What is a prison? Prison is a place where inmates are confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as punishment for various crimes.

But is this all to a prison? Can’t prison serve to be more than just a set up to punish the convicts?

Recidivism is not a very rare occurrence. It's time to put out the question, why? Why do convicts go back to their old means as soon as they are released from the prison? Why are prisons failing to contribute to society?

Overcrowding prisons with poor living conditions and little opportunity for rehabilitation has resulted in high rates of recidivism. But is that all?

Prisons not only affect the lives of convicts, it affects the lives of victims, the lives of officers working their shifts day and night and it affects the society as a whole.

Can they be used as a facility to right the morals of the inmates? What can be done to lower recidivism number? How can architecture be used to solve this problem?

For a long time, these questions have been neglected. But it's time to answer these questions. And hence, ARCH8 wants to encourage architects and designers to think in this aspect and to come up with a solution for the same. It encourages them to understand the true purpose of a prison and the impact it can have on people's life with the help of architecture.