Prison Architecture and Penal Policy in Slovenia: Between Security and Reform

Abstract Prisons, as Sykes ([1958] 2007) observed, are institutions that embody conflicting demands and serve multiple purposes, many of which are in tension. One of the key tensions he highlighted is the clash between the rehabilitative mission of prisons and the imperative to ensure security and prevent disorder. This paper will examine how these two functions – reform and security – interact within the design of a new prison that was recently built in Ljubljana, Slovenia, slated to open in April 2026. The design of the new facility has been celebrated as an effort to humanize the prison environment, with its architectural elements and materials aimed at promoting reform through the “normalisation”(see e.g. van de Rijt et al. 2023, Fransen 2017) of the prison setting. While the professed conceptual focus of the design is on reform, this aim, when translated into practice, is often made subservient to the integration of security in the design itself, which is clearly prioritised. Whereas the rehabilitative focus of prison, though secondary to security, is communicated and propagated by the media and stakeholders, the security, which is prioritised in the design, is kept concealed and is made to be largely out of sight of those imprisoned there. In this paper, I will analyse the design plans for the new men’s prison in Ljubljana as a case study, drawing attention to concerns raised by some Slovene scholars regarding the sidelining of goals of reform in favour of security concerns. I will also contextualize these developments within the broader political and social processes that have influenced Slovenia’s penal policy.