Article by By JIM LEWIS from New York Times
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“Go ahead and say it; everyone does. Certainly I did. Here’s a striking building, perched on a slope outside the small Austrian town of Leoben — a sleek structure made of glass, wood and concrete, stately but agile, sure in its rhythms and proportions: each part bears an obvious relationship to the whole. In the daytime, the corridors and rooms are flooded with sunshine. At night, the whole structure glows from within. A markedly well-made building, and what is it? A prison.
Designed by Josef Hohensinn, this complex — which includes a prison and a courthouse — opened late in 2004, in Leoben, a small Austrian town. The prison currently houses around 200 inmates.
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Everybody says this, or something like it: I guess crime does pay, after all. Or, That’s bigger than my apartment. (New Yorkers, in particular, tend to take this route.) Or, Maybe I should move to Austria and rob a couple of banks. It’s a reflex, and perfectly understandable, though it’s also foolish and untrue — about as sensible as looking at a new hospital wing and saying, Gee, I wish I had cancer.
To be more accurate, free people say these things. Prisoners don’t. Nor, for the most part, do the guards, the wardens or the administrators; nor do legal scholars or experts on corrections; nor does Josef Hohensinn, who designed the Leoben prison. They all say something else: No one, however down-and-out or cynical, wants to go to prison, however comfortable it may be.
The entrance to the prison, which is made of glass, wood and concrete. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times
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Still, the argument goes, the place must be a country club for white-collar criminals. (No, it holds everyone from prisoners awaiting trial to the standard run of felons.) Then it must cost a fortune. (A little more than other prisons, maybe, but not by much — as a rule, the more a corrections center bristles with overt security, with cameras, and squads of guards, and isolation cells, the more expensive it’s going to be.) And that’s glass? (Yes, though it’s shatterproof. And yes, those are the cells and that is a little balcony, albeit caged in with heavy bars, and below it is a courtyard.) The whole thing seems impossible, oxymoronic, like a luxury D.M.V., and yet there it is.
One gray day in February, Hohensinn drove me from his office in Graz down to Leoben, an hourlong trip through a region isolated by mountains and still transitioning out of an industrial economy. He is a compact man in his early 50s, with bushy eyebrows, a gappy smile and an air about him of cheerful confidence, mixed with a kind of Alpine soulfulness. Before the prison opened, late in 2004, he 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.”
The prison's courtyards and exercise areas. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times
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Leoben has received quite a lot of attention. In America, its public profile has been limited to a series of get-a-load-of-this e-mail messages and mocking blog posts (where the prison is often misidentified as a corrections center outside Chicago), but in Europe, Hohensinn’s design has become more of a model — not universally accepted, but not easily ignored either. It is the opening statement in a debate about what it means to construct a better prison. Already there are plans to build something like it outside of Berlin.
The day Hohensinn and I visited, Leoben was dreary, and there were traces of sleet in the air; as we approached, the building looked both idle and inviting, like a college library during winter break — or it would have, anyway, were it not for the razor wire coiled along the concrete wall of the yard and the sentence carved below it, a line from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the United States signed and ratified) that reads: “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”
Inside the prison it felt like Sunday afternoon, though in fact it was a Tuesday. There was a glassy brightness over everything, and most surprising, an unbreakable silence. Prisons are usually clamorous places, filled with the sound of metal doors opening and closing, and the general racket that comes with holding large numbers of men in a confined space. Noise is part of the chaos of prison life; Leoben was serene. I mentioned as much to Hohensinn, and he smiled and pointed to the whitewashed ceilings. He had taken great care to install soundproofing.
Prisoners live in one-person cells with private bathrooms, kitchenettes and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto balconies. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times
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An assistant warden accompanied us on our tour, one of three guards on duty tasked with watching more than 200 inmates. On one side of the prison there was a block of prisoners on remand; on the other side were the convicts, living in units called pods — groups of 15 one-person cells with floor-to-ceiling windows, private lavatories and a common space that includes a small kitchen. We came upon one prisoner cooking a late lunch for a few of his podmates; we stood there for a bit, chatting. They were wearing their own clothes. The utensils on the table were metal. “They are criminals,” Hohensinn said to me, “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.” His principle, he said, was simple: “Maximum security outside; maximum freedom inside.” (The bars over the balconies are there to ensure the inmates’ safety, Hohensinn said; the surrounding wall outside is more than enough to make sure no one gets free.)
We walked around some more. There was a gymnasium, a prayer room, a room for conjugal visits. I asked Hohensinn what he would do if, contrary to fact, it were conclusively proved that prisons like his encouraged crime rather than diminished it. Would he renounce the design? He shook his head. “The prisoners’ dignity is all I really care about,” he told me.
Hohensinn's design principle is simple: "Maximum security outside; maximum freedom inside." Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times
The facility has a gymnasium, a prayer room and a room for conjugal visits. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times
Inside the visitors' area. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times
Along the prison's concrete wall is an inscription from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which reads, "All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person." Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times
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Suppose we can’t bring ourselves to be quite so magnanimous. Suppose all we’re interested in is reducing crime. If you trust a criminal with a better environment, will he prove trustworthy? As far as Leoben is concerned, it’s too soon to tell. The place has been open for only four years. But I noticed something as we were leaving, and in the absence of any other data it seemed significant. In the three or four hours we spent roaming all through the place, I hadn’t seen a single example of vandalism….”
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