Jus­tice Cen­ter Leoben is a fantastically-designed prison in Aus­tria that can’t be ignored. Designed by archi­tect Joseph Hohensinn, views on the prison are var­ied and emphatic. The New York Times takes a tour of the prison, offer­ing some novel thoughts on impris­on­ment and reha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Before the prison opened, late in 2004, [Joseph Hohensinn] had a solid career build­ing pub­lic hous­ing. Now he is the Man Who Built That Prison, a dis­tinc­tion that dis­mays him slightly, if only because, as he says, “One always has mixed feel­ings about hav­ing one work sin­gled out for attention.”

Leoben has received quite a lot of atten­tion. In Amer­ica, its pub­lic pro­file has been lim­ited to [mock­ery], but in Europe, Hohensinn’s design has become more of a model […]. It is the open­ing state­ment in a debate about what it means to con­struct a bet­ter prison.

I’m all in favour of prison com­plexes such as this, and my rea­sons why can eas­ily be encap­su­lated in two quotes: one from Hohensinn him­self, and the other—carved into a con­crete wall of the prison—from the Inter­na­tional Covenant on Civil and Polit­i­cal Rights:

“They are crim­i­nals, but they are also human beings. The more nor­mal a life you give them here, the less nec­es­sary it is to reso­cial­ize them when they leave.“
“All per­sons deprived of their lib­erty shall be treated with human­ity and with respect for the inher­ent dig­nity of the human person.”

As the arti­cle states, it’s still too soon to tell if such an approach is ‘cor­rect’, but before we can answer that ques­tion we have oth­ers we need to debate. Some I found myself asking:

  • Does impris­on­ment work?
  • If you trust a crim­i­nal with a bet­ter envi­ron­ment, will he prove trustworthy?
  • Do ‘com­fort­able’ pris­ons encour­age crime?
  • What do we want pris­ons to actu­ally do?
  • What exactly does ‘impris­on­ment’ constitute?

At first glance these may seem obvi­ous, but with fur­ther exam­i­na­tion they’re quite com­plex questions.