The current state of the UK criminal justice system is a complex and multifaceted issue. Largely because it is made up of four sections; police, prosecution, courts and prison. Due to the shorter length of this project compared to a real-world piece of work for a client, I focused the research solely on prisons and offenders.

While strides have been made in recent years to address the challenges faced by prisoners, there is still room for reform. Starting broadly, the UK prison system is predominantly nineteenth-century in design with the last major reform acts being in 1835 and 1877 which argues it does not provide an individual a space to rehabilitate in modern ways. Additionally, prison staffing has been reducing in numbers since 2010 and has played a pivotal role in ‘the gradual worsening backdrop of self-harm and individual cases of violence’ (Karthaus et al, 2019).

In 2017, a six-month project to re-design prison environments ‘through informing architectural design with the overall objective of supporting rehabilitation and reducing reoffending’ was run by RIBA and Innovate UK. Its report discusses how their changes can improve offenders’ relationships with environments and their autonomy whilst covering the needs of accessibility users too. This physical space vision helps dictate the areas of focus for Reach, by providing a framework of well-being design methods.