DLR site includes posts such as “How Design Can Decarcerate the U.S.”
The Premise
The editorial outlined their plans to redesign three buildings in the juvenile justice campus to help heal the wounds of adolescents who committed serious offenses based on the premise that “we don’t believe that young people are hardened, irredeemable criminals but are vulnerable individuals deserving of support and rehabilitation.”
The Family Services building, where parents learn how to care for their children, is modeled after a living room and kitchen, instead of brick boxes, so that individuals do not feel isolated from the community. The Respite and Assessment Center will provide therapy, social services, and shelter for homeless youth instead of jail. The “pre-trial housing” will resemble college dorms rather than “cement, steel, and barbed wire” of jails.
The editorial claimed that juveniles committed crimes in part because they were victims of trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and it is scientific fact that trauma damages child development. They intend to break the “abuse-to-prison pipeline” by providing “services instead of incarceration.”
Analysis
The terms of progressive agendas are typically couched in humanitarian compassion—extraordinary promises of a better world where everyone is equal in capacities. They can also act as a balm of moral self-inflation, capable of convincing individuals that the evidence is what they assert, not what is proven.
Despite the chorus of advocates for the toxic stress and ACEs agenda who claim the science is settled that trauma damages the brain and derails child development, it is not proven. In fact, the evidence far more often has disproven it (see here and here).
The restorative justice agenda emerged as an alternative to traditional retributive justice in the 1970s. But after studies trickled in, a report in 2019 summarized the consistent lack of positive results.
It is not surprising that these agendas merged within a relatively new offshoot of trauma-informed architecture. There are neither negative nor positive studies of trauma-informed architecture.
Interior design change may seem like a trivial concern. The importance of it, however, is a constant symbolism of an intellectual framework driven by a misguided understanding of criminal behavior and human nature.
You can subscribe to our email newsletter by clicking on Trauma Dispatch in the menu bar at the top of this page.