Choice Architecture & Criminal Law Talk Part 3

Affective Architecture: The social, emotional, and cognitive psychology of justice space.
The built environment refers to that portion of space, place, and context that has been altered and designed by humans to suit human needs and wants. The built environment significantly shapes how we perceive, understand, engage, and act upon our world and others in it. A major challenge of societal living involves the regulation of behavior and the administration of systems for enforcing behavioral norms – so-called “justice processes,” designed to apply principles based on what is accepted in society as “fair.” The built environment is not just the backdrop for these processes; it is a tool for enacting these processes. The term “affective architecture” is meant to capture how the built environment can be – and often is – used to influence how humans participate in justice processes. In the last several years, Dr. Blount-Hill has been working to develop frameworks for the understanding the role of the built environment within justice processes, particularly in the areas of policing and corrections. In this talk, Dr. Blount-Hill will cover basic environmental psychology paradigms, how they are applied in his work on police and custodial buildings, the results of prior studies and preliminary results of ongoing work, as well as future directions for understanding the architecture of justice processes through lens of environmental psychology and sociology.

Lunch will be provided.