PRISON SYSTEM USA AND PHILIPPINES
we all respect culturally,is to give the rights and just
USA
Persons who violate state laws and/or territorial laws
generally are placed in state or territorial prisons,
while those who violate United States federal law are
generally placed in federal prisons operated by
the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), an agency of
the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ).
The BOP also houses adult felons convicted of
violating District of Columbia laws due to the National
Capital Revitalization and Self-Government
Improvement Act of 1997.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_Unit
ed_States
PHILIPPINES
The Bureau of Corrections (Filipino: Kawanihan ng
mga Bilangguan, literally "Bureau of Prisons", which
was the old name of the agency from 1905 to 1989;
abbreviated BuCor) is an agency of the Department of
Justice which is charged with the custody and
rehabilitation of national offenders, who have
been sentenced to three years of imprisonment[1] or
more. The agency has its headquarters in the New
Bilibid Prison Reservation in Muntinlupa City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Corrections_(
Philippines)
Restorative justice is an alternative approach to the
criminal justice system, one that focuses on
rehabilitating offenders back into the community
through an ethos of reconciliation and understanding.
Architecture and restorative justice dont immediately
seem relateduntil you consider that our current
penal system exists within a very specific type of
architecture: high-security jails and courthouses. An
alternative system, of course, would have its own
reinforcing architecture.
On open letter
Dear Supt Tesoro,
Good dayako po si Joy Sayangda,BS Architecture-
5 from the University of La Salette Santiago
City,Isabela.
Kasalukuyan po ang thesis ko: PROPOSED
REGIONAL PRISON AND PENAL FARM for Region
@ which is to be located in Cordon,Isabela.
I am aiming po for the COMFORT of Inmates through
Architectural Approach. Since wala pong Correctional
Architecture sa Philippines.
The concept of my proposal sir is REFORMATION
THROUGH THE CONCEPTS OF ARCHITECTURE.
As it was explained to me by the Supervisor of
Education in CIW,SECURITY and REFORMATION
are the two goals of the correction.Dahil po sa dami
ng naresearch ko about our penal institutions Ive
learned that it is presently awful living inside.My term
of applying COMFORT is to ease further
emotional.psychological and physical effects of
imprisonment to inmates whose lives
are doomed.That I have learned the fact that being
deprived of ones liberty is already punitive.
1
To ease and aflame HUMAN RIGHTS,since its what
ang para kay juan ay para kay juan is what I want to
show in my proposal.Thatthrough Architecture we can
make the change we deserve to give to these people
whoever and whatever made them up.That through
Architecture,we can show that a boring and unhappy
place can be a nicer place to live life fully even way is
inside.
Iniisip ko na po kasi sir kung ako o pamilya ko ang
mga makukulongEVERYBODY DESERVES A
FAIR LIFE.hehhehehehe,) JOY*
Dear Joy,
Any facility designed for incarceration is never an
enjoyable area. As a matter of fact, the deprivation of
liberty, the loss of freedom, the air of regimentation
and absolute totalitarian climate makes it indeed an
awful if not a traumatic experience. Even if you install
a split type airconditioning system complete with
digital television with top of the line food for the
prisoner, the experience of imprisonment is still awful
and unfortunate. Prison administrators cannot reduce
the psychological and pathological effect of detention
even if everything around the prison camp is written in
comfort. Comfort cannot be introduced into the
consciousness of inmates unless one is about to be
released. For the prisoners, the promise of
integration into the free community is already a inch
closer to what we refer to as comfort.
The only way architecture can alleviate the condition
of present day correctional facilities is through a
design which promotes spatial consideration. All
prisons and jails all over the country are suffering
from loss of space, from congestion, from sardine-like
situation. Architectural concepts dealing with space
or designing something that would liberally partake of
greater spatial zones makes a great idea in the
fulfillment of prison rehabilitation.
Boredom and the state of unhappiness are personal
characteristics which cannot be changed through
infrastructure. This is where the trained professional
prison worker comes in. These professionals are the
catalyst in behavior modification. We can have the
best basketball court in town, complete with
rubberized flooring and glass boards but when the
referees are incompetent, there will always be trouble
and violence.
Human rights is a borderline issue in correctional
administration. For how can human rights per se be
imposed in prison when the fountainhead of human
rights is freedom. Prisoners lost it by way of violating
the law. The courts and the corrections pillar have to
clip the right of freedom, thus effectively reducing the
offenders human rights. Remember that when we
say right it is something that cannot be taken away,
like right to life. There are basic human rights
however and these are mainly referred to as
privileges. In prison, it is privilege more than right that
is contemplated.
Kaya kung tayo makukulong, let us not expect a
grand area for reception. Magdala na lang ng
madaming libro at sa isang sulok, magbasa ng
magbasa na lang. There is real comfort in reading
and in spending time with literature. Regards. VJT
Supt. Venancio Tesoro, former head of the New
Bilibid Prison (NBP) 2014
https://philippineprisons.com/2012/12/12/architecture-
and-prison/
SEC. 4. The Mandates of the Bureau of
Corrections. The BuCor shall be in charge of
safekeeping and instituting reformation programs to
national inmates sentenced to more than three (3)
years.
(a) Safekeeping of National Inmates The
safekeeping of inmates shall include decent provision
of quarters, food, water and clothing in compliance
with established United Nations standards. The
security of the inmates shall be undertaken by the
Custodial Force consisting of Corrections Officers
with a ranking system and salary grades similar to its
counterpart in the BJMP.
(b) Reformation of National Inmates The
reformation programs, which will be instituted by the
BuCor for the inmates, shall be the following:
(1) Moral and Spiritual Program;
(2) Education and Training Program;
(3) Work and Livelihood Program;
(4) Sports and Recreation Program;
(5) Health and Welfare Program; and
(6) Behavior Modification Program, to include
Therapeutic Community.
(c) The reformation programs shall be undertaken by
Professional Reformation Personnel consisting of
Corrections Technical Officers with ranking system
and salary grades similar to Corrections Officers.
(1) Corrections Technical Officers are personnel
employed in the implementation of reformation
programs and those personnel whose nature of work
requires proximate or direct contact with inmates.
(2) Corrections Technical Officers include priests,
evangelists, pastors, teachers, instructors, professors,
vocational placement officers, librarians, guidance
counselors, physicians, nurses, medical
technologists, pharmacists, dentists, therapists,
psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, social
workers, engineers, electricians, agriculturists,
veterinarians, lawyers and similar professional skills
relevant to the implementation of inmate reformation
programs.
SEC. 5. Operations of the Bureau of Corrections.
(a) The BuCor shall operate with a directorial
structure. It shall undertake reception of inmates
through its Directorate for Reception and Diagnostics
(DRD), formerly Reception and Diagnostic Center
(RDC), provide basic needs and security through its
Security and Operations Directorates, administer
reformation programs through its Reformation
Directorates, and prepare inmates for reintegration to
mainstream society through its Directorate for
External Relations (DER), formerly External Relations
Division (ERD).
2
(b) The DRD shall be responsible for the conduct of
classification of each and every inmate admitted to
the BuCor. Inmates shall be classified according to
security risk and sentence. Included in the
classification is determining inmates certain skills or
talents, physical, spiritual, social, mental and
psychological evaluation and other behavioral
assessments, as reference of the DRD in the
preparation of individual inmate reformation
programs.
(c) Aside from those borne of the provisions under
Rule 8, Part I, Rules of General Application of the
United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the
Treatment of Prisoners and that of the existing
regulation of the BuCor on security classification (i.e.
maximum, medium and minimum security risk),
inmates shall also be internally classified by the DRD
and segregated according to crimes committed based
on the related penal codes such as Crimes Against
Persons, Crimes Against Properties, Crimes Against
Chastity, so on and so forth, as well as by other
related Special Laws, Custom and Immigration Laws.
(d) From the DRD, the Custodial Force and
Reformation Personnel of respective security
institutions/camps shall be in charge for the security
and the implementation of the recommended inmate
reformation program of each and every inmate while
serving sentence, respectively.
(e) The Directorate for External Relations (DER) shall
be responsible for pre-release and post-release
programs of inmates due for release. The DER shall
also classify inmates according to skills acquired for
referral and endorsement to appropriate companies or
corporations participating in the BuCor On-The-Job
Training Programs for newly reformed inmates. The
DER shall also evaluate, classify and apply necessary
programs to inmates for readiness to join the
mainstream society upon release.
(f) Apart from handling inmates, the BuCor shall
administratively operate like a standard government
agency through its Administrative Directorates with
internal control and internal audit units.
(g) The BuCor shall employ full computerization in the
build-up, maintenance and transmittal of necessary
inmate records to all its Prison and Penal Farms and
other recipient agencies (i.e. Board of Pardons and
Parole).
SEC. 6. Lands of the Bureau of Corrections. (a)
Aside from administrative purposes, all BuCor lands
shall be used for inmate security, reformation
programs and as a means to promote sustainability,
both for income and non-income generating
programs, with or without partnership among
nongovernment organizations, civic organizations or
other government entities.
(b) As a way to maximize its assets value for the
effective and extensive reformation (corrections)
programs for national inmates, the BuCor shall have
the absolute authority to design, formulate and
implement land-use development plans and policies.
(c) The BuCor may propose additional penal farms as
may be necessary as possible, aside from its existing
seven (7) prison and penal farms to decongest
existing penal institutions and accommodate the
increasing number of inmates committed to the
agency.
(d) All BuCor lands shall have a Certificate of Title
registered under its name.
SEC. 7. Facilities of the Bureau of Corrections.
The BuCor shall operate with standard and uniform
design of prison facilities, reformation facilities and
administrative facilities, through all the operating
prison and penal farms, such as the following:
(a) Dormitory;
(b) Administration building;
(c) Perimeter/Security fences;
(d) Hospital/Infirmary;
(e) Recreation/Multipurpose hall;
(f) Training/Lecture center;
(g) Workshop facility;
(h) Mess hall/kitchen;
(i) Visiting area;
(j) Water tank and pump;
(k) Reception and diagnostic center; and
(l) Service personnel facilities.
Restorative Justice: Creating Space for Restoring
Lives
I was very interested in a recent New York
Times article describing New York Citys
implementation of a $130 million investment in
restorative justice programs and initiatives: The new
plan will shift emphasis from punishment for minor
crimes to treatmenttripling pretrial diversion
program and the amount of resources devoted to
easing transition from jail back into society.
New Yorks program is one of many new justice
models being developed across the country that seek
to bring the justice system into a closer relationship to
the communities they serve, focusing on treatment
and rehabilitation rather than punishment and
incarceration. Providing more treatment and
community program options for low-level offenders
seems to be an emerging trend nationally. Californias
recent shift of responsibility for low-level felony
offenders from the state system to local counties
represents a similar shift at a much larger scale.
As justice architects, we are called to explore how
design of justice facilities can help support our
communities as they develop strategies for
implementing restorative justice practices. Some
wonder how this new focus changes facility design.
I recently worked through an extensive programming
and planning exercise with a county juvenile courts
facility. This is a county in which the court system has
embraced treatment programs as an alternative to
punitive detention for juveniles. The court building
3
needed to accommodate a host of treatment
providers, a community resource center, and
courtrooms that could support multi-party interactions
in the courtroom for their drug and family treatment
courts. It also needed a place for graduation parties at
the completion of treatment programs!
In this model the court facility is no longer just a place
to get punished, it is a place for families and juveniles
to engage with judges, volunteers and community
resource providers to help families heal by receiving
the support they need. An architectural response
supporting this vision includes integration of multiple
function areas into a court facility model that delivers
both court and social services.
Similarly, an interest in expanding treatment programs
and providing safe, normative environments in
detention facilities, is allowing us to explore new
architectural strategies to support these new facility
models for detention environments. While security,
safety, and efficiency of operations still underpin the
facility designs, integrating design ideas from
normative housing and academic environments
allows the resulting facilities to feel less alienating.
If the design helps inmates and correctional officers
feel more comfortable and safe, then positive
interactions and treatment success stories become a
reality rather than a rarity. Our role in design is
shifting to help determine just the right balance of
security, operational requirements and softening
elements such as normative furnishings, use of color
and access to natural light and views. When the
environmental cues calm behavior and create positive
interactions, everyone benefits!
With so many new justice models available to explore,
clients are now reconsidering where their unique
model falls along the continuum of justice
options. And we have the privilege of exploring those
options with them to create dynamic facilities and
programs that help restore lives through justice
architecture.
We've recently covered the topic of prison design on a
number of occasions - more specifically the work of
Architects, Designers and Planners for Social
Responsibility, led by Raphael Sperry. ADPSR is
campaigning to have the AIA forbid its members from
designing prisons; however, we have
previously questioned the effectiveness of this tactic, with
other professionals, such as engineers, often willing
to design prisons in the absence of architects.
In another article on the topic, we suggested that the
problem lies not with the ethics of architects, but with
the US prison system itself.
This raised the question of how architects might
actually change the system - are we stuck with the
political landscape we are given, or are we capable of

leveraging our expertise to make positive changes to
society?
It turns out that Deanna VanBuren of FOURM Design
Studio is doing exactly that. Through her designs, as
well as workshops and events with the public and with
prisoners, VanBuren is championing restorative
justice: a form of incarceration centered around
rehabilitation rather than punishment. We interviewed
VanBuren to find out how she is encouraging people
to accept restorative justice above punishment.
W hat Restorative Justice Can Teach You
About Architecture
Design has an important role to play in criminal
justice reformand architects can learn a lot from the
restorative justice process, too.
B Y M E G MI L L E R
Deanna Van Buren, cofounder of the Oakland-based
organization Designing Justice + Designing
Spaces, remembers exactly where she was when she first
heard the term restorative justice. It was Martin Luther
King Day in 2006, and Van Buren was at Taylor Memorial
United Methodist Church in West Oakland. The social
justice activist Angela Davis and her sister, Fania Davis,
were there speaking on the subject.
I really had that moment of understanding, and a belief
that restorative justice was the way forward for us, Van
Buren, an architect who at the time was working at the
global architecture firm Perkins + Will, tells Co.Design. I
became pretty committed from then on to helping that
system grow.
Restorative justice is an alternative approach to the criminal
justice system, one that focuses on rehabilitating offenders
back into the community through an ethos of reconciliation
and understanding. Architecture and restorative justice
dont immediately seem relateduntil you consider that
our current penal system exists within a very specific type
of architecture: high-security jails and courthouses.
An alternative system, of course, would have its own
reinforcing architecture.
After hearing the famed activists speak, Van Buren spent
the next decade trying to figure out how to define an
architecture of restorative justice and apply it nationwide.
[Photo: Emily Hagopian/courtesy Designing Justice +
Designing Spaces]In 2015, Van Buren founded Designing
Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS), along with friend and
real-estate developer Kyle Rawlins, with the mission of
4
designing and developing spaces with the goals of
restorative justice in mind.
DJDS designs physical spaces where the practice of
restorative justice can take place. That might include
reconciliation between offender and victim, or preparation
for someones assimilation back into society peacefully and
productively. But more than that, Van Buren and her team
at DJDS have applied certain values of restorative justice to
the way that architecture itself is practiced. That has
involved adopting a model of collaboration that is rare in
the architecture worldone that touches every aspect of
the business, from project conception to designing to
funding.
At the end of June, DJDS and Five Keys Schools and
Programs will officially launch the Five Keys Mobile Self-
Determination Project, a mobile classroom housed in a
renovated MUNI bus, which provides academic
programming and resources for formerly incarcerated
individuals. I talked to Van Buren about how architecture
can take after activism, and how designing spaces that
address the root problem of a social issue requires listening
and cooperation from all sides.
[Photo: Emily Hagopian/courtesy Designing Justice +
Designing Spaces]
REDEFINING AN ARCHITECTURAL
PRACTICE
Before founding DJDS, Van Buren had worked for over a
decade in traditional architecture firms. For a few years she
designed retail spaces overseas in Australia and England,
then came back to the states to design mostly academic and
office spaces for Perkins + Will. While getting her MA at
Columbia University in the 90s, she had expressed an
interest in working with the community in Harlem, which
neighbors the university, only to abandon the idea when it
received a less-than-welcome reception. I worked for 12
years before I came back to the idea that we could be doing
this work in a different way, she says.
[Photo: Emily Hagopian/courtesy Designing Justice +
Designing Spaces]After that fateful MLK Day in 2006, Van
Buren began doing extensive research in restorative
justice. Though the restorative justice process takes a
number of forms, the most prominent is similar to
mediation: It involves the accused, the victim, and a
facilitator in a face-to-face meeting. Each party gets a
chance to speak uninterrupted, before coming to a
consensus about how to repair the damage done. Its
typically used for less-serious crimes like petty theft or
vandalizing, and in the U.S. it has proven effective
at reducing recidivism in places like Baltimore,
Minneapolis, and Oakland.
The most obvious spatial element in this process is the
mediation room itselfand Van Burens first project
applying architecture in this way was to refurbish a
dilapidated room for precisely that purpose. While still at
Perkins + Will, Van Buren convinced the firm to take on
the project pro bono for the nonprofit Restorative Justice
for Oakland Youth. She also started thinking about other
spaces that could embody the values of restorative justice,
resulting in projects like the Designing From the Inside
Out workshops, held inside prisons throughout the country,
that ask inmates to design and mock up their own spaces
for rehabilitation and reconciliation. In 2014, Van Buren
helped lead a community-driven design process for
the Near Westside Peacemaking Center, an initiative of the
Center for Court Innovation, that brings Native American
peacemaking practices into the Near Westside community
in Syracuse, New York.
By the time Van Buren and Rawlins founded Designing
Justice + Designing Spaces in 2015, the mission was to also
create spaces that supported job training and education
the two biggest factors that reduce recidivism rates. We
really look at the root causes of mass incarceration, says
Van Buren. We look at: Why do people end up
incarcerated in the first place? And try to design an
infrastructure to address those things.
[Photo: Emily Hagopian/courtesy Designing Justice +
Designing Spaces]
of the bus is kitted out with comfortable chairs and pillows
for students to relax, socialize, and study.
By working closely with Five Keys and the students, DJDS
was able to design a space that will create job opportunities
for the formerly incarcerated, and smooth their transition
back into the Oakland community. The question is always
How do our projects help create opportunities in these
communities so that crime that revolves around a lack of
resources are reduced?' says Van Buren. We believe the
real focus should be on that and not how can we make
prisons better places to house black and brown bodies.
[Image: courtesy Designing Justice + Designing Spaces]
IT TAKES A VILLAGE

CREATING THE SPACE F OR CRIMINAL
JUSTICE REFORM
As DJDS shifted to focus on education and jobs, a new
model emergedone where projects would be developed
with partner organizations from the ground-up. When
working on a community-driven project, Van Buren says,
architects need to seek out people who are already doing
the work at a social level and offer their assistance as
designers. Incidentally, this follows an activist mentality
that Angela Davis espouses: treating community members
as equal partners in the struggle.
Similarly, Van Buren says, DJDS looks for community
partners before starting any project. Rather than focusing
on competitionsas with a request for proposal (RFP) or
design contestthis approach relies more on building
relationships. What wed prefer to do is find people who
are innovating with their programs and talk to them about
how we can work with them, their stakeholders, and their
community, and then fund it together, says Van Buren.
Its always a shared process.
[Photo: Emily Hagopian/courtesy Designing Justice +
Designing Spaces]Two years ago, Van Buren was
approached by Five Keys Schools and Programs, one of the
organizations that DJDS had built a relationship with,
about working on a new project. Originally founded by the
San Francisco Sheriffs Department, Five Keys offers
educational programs for formerly incarcerated individuals
by opening up schools in underserved communities in the
Bay Area. Together, DJDS and Five Keys wanted to create a
school that was mobile, so their programs would reach
more people. With funding from the Artist As Activist
grant from the Rauschenberg Foundation, Van Buren
spent months in meetings with Five Keys students and
teachers to find out what they needed. She also spent
a week with the women in the San Francisco County Jail
talking to them about the resources theyd most like to
have access to when they are released.
The result of that research is Five Keys Mobile Self
Determination Project, a flexible, mobile classroom hosted
in a gutted San Francisco transit bus. Since the education
program is self-guided, DJDS designed the space so that
students could work at their own level, and teachers could
come around to each of them individually. At the center of
the bus, there are a series of sliding white boards and
tables that allow the space to be reorganized quicklyby
sliding the boards back for an open space, for example, or
sliding the tables together for a long workspace. The back
The Five Keys classroom is part of a wider effort by Five
Keys and DJDS to create a Pop-Up Resource Village. The
project, which is funded by various foundation grants,
would include mobile social services, medical services, and
a pop-up marketplace to sell produce. The next aspect of
the village, to launch in San Francisco within the next year
or so, is the Womens Resource Bus, which will provide a
place for women to stay the night they are let out of jail.
As DJDS continues to grow and take on new projects, Van
Buren maintains that she has learned a lot about
architecture from working with partner nonprofit
organizations and incarcerated individualsparticularly
when it comes to being accountable for ones mistakes and
communicating clearly with people. The most important
thing that has guided her practice is also one of the central
tenets of the restorative justice process: to listen.
Youd be surprised how many architects dont even listen
to their clients or stakeholders, she says. We do our best
to share our tools, help [our partners] learn our tools, help
them make decisions, plan and strategize. Its important
that everyone understands whats happening so that they
can participate in the process and carry it on.
Towards the LIVING envelope: Biomimetics for
building envelope adaptation
Title
Several biomimetic design strategies are available for
various applications, though the research on
biomimetics as a design tool in architecture is still
challenging. This is due to a lack of systematic design
tools required for identifying relevant organisms, or
natural systems, and abstracting the corresponding
generic principles for implementation in design
concept generations for building envelopes. A major
challenge in current strategies is the filtering of the
wide possibilities that nature provides, especially for
architects who have limited biophysical background.
In order to find design solutions from nature, the
requirements of the artificial system have to be
defined, and then analogue systems in nature that
perform similar functions need to be identified. The
design generating tools should support the transitions
between the domains, especially the identification of
biological analogies and their abstraction. To this end,
the current thesis proposes a strategic methodology,
referred to as the living envelope methodology, for the
generation of design concepts. The proposed
methodology provides an exploration and
investigation platform for architects. It assists
channelling the way from technical challenges,
defined by the demands on the living envelope,
through functional aspects and various strategies
found in nature. Furthermore, the proposed
methodology provides several phases of

5
categorizations that funnel at the end into a single
imaginary organism/system, referred to as imaginary
pinnacle, which has the successful dominant features
of the desired living envelope. The various phases
and sub-phases of the methodology facilitate the
transitions between the various phases of the design
process, with a special attention to the representation
of biophysical information, identification and
abstraction of principles, and their systematic
selection. Systematic exploration models are
developed for the biophysical information
representation, and unique schemes and flow charts
that provide user-friendly design tools are developed
and presented. For the validation of the methodology
and the assessment of its generality, four important
environmental aspects that need to be managed by
the building envelope are applied to the methodology:
(1) air to manage ventilation, which is required in
order to provide high indoor air quality and to prevent
air stagnation; (2) heat to maintain a thermal
comfort for the occupants; (3) water to gain and
make use of condensed water in arid areas; and (4)
light to provide a shading system with minimized
undesired heat gain and maximized daylight. For
each of the four aspects exemplary design concepts
are successfully generated. It is worth noting that the
aim of investigating these environmental aspects is
not to provide detailed design solutions; rather the
presented examples of the generated design
concepts examine the generality of the
implementation of the methodology. In order to further
assess the generality of the proposed methodology, a
qualitative example that combines all four
environmental aspects is introduced. The results of
the exemplary design concepts show the advantage
of the proposed living envelope methodology. The
methodology is capable to generate design concepts
with specified initial challenge set by the user
(architect). Moreover, the design cases open new
perspectives for new possible technical solutions for
building envelopes, and the potential to realize a new
class of innovation and lay a functional foundation in
architecture: a bio-inspired, climatically oriented, and
environmentally conscious.