For those in the United States systematically targeted by mass incarceration, the idea of home can prove not only to be elusive, but also in most cases, extremely challenging to achieve. The US’s prison system is, by design, driven not by the desire for public safety, but as a for-profit system targeting people of color and those living under or below the poverty line. For every $100 an American pays in taxes, $32.50 goes toward paying for incarceration. By comparison, only $14.12 is allotted to much-needed healthcare services. (1) The US not only incarcerates its citizens at a rate far higher than that of any other country in the world, but it also claims some of the highest recidivism rates in the world. Within their first year of release, 43 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals return to prison; 70 percent return to prison within five years. (2)
Exterior of a Mobile Refuge Room, 2024; Credit: Designing Justice + Designing Spaces
Designing Justice + Designing Spaces believes that ending mass incarceration is the defining public safety, health, and civil rights issue of our time—a deep-seated challenge created by centuries of harmful policies and infrastructure. We believe that when communities are resourced with infrastructure that creates access to healthcare, healthy food, safe housing, education, and jobs, they can begin to interrupt cycles of systemic harm. We want to radically imagine how architecture and design can be used as a new tool in the abolition of prisons, jails, juvenile detention centers, and other spaces of confinement. One of the first questions that comes up when beginning to think about undoing centuries of racism through the built environment is, What do we build instead?
We are on a journey to build spaces rooted in care and dignity. Communities should have access to spaces that care for the body, lift the spirit, and support individuals’ emotional well-being. This design ethos is the foundation of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. Housing is the first critical step to reentry and a key factor to ending mass incarceration. It also proves to be one of the most complex. Reentry housing that provides access to job training, education, mental health support, and a place to rest—all in one location—is challenging to build.
Designing Justice + Designing Spaces presents the Mobile Refuge Room, a project born out of the need for rehabilitative housing with increased safety, dignity, and privacy. Paired with the ideal service provider, the Mobile Refuge Room represents a unique opportunity to provide trauma-informed care and temporary living spaces.
NOTES
(1) “At What Cost? Examining Police, Sheriff, and Jail Budgets across the US,” National Equity Atlas, https://nationalequityatlas.org/us-carceral-spending/dashboard.
(2) Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among Formerly Incarcerated People,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, accessed August 23, 2024, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/ reports/housing.html.
Excerpt from Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, (Cooper Hewitt | The MIT Press, 2025) published in companion with Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial (New York, Nov. 2024-Aug. 2025)
Rendering of a lounge space within a cluster of Mobile Refuge Rooms, 2018; Credit: Designing Justice + Designing Spaces
Shelves, desk, and a Murphy bed in the interior of a Mobile Refuge Room, 2024; Credit: Designing Justice + Designing Spaces