The ACA and the Da Vinci Code

One of the hottest summer reads was Dan Brown’s, The Da Vinci Code. No less than one dozen art aficionados must have told me to ‘not leave home without it’, so dutifully, over a long Labor Day holiday, I dug into the page-turner. Don’t worry, this article will not divulge any of the myriad clues that one must experience (endure) to arrive at the final (or is it?) one. But, the clue to a standard that was adopted by the American Correctional Association figures pretty significantly in the plot.

Having just attended the August ACA Congress where I saw many of the standards’ purveyors and interacted with the architects who create spaces that follow these standards, I decided now was the time to come clean. This is a true story known only to a few folks who were asked to take part in updating the Third Edition ACA physical plant standards, more important than ever because shrinking state and local budgets have the tendency to shrink space per inmate.

Most of you within this reading audience can remember when 400- to 500-gross-square-feet-per-inmate was a ‘reasonable’ target for a new state prison, and if the facility followed the ACA-suggested size of 500 inmates, then 200,000 to 250,000 square feet was on-target. In this current climate of minimization, most of my colleagues agree that if new prisons reach 300- to 350-square-feet-per-inmate, a small celebration is in order. Is this trend to provide less space in jails and prisons a budget solution or another statement about the relevance of the profession?

About a dozen years ago, the ACA received a small grant to look at ‘foundational issues’ upon which the Physical Plant standards of the Adult and Local Detention Standards were based. Rod Miller, Rich Wener, and I were asked to explore why 500 was the right size for a prison and 70 square feet was appropriate for a single cell.

Rod is well recognized nationally for his work on standards and is currently assisting the ACA with advancing performance-based standards. Dr. Rich Wener is one of the very few environmental psychologists who used quantification techniques to measure human response to space. I brought the coffee, drew on the white board, and offered an occasional opinion.

The 70-square-foot standard was critical to ACA credibility because in the early 90s, every elected official was an expert on the amount of living space inmates should be afforded. Unfortunately, the 70 square feet was not easily defended when 82% of the elected officials had evidently spent 10 or more years sleeping soundly on a submarine that offered only 11-square-feet-per-sailor. And, of course, they were not about to dole out our scarce public resources for inmates to be given a ‘luxurious’ 70 square feet.

Enter Leonardo da Vinci. If you don’t already know, you will learn by reading The Da Vinci Code that Leonardo was a pretty remarkable fellow who, among a host of other things, understood human dimensions. He translated the work of a Roman architect, Vitruvius, into a diagram that was just what we needed to support the contentious 70-square-foot standard. The drawing of the naked, curly-haired guy with four arms and legs outspread you see above well, that’s the basis of the 35 unencumbered square feet per inmate that resulted from too many coffees and too little sleep.

The Vitruvian Man provided a foundation for defining a minimal amount of space that an inmate should be given to perform basic stretching exercises within a cell. The space for everything else in the cell, such as the bunk, water closet, lavatory, table, chair, storage locker, would be in addition to the unencumbered area. Architects are creative people and given the challenge, know that properly appointed cells could be designed for less than 70 square feet (but not much).

That is confession number one. The second confession follows. When the research results on this particular standard were presented to the ACA higher-ups, the actual dimensions of Vitruvius’ work were modified. Using Imperial scale measurements, that naked guy would require four square cubits to do jumping jacks, or somewhere between 34 and 47 square feet, based on whether you were a Roman or a Babylonian. Unfortunately, the ACA auditors, who have to field-verify dimensions, were not routinely issued ‘cubitors.’ However, everyone understood and could visualize 35 square feet since the dayroom standard used that dimension.

So, with proper respect to the clear thinking of Vitruvius and the talented hand of Leonardo, a spatial standard emerged that could be defended ‘or could it? The troubling trend lurking around these days is that money alone matters in determining spatial decisions an administrator must make.

Since the ACA first issued standards, various organizations and individuals have challenged their basis, especially regarding physical plant issues. Having spent a lot of time in jails and prisons in developed and emerging nations, I appreciate that the ACA was willing to get out in front of the curve prior to the prison building explosion that occurred in the 80s and 90s and offer professional benchmarks based upon a recognition that environment contributes to rehabilitation.

Now, more than two decades after the first standards and several revisions, we are still defending the spatial basis of prisons. But maybe that’s a good thing as adversity often leads to innovation. I am confident that the trend towards performance-based standards will continue to seek quantifiable, research-inspired data on which to guide our defense of adequate space to incarcerate and rehabilitate people.

We owe a fair amount to Vitruvius and Leonardo da Vinci for quantifying and demonstrating human dimensions in spatial terms. I doubt they ever considered that many a court case would be influenced by their work, but that’s what economists call tertiary benefits. We win. Read the book.

Stephen A. Carter, AICP, is principal of Carter Goble Lee LLC in Columbia, S.C. He can be contacted by e-mail, scarter@cartergoblelee.com. Additional information is on the company’s Web site, www.cartergoblelee.com .