Trauma-informed architecture in youth detention center launched with high aspiration of preventing crime

First-hand look at the secret solution juvenile justice has been missing: Architecture

CATEGORY: GOVERNMENT PROJECTS

Jonathan Delagrave (deceased)

Source: CorrectionalNews
Read time: 2.1 minutes plus 69-second video
 
This Happened
In May 2025, Racine County, Wisconsin opened its new trauma-informed youth detention center that is being promoted as being so therapeutic that the need for detentions will decrease to zero in the future.
 
Who Did This?
The new center was the vision of the elected head of Racine County government, Jonathan Delagrave. The project broke ground in 2023. Delagrave died unexpectedly in 2024 at age 51 while jogging, and the center has been named after him. Racine County went Republican in the last three presidential elections.
Assisting with the design of the facility was a national firm called Treanor. Andy Pitts, Justice Design Principal with Treanor, stated that when a trauma-informed environment is designed with “care, intention and purpose” it can “transform” troubled youths.
 
The Premise
The trauma-informed architecture of the new center is believed to provide rehabilitation through unconscious environmental influences. As opposed to the windowless and uninviting look of traditional detention centers, the revolutionary architecture uses softer “design techniques to support occupants’ healing and resilience” capable of reversing their criminal behaviors, including:

• Large glass-enclosed entrance lobby
• Warm, wood-ceilinged entryway
• Cross-laminated timber
• Window views to the surrounding rural Wisconsin landscape
• Teaching garden
• Circular courtroom makes all parties feel involved
• Color-changing LED lights shift in color temperature throughout the day in response to youths’ psychological needs

                                                                                                                                        
In the video below, showing excerpts from a local new report [Fox6 News Milwaukee], note the use of natural lighting, soft wood, and warm colors:

Project leaders reportedly claim that this facility will, by itself, somehow move the county to zero-detentions in the future.
 
Analysis
The premise of trauma-informed architecture is that environmental influences can penetrate unconsciously into minds and shift morals and behaviors in a positive direction. This, however, seems unlikely in the type of violent and repeat-offender population that ends up in detention centers.

​If the prospect of harming others, getting a criminal record, and being denied personal freedom hasn’t already deterred them, it does not seem plausible that short-term exposure to views of the Wisconsin landscape will transform them.

​There is absolutely zero evidence that trauma-informed design impacts immediate psychological mood, long-term behavior, or transforms criminal behavior (see here). As there are no data yet on recidivism or crime prevention for youths who were housed in trauma-informed structures, do-gooder political stunts like this can proceed without much hindrance.
​
​Why Is This Happening?
The converse of trauma-informed architecture is that limited sunlight, bright colors, and harder materials can shift morals and behaviors in a negative direction, causing crime and violence. This is, of course, absurd.

 If it were that simple to mold human behavior, there would be little predictably to child development and human nature would be wildly erratic and dysfunctional.
 
The trauma-informed concept was created as a political philosophy by activist clinicians untethered from any base of evidence from empirical experience, case reports, or research studies (see here], and hence, has never held itself to a requirement that it has been proven to work. Despite the lack of empiricism, or perhaps because of it, the concept has gained wide traction among neo-Marxist progressives in education, courts, child welfare, mental health clinics, social service agencies, and the social sciences.