Should architecture be used for punishment? How might the spaces we inhabit nurture or damage us? How can we begin to start over after the worst has happened?

Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes grapples with these questions every day as the world’s leading expert on rehabilitative prison design; she also faced them in her personal life when her partner of 25 years left her in the middle of a nightmare renovation project and then lockdown saw her trapped there.

Used to fighting the punitive prison system to create spaces that encourage reflection, healing, even hope for those incarcerated, she had to learn to be similarly compassionate to herself, considering what might help someone at the lowest point in their life to rebuild.

Challenging our expectations of what prisons are for, she takes us along their corridors, into cells, communal spaces, visitors’ areas, and staffrooms, to the architects’ studios where they are designed, and even into her own home, to show us the importance of an architecture of hope in the face of despair.

She is in conversation with Professor Joe Devine (University of Bath).

This Institute for Policy Research (IPR) event took place on 20 November 2024. Find out more about the IPR here: https://www.bath.ac.uk/research-institutes/institute-for-policy-research/