Vaissnavi Shukl
There are splitting views in the design profession on the role of architects in the perpetuation and even existence of prisons. This stems from an ethical and professional belief that incarceration is not the most optimum solution to crime, and that the very design of prisons creates conditions that subject inmates to inhuman living conditions. It also draws attention to the larger question of punishment and how architecture becomes a tool for discipline.
While in the previous episode, we focused on an alternate method of seeking justice, for this one I wanted to look at what is happening in the world of prison reforms. Our guest today, Pia Puolakka, trained as a forensic psychologist, and has been working as a prison psychologist for the criminal sanctions agency in Finland. In 2018, she was appointed as a project manager of the Smart Prison Project, where she developed digital services for inmates rehabilitation.

I am Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off-Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design perspectives, practices, and research projects that reflect emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture Off-Centre features conversations with radical designers, thinkers, and changemakers who are redefining the way we live and interact with the built environment.

Are we all set?

Pia Puolakka
I think so. Yes.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Okay, then Pia, I am very intrigued by your background and your career path. You’re neither a designer or a policymaker. In fact, you’re a forensic psychologist and in fact the first forensic psychologist on the podcast. Can you walk us through your journey? How do you end up at the criminal centre agency and what led you to the smart Prison Project?

Pia Puolakka
I started as a prison psychologist and I… I was working for almost 10 years as a prison psychologist before I came to the Central Administration Unit, where I work now. And there were some open… open positions for Senior Specialists in Rehabilitation… in Rehabilitative Practices. Since I was a forensic psychologist, and I had been doing rehabilitative work in prisons for… for such a long long time, I was appointed. And then when I had been working like for one year, in that position, this Smart Prison Project was opened and they were looking for somebody maybe not so technically oriented person, but someone…someone who could  digital services and rehabilitative practices, and who could understand a new prison concept, which was for us, prison as a learning environment. And this technical side was something that I… I’ve been learning by doing all the time. So I’ve had some further studies then after I started in this digitization project. But I think it was the idea of criminal sanctions agency to have someone who could think about not only the technical side, but the idea that we are providing new services to prisoners, for rehabilitative purposes for reintegration purposes, and also to teach them digital skills, which are part of the life outside of prison and often prisoners lack these kind of skills. And it’s one reason for marginalisation that you cannot take care of your daily affairs in a modern society, which is all the time more and more digitised, and all vocational careers or vocational and high school studies based on having enough digital skills, follow these kinds of applications and apply for for job, for example. So I think that’s why I got involved and that’s why I was appointed for this position as a forensic psychologist.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So for those who are not familiar with the Smart Prison Project. Do you want to walk us through what the project is and what you have been doing so far?

Pia Puolakka
Before the Smart Prison Project started, we had already started building a new women’s prison, a prison for 100 women prisoners and it was supposed to be based on this new prison concept. And then the criminal sanctions agency knew that there are already some smart prisons in other countries in Europe. And we kind of wanted to adopt this model too Finland to stop digitalization and develop development in Finnish prisons. The idea in the smart prison is that every prisoner has a personal cell device. So the… so the device is directly in the cell and you can use services inside prison, online and in a restricted way also to outside.

Vaissnavi Shukl
But this cell device is not a mobile phone, is it? Or is it like a tab or is it a completely new device that you have designed?

Pia Puolakka
In the Finnish Smart Prison it’s a laptop. So they are using the laptop and that was the model they prepared… preferred, since it’s easier, for example, to write with a better laptop model compared to tablets. But I know that in some prisons, they also have tablets, and also these kind of joint use workstations, kind of kiosk models. But in our case, we have laptops in… in all of the 100 cells of the new women’s prison. So everybody has their personal device directly in the cell. So this was kind of the first aim of the project. And then on the other hand, the idea was that at the same time we take care of the development in all our units, not necessarily providing personal devices but developing the digital services on the… on the so-called joint use workstations that we already had, in all our prisons and probation offices. So we’ve been developing this system to provide new services to offenders.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Can you give us an example of these digital services?

Pia Puolakka
So for example, a lot of our partners outside, NGOs and other officials and organisations that arrange rehabilitative practices for prisoners can contact online prisons and offenders and provide their services online. And also, educational courses can be done on the joint use devices. Various social services can be used on the devices. So basically, there’s a selection of relevant websites that prisoners can browse through and search for suitable services. There…there’s also websites for substance abuse, rehab rehabilitation for health care for psychological, social, family, and children’s issues and services like this. And then we have some special pilots that we only use in certain units to kind of test new practices like virtual reality, that we have in three prisons. Yes.

Vaissnavi Shukl
That’s fancy.

Pia Puolakka
Yeah, it is. We use VR environments for rehabilitative purposes, in kind of a test…test environment, and then we also have some NGOs who can provide us digital skills courses in some units. This is what we do.

Vaissnavi Shukl
This is kind of path breaking. It’s…it’s a new, absolutely new way to think about technology and especially virtual realities. I mean, I haven’t had enough exposure with virtual reality but to pick a technology like that and make it accessible in a place like a prison is, I would say quite, quite radical and very interesting. The Smart Prison Project, as you said, aims at integrating digital services and technology within the prison infrastructure. With the goal to enable prison occupants to stay abreast of developments in the society outside. I think you also mentioned that technology often becomes a way to marginalise prisoners and that the lack of these digital services further separates them from the civil society. Now I find this idea to be very profound, especially as I’m reading, a lot of architectural listeners will have heard this name a lot, I’m reading Michel Foucault’s, “Discipline and Punish” at the moment. And Foucault traces the emergence of prisons as building types created specifically to punish those who have committed a crime. There’s also a separate discourse on the idea of a panopticon and the role of surveillance prisons. And then way back in the day,there’s artists like Piranesi, who portrayed a very surreal collection of prisons. So in his collection of drawings called I’m not pronouncing it wrong, Carceri d’invenzione or imaginary prisons. Piranesi depicts the dark and foreboding nature of prison architecture. Whereas the Smart Prison Project radically challenges all these notions of what a prison should be, and aims to, if I can use the word, rehabilitate prisoners for a better life after serving their sentence. How do you think the Smart Prison Project challenges the idea of punishment in prisons or for that matter, even pushes the architectural design of these prisons in an entirely new direction?
I was just thinking about how in history when we look at a lot of literature, a lot of these theories when you think about a prison or the way a prison was designed or created, was directly related to the idea of punishment. But when you’re looking at the Smart Prison Project, it seems like the element of punishment has somewhere  been in a negotiation with the idea of freedom. So when you bring technology into since you’re almost allowing a certain degree of freedom to this prisoners or a certain kind of liberty or exposure, that stands directly opposite to what punishment is supposed to be because you’re increasing their access to information. You’re trying to have all these skill development workshops, you’ve tied up with NGOs, who are actually trying to not look at it as a way to punish people, but also mindful at the same time that they’re there in the prison because of something that you have done wrong in the past. So with that in mind, do you think it’s the role of punishment when you’re looking at the Smart Prison Project? Because one of the videos that we look at your work in the Smart Prison Project is also an element of how prisoners are allowed to move around freely, maybe even stepped out of the prison for a while and then, you know, stepped back in? What are your thoughts on the punishment aspect of it?

Pia Puolakka
So the only punishment that prison is supposed to be is that you lose your freedom for a limited period of time. And in the Finnish system, there are different levels for losing this freedom. So we also have the so-called high security units and closed prisons, where prisoners go first, especially if they have a long..long sentence. But it’s the idea that towards the end of your sentence, you step by step become more accustomed, again, of how life is outside. And this is to actually take this… the idea is that doing it in this way will make prisoners easier to reintegrate because total exclusion is it produces a high risk for reoffending. If you get free without learning how to reintegrate back this, becoming free of prison, comes risk in itself, which is not what it’s supposed to be because then the system has failed. If it heightens people’s risk, instead of lowering it. So there must be a balance between the punishment. The punishment side side, which is inevitable, since it’s a prison to prison sentence and the rehabilitative side, which anyway provides prisoners services during their prison sentence in order to have an effect on their risk levels, recidivism, and in order to reintegrate them back to the society, because that’s the idea of how to succeed with the system. And we probably know that this doesn’t always succeed. But if we can make it more successful with these kinds of changes, like providing more services during the prison time also from outside prison. When these digital names become important, there are a lot of services in the outside society that prisoners would probably need or benefit during the prison time, but they cannot use them since they are in prison. And all these service providers cannot come inside the prison. So actually, the online digital way of using services is the only possibility for in some cases. So I think this is a way to lessen the risk of offenders. I don’t see it as contradictory to the idea of punishment. And I… and I wouldn’t prepare to speak about punishment and rehabilitations as opposites, in a way that it’s often done. Both of these elements are part of the prison sentence inevitably. But there’s no need to be more punishment than the loss of your freedom. Because we know that giving more punishment, longer sentences or…or not so humane treatment during prison time doesn’t make things better for anyone, not for the offenders, but not for the outside society either. Or let alone the negatives of these offenders. So nobody benefits from more like more from…from more harsh practices.

Vaissnavi Shukl
As we continue speaking to Pia , let’s take a little break and see what’s lined up for our next episode with architectural historian Robert Jan Van Pelt who served as a defence expert witness in a court case concerning the Auschwitz concentration camp. 

Robert Jan Van Pelt
 “The fact that we’re dealing with a building complex that was the… that was the site of an enormous crime against humanity that was prosecuted in various courts, means also that you have an unusual kind of supply of material from the judicial system. Very important is the interrogation of the clerk in the Gestapo office. And then we have the prosecution of the architects of Auschwitz, two of the architects in Vienna in 1970. So that already creates a kind of an unusual body of material that you’re dealing with.”

Vaissnavi Shukl
This is going to be a two part episode you don’t want to miss. So tune in two weeks from now to hear more about how an architectural historian ended up testifying in court.

Now, I know you parted a Smart Prison Project with a new women’s prison that you… you just built and you were testing the programme. And in our earlier conversation, we had very briefly spoken about how the digital services were integrated within the building and now my architecture brain is very curious to know as a psychologist, what did you think in terms of design of that building? How do you think that was different than the existing prisons the way it was designed and built because it was going to be part of the Smart Prison Project?I don’t know a lot of simple things like a lot of student projects which deal with the design of prisons and would usually look at the ventilation, good sunlight, cell sizes, just common gathering spaces, and a little interaction with good landscape. Cause a lot of times when you in the movies and even in real life you see prisons they’re supposed to be these cold harsh places, but I know that the prison you design and build does not look anything like that. What do you think changed in the… in the design of the prisons with the integration of the Smart Prison Project?

Pia Puolakka
Yes, I think there’s more open areas inside of the prison and the colours and lighting, as you said, taken into consideration. And there’s also green areas around the prison, where prisoners can spend their time. So small things are… are important if I’m thinking about the structure of the prison, of course, where do you see that it’s a prison is basically the doors are closed. That the staff is in use in prison officers’ suits, and the door doors of cells are also kept locked for… for some parts of the day and during night.But otherwise the library must have been to look for, for concept as I said prison as a learning environment that it would more remind you of some kind of a school or intern environment or some kind of a rehabilitative centre, not necessarily a hospital but some kind of a rehab centre for example. So of course, since it must, it anyway must be done in a secure unit where it’s difficult to flee. You have to think of some things differently than when building another kind of rehabilitative centre. But as far as you can, you can take into consideration the materials and the colours can also kind of the there’s more open space and open space in the premises that not for… for individual use or for prisoner but where prisoners can spend their joint time during the day. So for example, these are important things.

Vaissnavi Shukl
We do see a lot of prison reform for movements popping up across the world. But there are also a lot of complexities involved with it right I think you mentioned earlier there are also some high security prisons. Do you think about it in terms of quality of life, for example, in a country like Finland, which has been voted as the happiest country in the world for the past four years, one would assume that the nature of crimes is different than, say, a country like India, where I’m from, or that the overall relationship of the country with its criminal justice system is different. Maybe it’s even a lot more positive and its outlook. How do you imagine the Smart Prison movement growing and adapting internationally, were it to take form in different parts of the world?

Pia Puolakka
I think this kind of model can be applied to prisons. But of course you have to remember that we have… we have different kinds of prisoners. So this is also one stereotype that when we think of a prisoner every… we think a specific type of person. And the reality is that these people are very varied individuals as all of us. Of course, there are similarities too and there are common risk factors that lead to prison. But yes, there probably might be units where you need to take the security issues more into consideration. And then units where prisoners can be in more open premises. But I wouldn’t see not necessarily would I see that providing digital services would be somehow the biggest risk. I think the risks in… in the highest security units are something else. The risk…the major risk is not that the prisoner can use restricted internet. But the risks are totally something else. So seeing… seeing digitalization as some kind of a risk. I think it might be a bit of an exaggerated idea that it would be such a risk. Nowadays all these data security data protection issues are very important. But as we did in Finland it’s… it’s possible with today’s technology to build secure systems, even for prisons where special things has to be taken into consideration. But it is possible to build systems like this. There are already vendors in Europe who are specialised, in prison technology and I don’t only mean security technique, but these prisoner cell device systems, kind of a self service systems as some vendors call it. So I would see that it’s inevitable that in the same way as all our institutions in society are developing and getting digitalized. The same thing is going to happen in prisons too. Because of the special nature of prisons, prison systems tend to lag behind the development of the rest of the society… of the society. In many questions, and it’s understandable, recording this digitalization was the same thing in Finland that compared to other systems of the society, like schools, or hospitals. They were already digitised for years before the prisoners got the same kind of devices as clients in other organisations and institutions of society. are already used. So I think this development will definitely continue. It’s just a question of time.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I can’t wait for it… for it to see and, you know, evolve and travel all the way here. I mean, in India, of course, there have been some prison reform movements and there was a particular IAS officer. Well, no, sorry. She was an IPS officer named Kiran Bedi, who was one of the first female IPS officers who was posted in one of the very high security prisons in India and she started a prison reform movement with, you know, different programmes. She got a lot of spiritual people to come teach meditation, they started exercises, they started yoga, and basically upscaling the prisoners so that there’s a little industry that works within the prison itself and they would manufacture different goods and those goods would be sold outside but very interesting to see your work and a completely digital take on how potential prison reform movement could be. So towards the end of our conversation, Pia I’m very curious to know what is next for you. And what’s in the pipeline for the Smart Prison Project? Where do we go from here?

Pia Puolakka
What we are considering at the moment, since we have the system now in one of our units, is that can we extend this model to all our closed prisons in the years coming? Or maybe even next year? Could we take another unit into the system because that was the idea when we purchased the system that we will extend it to or our close to units which are 16 at the moment in Finland, but it will take of course, some time and we have to see the system to develop and we are also piloting prisoner email system during this autumn and see how it works. And then we are developing our Offender Management System and we are trying to bring some years of artificial intelligence in the Offender Management System. We have interesting, interesting projects coming and developing the overall prison concept and also more rehabilitative Andy to the highest way. So I am kind of waiting that this development has just begun of care. Of course we’ve taken some big steps. Having the first smart prison in Finland. But this is only the beginning. And then probably we will also see some new digital solutions also on the probation side. So I’m looking forward to what’s happening next in the process.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Well, I can’t wait to see what y’all do then I’ll be on the lookout. So thank you so much for your time Pia, this first phenomenon and you’re such a calm and composed speaker and your thoughts are so articulated just really help bring a completely different perspective into questions that we’re looking at the season. Thank you for sharing your work.

Pia Puolakka
Thank you. I hope I was able to clarify our concepts and our ideas.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Ayushi Thakur for the research and design support, and Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.