When we’re briefed on a justice project, the questions that matter most rarely show up in a standard design brief. How does natural light change the way someone feels in a room they didn’t choose to be in? Could a patch of garden be the first quiet moment someone’s had in years? How does a well-placed visiting room help a relationship survive a sentence? This is the territory justice architects work in, because the criminal justice system needs buildings that do more than hold people — it needs spaces that support who someone is working to become. Every corridor, courtyard and family space we design carries that same intention, for the person inside it and the families waiting to welcome them home.
We’ve sharpened that mindset over 25 years of history designing justice facilities, placing HLM at the forefront of custodial design in the UK and internationally, with more than 7,500 new prison places delivered to date.
Steven Lennon, our Associate and Head of Justice & Emergency Services, describes our approach as operationally led: understanding how a service works before a wall goes up, so every space supports efficiency, safety and wellbeing at once. It’s a strand of justice architecture unlike almost any other building type, built around a question that sits at the heart of our justice design: what does dignity look like here? As experienced justice architects, we believe every design decision should contribute to safer, more effective environments.
Designing for the system, not just the site
A courthouse, a detention centre, a police custody suite — each one is a separate building, but none of them function alone. Justice projects sit inside a much larger system of courts, probation services, healthcare providers, government clients and community programmes; and we have to hold the whole system in mind during the design process. Getting it right means engaging stakeholders long before the design is locked in — probation officers, custody staff, even residents’ families — so every one of the physical and emotional aspects of the building reflects what actually happens on the ground. Get the layout of a custodial wing wrong and you end up with a facility that fights against rehabilitation rather than supporting it.
HMP Five Wells, a £120 million prison for the Ministry of Justice in Wellingborough, is a good example of that in practice. We led the Stage 5 delivery, bringing architecture, landscape, interior design and masterplanning together as one integrated exercise rather than separate disciplines. The result wasn’t just secure; we delivered the project almost 22% faster than traditional construction, with 80% of the build standardised, freeing up resources for the parts of the building that actually shape behaviour — the association spaces, the workshops, the visiting rooms.
We’ve learned that efficiency and humanity aren’t in tension. Done well, creating one reinforces the other.
Human dignity as a design input
Perhaps the clearest way we at HLM think differently is that we treat human dignity as a measurable design requirement. HMP Inverclyde, for instance, which we designed the concept for with the Scottish Prison Service, is built around a butterfly layout of house blocks with generous glazing and zoned communities. These were decisions made to support the wellbeing of women in custody. Its Community Integration Unit and family help hub were added to assist successful reintegration and restore hope. The evidence is clear that maintaining those ties is one of the strongest predictors of reduced recidivism — reflecting the Scottish Prison Service’s own vision for incarceration–one built around the future someone will have after release, not just the sentence they’re serving now. This people-first approach reflects the role of justice architects in creating environments that encourage rehabilitation.
The same thinking runs through our landscape work, led by Alethea Ottewell, our Head of Landscape Architecture. In a justice setting, nature isn’t decoration — it’s treatment. Daylight, biodiversity and restorative outdoor spaces support recovery, ease a facility’s reliance on artificial environments, and even help staff stay in their roles for longer — a detail easily overlooked, but one that shapes how safely and humanely a building operates for years to come.
Mental health and healing belong in the blueprint
At HLM we also think hard about mental health care, because many residents in custody arrive with complex mental health needs, often untreated before entering the system. We design therapeutic and learning environments with the same rigour as security infrastructure — spaces that support healing rather than simply containing people. This is where restorative justice thinking starts to influence the building itself: programme spaces designed for purposeful activity, education and connection to home– because purposeful activity is one of the few interventions proven to reduce reoffending.
Staff wellbeing gets the same attention from us. Our ‘see and be seen’ layout principles, dedicated staff wellbeing areas and ongoing training reflect a simple reality: a safe, humane environment for residents depends entirely on a safe, supported workforce. We don’t design one without the other.
Community engagement and civic trust
Justice buildings don’t exist in isolation from the communities around them, so we treat community engagement as essential research. The Southern Justice Centre in Royal Leamington Spa is a good example of this. It’s a £32 million civic facility we designed to bring courts, police custody and multiple justice agencies together into one interconnected building. The goal was to raise expectations for what a public justice building could be and help establish a new civic standard. Naturally lit courtyards manage the transition from public to private space, creating a building that the town can be proud of rather than a fortress cut off from it.
The same civic-minded thinking shapes our emergency services work: tri-service stations that bring police, fire and ambulance together under one roof–accessible to the communities they protect. Christopher Liddle, our Strategic Director and long-standing advisor across our justice sector, has spent his career championing social value and speaking internationally on the design of healthcare, justice and defence facilities — expertise that doesn’t stay static within our walls.
We share it, debate it and refine it at conferences and thought leadership forums across the world, part of our broader mission to keep raising the bar for the sector.
The forefront of a changing system
Government departments, courts and prison services are under growing pressure to find better solutions, not just more capacity. We’re increasingly the ones bringing evidence and technology to the table, using digital toolkits to model environmental performance and daylight before a single brick is laid. That means our teams can make informed decisions about sustainability, security and comfort together, rather than trading one off against another.
What ties all of this together is a simple conviction that the built environment can either work against rehabilitation or actively support it, and there’s no neutral option. We — together with the wider teams of designers, engineers and landscape specialists — are proud to sit at the forefront of that responsibility as justice architects, treating courts, custody suites and detention centres as opportunities to reduce recidivism, protect wellbeing, and give people a genuine chance at a different life.
As Steven Lennon, our Head of Justice & Emergency Services, puts it:
What we’re interested in is design for rehabilitation…The cost of reoffending is a huge number, so anything we can do to improve that, anything we can do to save a life, anything we can do in terms of design to offer something better is hugely important for us.”
Steven Lennon HLM Head of Justice & Emergency Services
Work with us
If you’re planning a justice or emergency services project, we’d like to hear from you.
Whether it’s a new prison, a courthouse, a custody suite or a tri-service hub, our justice and emergency services team can help from the earliest stages of the design process, turning operational need into facilities that work for residents, staff and society alike.
