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How Design Can Help Divest From Incarceration: Lessons From Atlanta and Los Angeles

A guide to the design argument behind decarceration: how communities can redirect buildings, budgets and planning from punishment toward health, housing, restoration and reentry.

By ThatPainter Team Published
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Decarceration and designing to divest means changing what public money builds and maintains, not merely making jails more efficient. In a 2020 Architectural Record commentary, Garrett Jacobs and Deanna Van Buren of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) argue that architects, planners and communities can redirect investment from punishment toward health, housing, restoration and everyday support. Their Atlanta and Los Angeles County examples show how that shift might work, while also illustrating an essential caution: the projects and statistics described below are historical reports from October 2020, not proof of what was ultimately built or what conditions exist now.

What does “decarceration by design” mean?

Decarceration is usually discussed as a legal or policy goal: fewer people detained, sentenced or supervised through the criminal-legal system. Jacobs and Van Buren broaden the question to the physical world. A courthouse, jail, police facility or surveillance system embodies a decision about what government values and funds; a clinic, supportive-home complex, child-care center or restorative-justice space embodies a different one.

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The authors’ central claim is that design is not neutral. “As a society, we build what we believe in, and currently our architecture of justice in the U.S. represents beliefs in oppression, punishment, and dehumanization,” they write in the October 5, 2020 commentary. Designing to divest therefore asks a practical question: if a community wants less incarceration, what buildings, streets, services and budgets must replace the functions that incarceration currently performs?

This is different from “humanizing” a jail while leaving the system’s scale and purpose intact. Better daylight, safer fixtures or improved circulation may reduce immediate harm, but a divestment approach examines whether the facility is needed at all, who receives public investment instead, and how formerly incarcerated people and other affected residents share decision-making power.

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Why is the built environment part of an incarceration debate?

Physical projects lock in priorities for decades. A large detention complex requires land, construction or debt service, security contracts, staffing, transport routes and ongoing maintenance. Those commitments can crowd out neighborhood health care, housing, food access, behavioral-health treatment and non-police crisis response. Conversely, a network of small, welcoming sites can make support available before a person encounters the criminal-legal system and after release.

The 2020 commentary attributes two broad estimates to its own authors: approximately $80 billion a year to incarcerate, control and supervise more than 6 million people, and approximately $100 billion a year on policing. The article does not identify an underlying data source for those figures. They should be read as figures reported in that 2020 essay, not as current or independently verified totals.

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Design also shapes experience. A fortress-like entrance communicates exclusion and threat; a reception area with privacy, natural light, interpreters and child-friendly waiting space can communicate care. These signals do not replace policy, adequate staffing or material resources, but they influence whether people can reach services, exercise rights and participate without additional trauma.

How can designers help communities divest from punishment?

DJDS presents a collaborative method rather than a single building type. The following sequence translates the commentary’s approach into a usable framework for a public agency, design team or community coalition.

  1. Start with the people most affected. Include formerly incarcerated people, families, neighborhood organizations, service providers, public defenders, health workers and, where appropriate, corrections officers. Their knowledge should shape the problem definition before a site or architectural solution is selected.
  2. Map the existing system. Document where police, courts, detention, emergency rooms, shelters, treatment, housing and reentry services are located; record travel time, eligibility rules, language access and points where people fall through gaps. Mapping can reveal that a proposed jail expansion is compensating for missing health or housing infrastructure.
  3. Define outcomes in human terms. “Capacity” is not enough. A brief might specify stable housing, reduced emergency-room use, fewer arrests for behavior linked to untreated illness, family reunification, access to legal help or meaningful employment. These outcomes can guide investment without treating incarceration as the default measure.
  4. Test multiple futures. Compare reuse, partial conversion, demolition and distributed alternatives. Include operating costs, land value, transportation, staffing, environmental remediation and the risk that a new facility quietly recreates the old system under another name.
  5. Use trauma-informed and inclusive engagement. Offer stipends, childcare, interpretation, accessible meeting formats and confidential ways to comment. Report what participants changed, not only how many attended.
  6. Build accountability into the plan. Publish decision criteria, budgets, timelines and benchmarks. Establish resident governance or oversight so a community’s role continues after the concept drawings are complete.

Jacobs and Van Buren summarize the intended ethos this way: “When we lead with creativity, work across disciplines, carefully listen to the community, and implement inclusive, trauma-informed methodologies, we can provide vibrant examples of how to invest to unbuild the racist infrastructure that keeps us locked in an unjust and inequitable world.” The sentence describes their 2020 argument; it is not a claim that every project using these methods has achieved those outcomes.

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What did the Atlanta proposal show?

Atlanta provides the commentary’s clearest example of asking what a jail could become—or whether it should remain. The authors report that in May 2019 Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms approved a measure creating a task force to recommend how to transform the downtown jail into a Center for Equity and Wellness. DJDS worked with community organizers and the mayor’s office on engagement, financial and feasibility analysis, and four reuse concepts, according to the article.

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The jail is described as a 471,000-square-foot building designed for more than 1,300 people. The commentary reports that only 25 people were held there at a time during the period discussed. Those are article-era figures, attributed to Jacobs and Van Buren, and they should not be presented as the facility’s current capacity or population.

Engagement reportedly included more than 600 community participants in dialogue with a 60-person mayoral task force. Proposed uses included healthy food, day care, health and wellness services, legal support and retail for daily needs. Survey results initially favored demolishing the jail and distributing Centers for Equity and Wellness around the city rather than concentrating every service in the existing downtown structure.

That preference is significant because it exposes a choice that a conventional adaptive-reuse study can miss. Reusing a large building may preserve embodied energy, avoid demolition and create a visible civic destination. It may also keep essential services far from residents who need them, leave a stigmatizing symbol in place or force a single site to carry functions better delivered locally. The Atlanta process, as described in 2020, treated those trade-offs as questions for residents and service users rather than as an architect’s technical decision.

Central reuse or distributed neighborhood sites: which approach fits?

The commentary does not report a formal evaluation or final decision. Its examples support a comparison of approaches, not a ranking of outcomes.

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Question Central reuse of an existing jail Distributed neighborhood centers
Access One identifiable campus; may be convenient for some transit routes and difficult for outlying neighborhoods. Services can be placed near residents, but require coordination across multiple sites.
Symbolism Conversion can demonstrate that a punitive asset has a new civic purpose; the old stigma may persist. New or repurposed ordinary buildings can avoid a jail-centered identity.
Capital and operations Existing structure may reduce some construction work, but security-era layouts can be expensive to remediate and operate. Smaller projects can be phased, yet each site needs leases, staffing, maintenance and consistent standards.
Community governance A single institution may simplify oversight but concentrate power. A network can support local control, with a greater need for shared accountability and data systems.

A responsible decision would examine actual building conditions, contamination, code compliance, transportation and long-term operating funds. It would also ask who benefits from downtown redevelopment and whether residents most affected by incarceration can veto or reshape the proposal.

What was proposed for Los Angeles County?

For Los Angeles County, the authors describe collaboration with JusticeLA on implementing an Alternatives to Incarceration plan adopted by the County Board of Supervisors in March 2020. DJDS’s work included research and mapping across health care, first response, pre-arrest diversion, housing and post-incarceration reentry.

The commentary describes a proposed pilot called a Restorative Care Village, conceived as part of a distributed network of care-oriented places. In this model, a person experiencing a behavioral-health crisis or returning from custody could encounter medical and social support, housing assistance, legal help and reentry services without being routed automatically through jail. The “village” is a planning concept in the 2020 article, not evidence that a particular facility was completed or that the county’s plan achieved its intended results.

The Los Angeles example adds a systems lesson to Atlanta’s building debate. A new center cannot function as an alternative if hospitals, housing providers, crisis responders, courts and community organizations cannot coordinate referrals, records, transportation and follow-up. Design must therefore include governance, staffing and funding pathways alongside rooms and site plans.

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What should a community demand before approving a project?

Residents can use a short due-diligence checklist when officials present a jail conversion or alternatives-to-incarceration facility:

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  • A clear baseline: How many people are currently detained or supervised, for what reasons, and from which neighborhoods?
  • A divestment commitment: Which detention beds, policing functions or surveillance contracts will shrink, close or lose funding as services expand?
  • Accessible services: Are housing, treatment, food, child care, legal assistance and transportation available without impossible eligibility hurdles?
  • Resident power: Do affected people receive compensation and real authority over site selection, programming, budgets and evaluation?
  • Protection against displacement: Could new investment raise rents or remove informal support networks in the neighborhoods it is meant to help?
  • Public reporting: Will officials publish spending, participation, service use, safety and equity measures, including unintended harms?

These questions keep “wellness” from becoming a new label on an old control system. They also make it possible to revise a project when evidence shows that a centralized facility, a distributed network or a combination is failing to reach people.

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How should readers interpret the 2020 commentary today?

The author biography for Deanna Van Buren identifies her as DJDS’s executive director and design director; Jacobs is identified in the commentary as the organization’s chief of finance and operations. Their essay is best understood as an argument and a set of project descriptions from 2020, not a current census of incarceration spending or a status report on Atlanta and Los Angeles County.

DJDS’s later news index shows continuing activity, including 2025 coverage of a donation-collection project described as supporting formerly incarcerated people. An index headline alone does not establish current availability, partners, outcomes or a commercial program, so it should not be used to imply any of those facts.

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The durable contribution of the commentary is methodological. It asks designers to treat budgets, sites, participation and care networks as one design problem. Whether a community reuses a jail, demolishes it or distributes services across neighborhoods, the measure of success is not architectural novelty. It is whether people gain safety, stability, dignity and meaningful alternatives to punishment—and whether public investment follows those goals.

What is the practical takeaway for architects and planners?

Begin with a spending and service map, invite affected residents into paid decision-making, compare centralized and distributed options, and tie every physical proposal to a plan for housing, health, legal support and reentry. Keep the historical limits of the available evidence visible: Atlanta’s figures and concepts, Los Angeles County’s Restorative Care Village and the national spending estimates are all claims reported in the 2020 Architectural Record commentary. Designing to divest is ultimately less about producing a new building than about changing the systems and priorities that buildings make possible.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is decarceration the same as closing every jail?

No. Decarceration describes reducing reliance on detention and supervision, while closure is one possible result. A credible plan must explain how health care, housing, crisis response, legal support and reentry needs will be met without shifting people into other coercive institutions.

Can an old jail really be converted into a healing or community facility?

Sometimes, but feasibility depends on structure, daylight, plumbing, security layouts, environmental conditions, code requirements and operating funds. Conversion should be compared with demolition and distributed sites, and residents should help decide whether the building’s history makes reuse acceptable.

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What does trauma-informed design require in a public service center?

It generally means reducing avoidable triggers and barriers through choices such as privacy, clear wayfinding, natural light, quiet areas, accessible entrances, culturally competent communication and non-punitive intake procedures. The physical features must be paired with trained staff and policies that do not recreate surveillance or humiliation.

How can residents tell whether an alternatives-to-incarceration project is working?

Ask for public measures that connect investment to outcomes: service access, housing stability, crisis resolution, repeat system contact, racial and geographic equity, user safety and displacement effects. Participation counts alone cannot show whether a project reduced harm or merely added another program.

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