Designing Natural Landscape to Promote the Well-being of Incarcerated Individuals and Correctional Staff

• In Event: Women in Prison: Rates, Experiences, and Reentry

Abstract

Evidence strongly supports that nature-based interactions and interventions positively influence and sustain overall physical and psychological health and improve quality of life, including among those who are incarcerated and who work in correctional facilities. In recent years, an Iowa-based landscape architecture professor and students, in collaboration with incarcerated women and correctional staff, designed and built several innovative natural landscapes inside a women’s correctional facility, both outside and inside buildings. A transdisciplinary team, including members from criminal justice, landscape architecture, and occupational therapy, has been evaluating the landscapes for their use by and impacts on incarcerated women and staff. This presentation will review existing literature on the impact of nature-based programs inside correctional facilities and introduce the Iowa design-build landscape projects. The presenter, a member of the research team, will discuss empirical findings and their implications for future landscape projects in other correctional facilities.

Author

• Barb Toews, University of Washington Tacoma