Hidden in plain sight: Architectures of community corrections as public secret

Abstract

Public secrets are the information the public chooses to keep from itself. Architecture is required to both house and operate these secrets. Community sanctions are arguably a public secret. This study analyses the most visible aspects of community sanctions, probation and parole offices, to understand whether and how their architectural features help keep the system hidden. By analysing photographs of such offices, I argue that not only do the building features help maintain community corrections as a public secret, but they also keep the systems secret from the public. I also argue that keeping the offices intentionally obscured may also impact how those under supervision are viewed by the general public.

Sensing probation in Canada: Notes on affect and penal aesthetics in risk assessment

“…My data consists of subjective interpretations about my own experiences as a ‘complete participant’ in the field, employed as a fully qualified probation practitioner over a 6-year period (Hesse-Biber, 2016). As probation is inherently secretive (Mawby and Worrall, 2013; Shah, 2020), this required ‘studying up’ the enigmatic topic of community corrections by recognising the inverted balance of power of the organisation that employed me and my own personal experience as the subject of research (Beizsley, 2019).…”

“…That discrimination occurs in a paradoxical way which represents an alternative to imprisonment for some, while for others, incarceration becomes more likely (Phelps, 2013). Probation is thus fertile ground for potentiating an orientation to rehabilitation (Canton and Dominey, 2018;RA Duff, 2003;Durnescu, 2011;McNeill, 2011;Mcwilliams and Pease, 1990;Ward and Maruna, 2007); as well as the possibility for architectural reform in the context of penal aesthetics, choice-making, and design (Jewkes, 2017(Jewkes, , 2018McNeill, 2006;Phillips, 2014;Shah, 2020;Tidmarsh, 2021). While the value of a therapeutic alliance in probation practice means working with criminalised people (Ricciardelli, 2018), a paradigm governed by risk is convergent with the values of criminal desistance (McNeill, 2006;Ward and Maruna, 2007).…”

A pedagogy of ‘public criminology’ as a counter to marginality? Lessons for community sanctions and measures from thePedagogy of the Oppressed

“…Indeed, in a rare example of an attempt to demystify the service, a recent BBC News (2021) feature described probation as ‘the forgotten part of the criminal justice system’. Where prisons have a discernible architecture, CSM are ‘public secrets’ (Shah, 2020: 137) that are largely hidden from view. A small literature on the architecture of probation offices emphasises this anonymity: practise is predominantly computer-based and concentrated in open-plan office blocks, a change which reflects the punitive and managerial policy decisions of recent decades (Phillips, 2014; Tidmarsh, 2021).…”

Delivering desistance-focused probation in community hubs: Five key ingredients

“…Shah's concerns about parole offices supporting reintegration and the development of social capital in communities with high levels of need resonate with notions of 'community engagement' and 'community justice'. Shah (2020) argues that probation offices (albeit in the United States) maintain community corrections as a public secret, thus potentially perpetuating the retreat from the community that we have also witnessed in the English and Welsh context.…”