Justice Design News recently met with Ken Ricci and Karen Sicner of NELSON Worldwide, which has just published a vital new e-book on the concept of Trauma-Informed Design. They shared their insights and expertise on why this approach is so important in the rehabilitative process in 2025.
JDN: What are the most significant trends today with Trauma-Informed Design practices?
Karen S.: One of the requests we’re getting lately is incorporating easier access to outdoor space. In justice terms, there’s a living area, and those areas would be directly connected to the exterior—as opposed to having to walk down a hallway—so that people can go in and out easier.
Ken R.: We’re incorporating that feature in a lot of our designs, both adult and juvenile. I think another area that I want to focus on is safety. We’re trying to avoid triggering the new residents or any residents. And by doing so, we provide what I like to call is the mantra of site safety: Sightlines, Sunlight and Serenity. Safety so that they know someone is in charge. Sightlines allow staff to always know where the kids are. Sunlight—for obvious reasons. Science has proven that sunlight, daylight and views to the outside speed healing in hospitals, improve test scores in schools and improve retail. And then there’s serenity; when you have safety, when you have good sightlines, when you have sunlight. And then when you mitigate all the noise associated with hard institutions, you achieve a sense of serenity.
Think of a courtyard like the Alhambra or other courtyards where there’s a walkway all the way around—an arcade all the way around, greenery in the courtyard, and a central fountain. The fountain produces a beautiful trickling or splashing noise. It’s full of sunlight. As a designer, that is my aim.
JDN: What are some of the challenges with bringing in elements that soften a facility but also striking the balance with that and safety and security?
Karen S.: We usually incorporate a lot of vandal-resistant elements. We pay close attention, from an interior standpoint, to the whole series of things that have been developed for behavioral health that are—for lack of a better term—more vandal resistant, but still softer in both finish and color. A good example is the traditional stainless steel plumbing fixtures, which can be bought with a white porcelain finish, like what you have in your house. Acoustics are a big deal, as these facilities have traditionally been very noisy. We’ve learned to incorporate a wide range of washable and easy-to-clean fabrics.
Ken R.: We’ve noticed a trend now in some of the facilities to smaller housing units where there might be six or eight residents. We have a client now that has 12; we even think that’s too many. You have six or eight kids and a couple of case workers, or supervisory staff—that leads to better security. With wide corridors, groups of kids can pass each other without touching each other. The corridor should be, ideally, 14 feet wide. Usually, we settle for 12. Sometimes we must settle for 10 feet wide. That includes smooth circulation—avoiding dead ends, blind spots, and twists and turns. A very, very simple layout of the building where everyone can always orient themselves.
Karen S.: Another key element we’ve been encouraging lately is providing lots of activities. If the offender or youth are in a housing unit all the time with no activities, they get bored and into trouble. Look at what other adults and kids do in the free world, right? Only it’s multiplied. We encourage a lot of programming in terms of both counseling and arts and crafts, classes, jobs, whatever we can talk them into. We highly encourage all of that.
JDN: Normative design is obviously such a big focus now. How does normative play into this whole concept of the trauma-guided approach?
Ken R.: I think normative design is what we like to call, “The godmother of Trauma-Informed Design.” The other major element is direct supervision. We promote the idea that the officer is in the day room with the kids, not in a glass booth. They can hear what’s going on, they can smell what’s going on. They can see the body language. In a glass booth none of that is possible. The first thing on my list is safety. If you have a staff that’s in a glass booth, it means they’re afraid of their kids. If that’s the case, there’s something wrong. Now I will have to say as a footnote, there are some, what we call kids who could be 200 pounds and six foot two, who are dangerous, that have very little impulse control, some anti-social type of behaviors that they’ve learned, and so you must be judicious about how you lay the place out and operate. Direct supervision, new generation, normative design, are sort of all the godparents of Trauma-Informed Design.
Karen S.: I totally agree. Trauma-informed Design recognizes the root causes of certain behavior; and there’s lots of data now that there never was when normative behavior started that support the design efforts that most of us, who have been in this industry for a while, realize we need to make. We can make a difference. We just must be responsive to what the kids have gone through, and the adults have gone through.
Ken R.: As an architect, we believe that environment influences behavior. But of course, that’s our belief, and our belief is founded—it’s a foundational principle. But as Karen says, now there’s more data (compared) to what we had in the past. Similarly, the clients would say, “Well, this youth facility is nicer than the high school.”
What would we say as a response? “Well, the high school only operates five shifts a week. The youth facility operates 21 shifts a week. It’s wearing out five times faster than your high school.” So, you must have sturdy materials. They don’t have to be institutional. But we introduce color, we introduce sunlight, we have sound-absorbent panels and so on. But you know, environment influences behavior, and again I go back to the image of the courtyard. If you close your mind, close your eyes, and think of that—it’s the feeling of serenity there. Now, you know that that’s a stretch, right? It’s a little bit too poetic for most clients. But it’s gone over well when it’s presented in a basket of values that include safety, sightlines, good site planning and sunlight.
JDN: Is your design team the ones leading this charge with better, more nurturing environments, or do you have clients that sometimes come to you and say they really want to take trauma into account with the facility design?
Karen S.: That’s a good question. I think it’s both. Clients that are better informed or more willing to rely on the data. If the client takes the lead, that’s great. If not, we find ourselves taking the lead and informing them on what we think is better practices.
JDN: Getting back to the environment just a little bit, you’ve talked about sunlight and some other things. What are some other key elements of either normative or Biophilia that you feel are helpful in these environments?
Karen S.: We’ve looked at sound as an issue. Like Ken said, with his idea with the fountain; and you’re trying to present that—well, fountains are generally high maintenance and can be problematic. We’ve recommended, in some cases, is you can incorporate sound relatively inexpensively. Every sleeping room or cell has an intercom and a speaker that goes into it. Integrating sound into some of these rooms, particularly the mental health areas—we’ve encouraged clients to add that option because they can do it relatively inexpensively.
Ken R.: That’s a great point, Karen. I have a colleague that runs some facilities in Pennsylvania as a private provider, and he’s a psychiatrist or doctor by training, they run—and when Karen says sound, it’s not necessarily music—they run low-frequency sounds into the facility. It’s almost like what a what a child hears in the womb. This is providing a low-frequency calming vibration—basically, after all, that’s what sound is—to affect the skin of the individuals and calms them down. And I can’t explain it too much more than that; he does a good job of it. And we were in an interview with him, and he explained this to the owner, and I swear they thought the guy was crazy. So, we did not get that job.
Karen S.: Which goes back to even though there’s some crazy ideas out there—and some that are proven, some that aren’t—we tend to propose them. Our job as we look at is to really get outside the box and bring up some ideas that we all know not everything’s going to get accepted by owners; but we feel like it’s our job to help them come up with better solutions.
JDN: Is there a recent project or projects that you think kind of exemplifies the whole concept we’re talking about, that you’ve worked on or are working on right now?
Ken R.: Yes, there are. We were contacted by a client—and I can’t mention the name of the client—by an architect, and the client told him “Get us a Trauma-Informed Design team and add it to your team.” So, we’ll see how much progress we’re making there. It’s one thing to say you want something. It’s another thing to buy off on the concept. (Some clients) find it very hard to swallow these concepts, but we have another client who’s, who’s on the treatment side. Certainly, on the youth side we have two categories—we have detention, and we have treatment. And treatment is for youth that have been adjudicated, that’s the term they use instead of sentence. When you’re in a treatment facility, you’re there for a long period of time. In detention you’re there for short bursts of time, but the principles remain the same.
And I have to say that in one in one instance, another client insisted on cameras in all the housing units, and they discovered that violence was reduced, assaults went down. If you think you’re going to be caught on camera and be held responsible for your behavior—which, depending on how violent it is, could even be a low-level felony—you improve your behavior. I was surprised at that, but pleasantly surprised.
JDN: What kind of feedback have you heard from clients for whom you’ve completed projects in the past, after they’ve had a chance to see the impact of your work?
Karen S.: One of the most interesting comments I got is—we’ve done four or five facilities for one client, and they’re all a little different. We started with something that was a really, hard facility, and then we slowly got them convinced to do softer facilities and at least do one housing unit of what they call an honor unit, which is softer finishes, nicer furnishings, more color, better privileges. In this case, it gives the kids a way to earn their way into a better environment. What’s interesting was a comment I got after we finished the education wing; we had some curve walls and lots of glass. They said, “You know what, we’re having very little trouble in this unit, because the kids really enjoy being there.” So, that was great. We pushed the envelope a little bit with them—and they looked at me like I was crazy when I showed them the concept with a curved library wall. I said, “Can we just do it? We know how to do it without spending a lot of money.” They said, “Sure.” It turns out that they would really like it in the next building. They said, “Oh, we want another curve wall.”
Ken R.: That’s on the kid side. On the staff side, we completed a courtyard facility with all the features I mentioned. The head of security and I were walking around, and he said, “You know, Ken, when I finish working here, I don’t have a headache like I used to at the Rahway State Prison.” The staff are very important. They’re there for a lifetime, so we keep them in mind in all our designs. It leads to better safety for the staff when the kids aren’t stressed, and one gang isn’t trying to fight with another gang and leads to better staff retention.
Karen S.: One of the problems with staff—they’re in the same conditions of confinement, no phones, no computers, can’t talk to their family. We’ve been incorporating little quiet rooms and staff retreat areas scattered around the facilities. If it’s a bigger facility, during their break they can call home, get on their computer, check their emails, and just the standard stuff we all take for granted. They never got to do any of that; a TV in that room or quiet library, whatever they want to use it for. That’s just one little thing has just made a big difference, in giving them the ability to get away and do all the stuff we take for granted in our work environment.
Kenneth Ricci, FAIA, serves as NELSON Worldwide’s Vice President and Business Development Leader, in their Civic & Justice Studio. Karen Sicner, AIA, is the firm’s Civic & Justice Studio Director.
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