MAXIMUM SECURITY DEMOCRACY

September 2004

Few Iraqis cheered when President Bush promised in a May speech to provide “a fitting symbol of Iraq’s new beginning” by replacing Abu Ghraib prison with “a modern, maximum security prison.” Some wanted Abu Ghraib preserved as a memorial of the country’s troubled past, while others maintained that the 34-year old American-designed facility remained serviceable. “We must not be sentimental,” said Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, head of Iraq’s Governing Council, calling the idea “a waste of resources.”

Corrections experts agree that the abuses at Abu Ghraib owed more to poor supervision than poor design. From a security standpoint, the existing facility is as adequate for incarcerating enemies of the new regime as for enemies of the last one.

Apparently disregarding the Iraqi reaction, however, the Bush administration has quietly pressed ahead with plans for a new facility – plans that existed before the war even began, says International Corrections and Prisons Association board member Stephen Carter.

According to Carter, the Department of Defense has determined it will replace Abu Ghraib with a podular facility of 4,000 beds, divided among 26 detention centers. Labor costs are lower in Iraq than in the U.S., but Carter, a veteran designer of Middle Eastern prisons, estimates the facility will cost at least 100 million dollars. And given that the Department of Defense will construct the facility using no-bid design-build contracts (an arrangement outlawed in much of the U.S.) the procurement process may be as poorly supervised as the corridors of Abu Ghraib.

So why do Iraqis or American taxpayers need it?

One answer, says architect Jim Kessler of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, is that the podular model could reduce the likelihood of another prisoner abuse scandal. The linear, Auburn style prison model used at Abu Ghraib, “provides supervision of the inmate only intermittently, when the guard walks down the corridor,” and as a corollary, only poor supervision of guards. By arranging cell blocks around dayrooms and placing guards in direct contact with prisoners, Iraq’s new prison can reduce idleness and break with a regional tradition of simply “warehousing” prisoners.

But merely transplanting the most enlightened prison design philosophy of the moment is not enough. While U.S. prisons usually segregate their populations by gender, age, and security level, Iraq’s historically volatile mix of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish groups complicates inmate categorization. Even Israeli prisons, some of the most modern in the region, tend to fail in this respect, according to Carter.

“There was no accommodation, so the Arab-speaking prisoners were building fires in the dayroom and cooking their food in it,” Carter says of one Israeli prison he toured. “They were not provided proper prayer rooms, or the ability to work, or set aside a place for industry. If we’re going to leave a legacy in Iraq, then let’s not let that be it.”

Designers must accomplish the conflicting goal of accommodating the thousands of security detainees formerly housed at Abu Ghraib and other facilities without resorting to building another Camp Delta. This “maximum security facility” must be designed to discourage militant recruitment (a widespread problem in Middle Eastern prisons) yet respect local customs, such as allowing the incarcerated to receive family visits within their housing units.

One of the leading experts in prison architectural history, Professor Emeritus Norman Johnston of Arcadia University, views Bush’s proposition as pure panacea.

“It would take no time at all for the wrong administration to make the new prison become as a horrific a symbol as Abu Ghraib was under Saddam Hussein,” says Johnston. “The building can only do so much.”

The heart of the issue is that Iraq needs better roads and hospitals, not better prisons. No politician should be permitted to insinuate, through a politically expedient offer, that faulty architecture is to blame for the Abu Ghraib scandal. Or, as Johnston puts it: “I wish Bush would remember they tore down the Bastille. But it’s still very much alive.”