Green Spaces in Prison - Balancing Risks and Benefits (PID001)

12pm – 12.30pm EDT, 25 April 2024 ‐ 30 mins

Room: Ballroom

Parallel Workshops

It is now widely recognised that nature contact enhances human wellbeing. Prisons tend to lack extensive green spaces, and hence prisoners (and prison staff) are not able to benefit from these positive wellbeing effects. Enhancing green space in prisons is expensive and can be controversial, and changes are often challenging to make because the perceived benefits of green spaces are hard to quantify. This session discusses groundbreaking research which quantifies the benefits of green space for prisoner and staff wellbeing, draws a link between higher levels of green space and lower levels of self-harm and violence, possibly supporting better post-custody outcomes, and pinpoints the types of prison and of imprisoned population for which increased greenspace is likely to deliver the most beneficial effects. It also lays out the implications for future design strategies.

Moderator

Hans Meurisse

Prison Administration, ICPA, Belgium

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Speakers

Prof Dominique Moran

Professor of Carceral Geography, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

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Hans Meurisse

Prison Administration, ICPA, Belgium

Hans Meurisse holds a master degree in Criminology from the Ghent University and also participated in several post-graduate courses, which allowed him to gain profound knowledge of public, financial and penitentiary management, forensic matters, Business Process Reengineering, and organised international fraud.

He started his professional career in 1986 with the Judicial Police, where he eventually was appointed Chief Investigator. In 1999, Hans became the Prison Governor of the Ghent prison. His work was mainly focused on managing the detention of convicts, remand prisoners, and mentally ill prisoners on an operational level. In September 2006, he was appointed as the Director General of the Belgian Prison Service.

Hans Meurisse was the Director General of the Belgian Prison Service for more than 11 years, from 2006 until 2017. During that time, he also served as President of the European Organisation of Prison and Correctional Services (EuroPris) for 6 years after being appointed in 2011. He was also a former member of the Board of Directors of the International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) from 2009 until 2011 (2nd International Vice-President) and from 2014 until 2017 (Ordinary Board Member). During his previous tenures with the Association, Hans hosted the ICPA Annual Conference in 2010 and provided support to ICPA through staffing, logistical and administrative services including the appointment of the Tineke De Waele as Executive Director.

Following his Presidency of the organisation, Hans served as a Senior Advisor and International Expert with EuroPris. Today he serves as Vice President of ICPA since 2019 and plays a key role on the Board of Directors. He is also involved in ICPA’s various initiatives and events, where he brings his expertise in technology, planning and design, and statistics. In his manifesto for serving as Vice-President, Mr Meurisse remains committed to enhancing the collaboration between ICPA and others internationally, with a key focus on building relations in Europe and Africa.

Prof Dominique Moran

Professor of Carceral Geography, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Dominique Moran is an academic researcher at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is a leading specialist in the design of prisons both for better prisoner and staff wellbeing, and for better sustainability and biodiversity outcomes. She has conducted research on prisons in the UK, Norway, Denmark and the Russian Federation, and her work has also been used to shape prison design in contexts as diverse as the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands and Colombia. She has acted as specialist consultant to numerous prison design projects.
She is author and co-author of numerous academic papers reporting on the relationship between aspects of prison design and prisoner and staff wellbeing, and she is lead editor of 'The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design' - the first collection of academic research into prison design and its effects.
Her most recent research has demonstrated a robust relationship between green spaces in prison and lower levels of self-harm and violence amongst prisoners, lower levels of prison staff sickness absence, and higher levels of self-reported prisoner wellbeing. She plans to take this research forward into an international comparative study, and is planning a Design Guide for safe and biodiverse green spaces in prisons.