JUSTICE with prison philanthropist Edwina Grosvenor

Justice Spaces, to heal or to harm? With Yvonne Jewkes

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Episode notes

In this episode Edwina explores prison design and architecture. Throughout history prisons have been places purposefully designed to be oppressive and punitive. However today, there is growing consensus that conditions inside prison should not be part of the punishment, and that if custody is appropriate at all, prisons should in fact be spaces that support change and growth. The question remains - can spaces designed to deprive people of their liberty ever be conducive to healing? And to what extent?

In this episode we explore these questions with Yvonne Jewkes, Professor of Criminology at the University of Bath. Yvonne’s research area is prison architecture and design, and she has consulted on prison design projects around the world. In this episode we explore Yvonne’s work designing the new women’s prison in Limerick, Ireland. Yvonne reflects on the process of working on this project, and the completed results, and speaks more broadly about the tension between designing prisons for women, and advocating for less women in prison.

Yvonne has written a personal and professional memoir, An Architecture of Hope: Reimagining the Prison, Restoring a House, Rebuilding Myself, which will be published by Scribe in Autumn 2024.

You can learn more about Limerick Prison here:

https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/limerick-womens-prison-an-architecture-of-hope