Unlike the adult courthouse that stands beside it, the Clayton County Juvenile Court building has no grand columns or dominating facade, but rather a wall of windows and a lobby its creator likens to a Hilton Hotel.

The design of the non-traditional juvenile courthouse in Jonesboro, Georgia,  was spearheaded by Judge Steven C. Teske. He and the architects he worked with designed the space to reduce anxiety, comfort the traumatized and encourage collaboration between youth, justice officials and community leaders. The building reflects the judge’s commitment to restorative justice principles: he focuses on making human connections with young offenders in an effort to address the root causes of their behavior rather than merely punishing them. 

“You want to be encouraging,” Teske said. “The only way you’re going to help people change their behavior is through positive relationships.”

The building, officially called the Clayton County Youth Development & Justice Center, was constructed in 2012 to house the jurisdiction’s forward-thinking system, which has become a national model for juvenile justice reform. 

Teske has served as a juvenile judge since 1999. He inherited a system that was unorganized and overwhelmed with complaints from schools. In 2003, as a part of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, Clayton County –– the sixth largest of Georgia’s 159 counties ––  invited community members and parents into the courthouse along with the youth to find solutions to the problems plaguing their lives and giving rise to their behavior. According to the county’s annual juvenile court report, since these innovative programs were enacted, detentions have declined by 70%.

According to Margaret J. King, director of the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis think tank, traditional courthouse architecture –– like that of the Harold R. Banke Justice Center next door to Teske’s building –– evokes a specific feeling to the public. 

“Courthouses are intended to be imposing, to inspire awe, and when they are typically classical and overscaled, calculated to make us feel small and insignificant in order to communicate their authority and power,” she said. “They radiate the majesty and gravity of the law.” 

This is just the type of building Teske did not want to build. One of his central directives to the designers of the facility, he said, was, “I don’t want a traditional courthouse.”

For Teske, the physical differences between the juvenile court building and the adult one next to it mirror the philosophical differences in the courts’ goals. He said his system is not intended to dominate the people involved with it, but to invite them in to solve problems cooperatively.

“In the adult system it’s very simple: they’re being punished for a crime,” Teske said. “In the juvenile system, it doesn’t work that way. The kid’s brain is still under neurological construction.”

Architect Melissa M. Farling, an adviser for The Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, emphasizes the role design can play in justice systems which aim to be “cooperative and collaborative.” The design of physical spaces, she said, “impacts our physiology –– I mean everything: emotional, psychological, neurological.”

In recent decades, researchers have accumulated a mountain of evidence supporting the central idea guiding the design of Teske’s courthouse: spaces influence people’s bodies and minds.

In one classic 1984 study, researchers split up patients recovering from surgery into two otherwise identical rooms with entirely different views out their windows: one a blank brick wall, the other a sunlit scene featuring leafy green foliage. Patients in the latter room, on average, recovered a full day earlier than the other group and required fewer strong narcotics to ease their pain.  

“People who come into [the facility] are traumatized,” Teske said. “And when they are intimidated, they tend to shut down. And when they shut down, they don’t talk. And we got to get them to talk about what their issues are.”

The juvenile justice building’s lobby is flooded with sunlight and filled with art from school children of all ages in the community. Large windows offer views of a courtyard with trees outside. 

According to environmental psychologist Sally Augustin, these design features reduce stress, boost mood and encourage broad thinking. This type of thinking, she said, is critical to “problem solving and getting along with others.” 

Augustin said the design of a place has an especially pronounced effect on people’s minds in high stress or high stakes situations. In these cases, like when a child is appearing at juvenile court, she said, people “look for clues in their world” to orient themselves and make sense of the situation. 

At Teske’s facility, interview rooms where young people meet with probation officers and other officials are housed in private spaces on the first floor. This way, the adults come to the child, which Augustin said can offer them a sense of comfort and ownership of the place. This, she said, indicates to the young people in the courthouse that they can work with the system cooperatively.  

Augustin said this feature can impact the power dynamic between the young person and justice worker who sees them. The adult will always have the power and authority, she said, but “things get equalized, to a certain extent” when the young person is allowed to claim their territory before the meeting begins. 

Tucked away at the top of the building is Teske’s domain, the courtroom. It is the least accessible part of the facility, because, he said “it is the least frequented place” there. He doesn’t want to judge young people involved in the juvenile justice system, he wants to talk with them. 

Since starting his dialogue-based reforms, Teske has seen less and less activity on the top floor –– exactly the goal of his columnless, conversation-oriented system and building. 

The post Courts with no columns: How building design affects kids appeared first on Kids Imprisoned.

For the project “Kids Imprisoned,” the team of student journalists will investigate disparities in sentencing and jail time, conditions of juvenile detention facilities and the impact on families, communities and victims. The stories will be published as a multimedia project online and shared with industry publishing partners across the country. Previous investigations have been published by major news organizations, including The Washington Post, NBC News, the Center for Public Integrity and USA Today, as well as many nonprofit news websites.

“In this moment, with what’s going on in the world, with the Black Lives Matters protests, I feel like we’re reporting in a historic moment and on a historic topic,” said News21 fellow Chloe Jones, an Arizona State University graduate student.

Headquartered at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, News21 was established in 2005 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to demonstrate that college journalism students can produce innovative, in-depth multimedia projects on a national scale. The initiative is led by Jacquee Petchel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a professor of practice at the Cronkite School.

“Across the country, tens of thousands of children are incarcerated for crimes ranging from larceny and vandalism to assault and murder. This project will investigate how states and local jurisdictions are dealing with youth crime and violence, from arrest to detention,” Petchel said. “It’s a topic critical to the future of children and teens, not to mention their families and their victims.”

Normally, students travel from Phoenix to as many as 30 states during a summer News21 reporting project, but the COVID-19  pandemic has compelled remote reporting this year. From their hometowns or campuses, the students hold a daily videoconference with Petchel, other faculty advisers and their own reporting team members.

Previous News21 projects have included investigations into voting rights, post-911 veterans, guns in America and drinking water safety, among other topics. The projects have won numerous awards, including five EPPY Awards from Editor & Publisher, the IRE student journalism investigative prize and a host of other honors.

The last two projects, “Hate in America” in 2018 and “State of Emergency” in 2019, won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award in the college journalism category. The award honors outstanding reporting on issues that reflect Kennedy’s passions, including human rights, social justice and the power of individual action in the U.S. and around the world. “State of Emergency” also won the top Investigative Reporters and Editors award for student journalists.

Fellows are selected for the highly competitive, paid summer fellowships based on nominations submitted by journalism deans and directors from across the country as well as how they perform in a spring seminar at the Cronkite School, during which they prepare by deeply immersing themselves in the topic.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provides core support for the News21 program. Individual fellows are supported by their universities as well as a variety of foundations, news organizations and philanthropists that include The Arizona Republic, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Knight Foundation, Murray Endowment, Diane Laney Fitzpatrick, Myrta J. Pulliam and John and Patty Williams.

The ASU fellows, their named fellowships and their hometowns are:

– José-Ignacio Casteñeda – Phoenix, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow 

– Kelsey Collesi ­– Shaker Heights, Ohio, Buffett Foundation Fellow 

– Daja Henry – New Orleans, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

– Delia C. Johnson – Phoenix, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

– Chloe Jones – Tempe, Arizona, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow*

– Franco LaTona – West Bend, Wisconsin, Don Bolles/Arizona Republic Fellow

– Haillie Parker – San Diego, California, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow

– Kimberly Rapanut – Mesa, Arizona, Buffett Foundation Fellow 

– Jill Ryan – Bear, Delaware, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow*

– Calah Schlabach – St. Michaels, Arizona, Buffett Foundation Fellow

– Katherine Sypher – Orono, Maine, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

– Anthony J. Wallace – Gilbert, Arizona, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

This year’s fellows from other universities are:

– Butler University – Sorell Grow, St. Louis

– DePauw University – Joslyn Fox, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Byron Mason II, Chicago, Myrta J. Pulliam Fellows

– Elon University – Victoria Traxler, Oakton, Virginia

– Kent State University – Gretchen Lasso, Amherst, Ohio, Diane Laney Fitzpatrick Fellow

– Morgan State University – Chloe Johnson, Baltimore 

– St. Bonaventure University – Layne Dowdall, Little Valley, New York, and Jeff Uveino, Perry, New York

– Syracuse University – Michele Abercrombie, Boston and Patrick Linehan, Derry, New Hampshire

– University of British Columbia – Braela Kwan, Vancouver, British Columbia

– University of Colorado Boulder – Lindsey Nichols, Strasberg, Colorado

– University of Illinois at Chicago – Brody Ford, San Diego, California, and Nicole Sroka, Chicago

– University of Iowa – Mikhayla Hughes-Shaw, Rock Island, Illinois, Murray Endowment Fellow

– University of Mississippi – Matthew Hendley, Madison, Mississippi 

– University of Nebraska – Morgan Wallace, Gering, Nebraska, James Wooldridge, Kansas City, Missouri, and Ike Somanas, Bangkok, Thailand

– University of Oklahoma – Jana Allen, Muskogee, Oklahoma, Abigail Hall, Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Molly Kruse, Houston, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellows

– University of Tennessee – Gabriela Szymanowska, Knoxville, Tennessee, John and Patty Williams Fellow

*Chloe Jones and Jill Ryan are part of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, supported by the Scripps Howard Foundation.

Past investigations and information on the Carnegie-Knight News21 program can be found at news21.com.

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: The Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. 

Carnegie Corporation of New York: The Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” is one of the oldest, largest and most influential American grant-making foundations. The foundation makes grants to promote international peace and to advance education and knowledge.

Donald W. Reynolds Foundation: The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation was founded as a national philanthropic organization in 1954 by the late media entrepreneur for whom it is named. During its 60-plus years of operation, the foundation was a major supporter of journalism and journalism education, with commitments of more than $115 million nationwide.

Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation: The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, headquartered in Oklahoma City, was founded by Edith Kinney Gaylord, the daughter of Daily Oklahoman Publisher E.K. Gaylord. Ms. Gaylord created the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation in 1982 to improve the quality of journalism by supporting research and creative projects that promote excellence and foster high ethical standards in journalism.

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