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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchEvidence-based design (EBD) can make forensic and youth behavioral-health facilities safer and more therapeutic when research, operational knowledge, and measured outcomes guide each decision. In its November 7, 2024 feature, BWBR defines EBD as basing design choices on credible research to achieve the best possible outcomes. The firm’s examples show how visibility, scale, daylight, sensory character, resident participation, and post-occupancy measurement can work together without turning a secure building into an impersonal one.
The approach is not a guarantee that a particular finish or room layout will reduce violence. Outcomes depend on staffing, clinical practice, policies, population, maintenance, and many other factors. BWBR’s Minnesota Security Hospital results are project-reported figures rather than independently verified causal estimates. That distinction matters: EBD is a disciplined way to make and test decisions, not a promise that architecture alone produces a specific percentage improvement.
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What evidence-based design means in a forensic setting
BWBR’s definition is deliberately practical: “Evidence-Based Design (EBD) bases design choices on credible research in order to achieve the best possible outcomes.” The process connects a facility’s goals to design decisions, then checks whether the completed environment is producing the intended results. Designers with EDAC certification are described in the article as demonstrating the ability to apply this process to facility design, including measuring and reporting results. That description should be understood as BWBR’s account of the certification and its role, not as a complete statement of every certification requirement.
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In a forensic hospital, secure treatment center, or juvenile correctional campus, “best possible outcomes” usually means balancing several objectives that can conflict:
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- protecting patients, residents, staff, and visitors from harm;
- supporting assessment, therapy, education, and daily routines;
- giving people dignity, orientation, and an appropriate sense of control;
- reducing environmental stressors that can intensify agitation;
- making supervision reliable without creating unnecessary institutional pressure; and
- producing information that helps leaders adjust operations after opening.
EBD therefore starts before a drawing is finalized. The project team identifies the population and clinical model, reviews credible research and comparable experience, consults people who will use the building, states measurable objectives, and establishes a plan to evaluate results. A calm color palette or a larger window is not “evidence-based” by itself; it becomes part of EBD when the team can explain the problem it addresses, the evidence supporting the choice, and the outcome that will be monitored.
Why the forensic environment needs a different design logic
Forensic facilities serve people whose legal status, mental-health needs, behavior, or age can require a high level of security. Blind corners, poor sightlines, confusing level changes, excessive noise, and overly institutional finishes can make care and supervision harder. At the same time, a building designed only around control can communicate distrust, increase stress, and undermine treatment or education.
The design task is to make safety visible and dependable while preserving the cues of ordinary life wherever they are compatible with security. Smaller residential groupings can make a unit easier to understand and supervise. Daylight and views can provide orientation and a connection to time and weather. Durable materials, carefully detailed hardware, and unobstructed observation can support staff without making every space feel punitive. These choices must be coordinated with sightline studies, anti-ligature requirements where applicable, fire and life-safety rules, acoustics, staffing patterns, and emergency procedures.
Minnesota Security Hospital: a measured renovation example
The problem BWBR describes
Minnesota Security Hospital (MSH) serves forensic patients designated as mentally ill and dangerous. BWBR says the pre-renovation environment included blind spots, corners, split-levels, and outdated spaces that were not conducive to care or safety. Those conditions can create practical problems: staff may have difficulty seeing activity, patients may struggle to read the layout, and movement through the building can feel unpredictable.
Design moves in the renovation and expansion
The renovation and expansion pursued a quieter, calmer environment. BWBR identifies four central moves:
- Smaller housing units: reducing the scale of residential areas so daily activity is easier to organize and supervise.
- Soothing color themes: replacing an unnecessarily harsh visual character with a more settled palette.
- Soft lighting: avoiding an atmosphere dominated by glare or institutional brightness while retaining the illumination required for safe observation.
- Improved visibility: addressing blind spots and confusing conditions that had impeded care and supervision.
These interventions work as a system. Smaller units are most useful when staff can see key areas and residents can understand where they are. Soft lighting must be paired with adequate task and observation light. Color and material choices should support calm without creating maintenance or contraband risks. The operational team should review the finished environment at different times of day, under occupied conditions, and during routine and emergency movement.
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Outcomes reported by BWBR
Within the first three years after the MSH expansion and renovation opened, BWBR reported the following changes:
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems| Measure | Reported change | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Staff injuries | Decreased by 51% | Figure reported by BWBR for MSH within the first three years after opening; the retrieved account does not provide a study design, comparison group, or underlying dataset. |
| Workers’ Compensation claims | Decreased by 35% | Figure reported by BWBR for MSH within the first three years after opening; it is not an independently verified causal estimate in the available material. |
| Patient aggressive-behavior cases | Decreased by 52% | Figure reported by BWBR for MSH within the first three years after opening; other clinical, staffing, or policy changes may also have influenced the result. |
The figures are useful because they connect design intentions to operational measures. They should not be read as proof that the physical changes alone caused the reductions. A responsible owner would examine definitions, reporting practices, population changes, staffing levels, clinical programming, and the period used for comparison before drawing a causal conclusion.
Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center: designing for treatment and hope
BWBR describes Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center (MJTC) as a secure facility for youth and teens who need intensive behavioral and mental-health treatment beyond a traditional sanctions-based approach. Its renovation and expansion were intended to support the center’s treatment, care, and education model and to expand services to include girls.
The design concept emphasized hope and joy rather than reproducing the imagery commonly associated with forensic institutions. BWBR cites:
- abundant windows that bring daylight and outside views into daily spaces;
- positive distractions that give attention a constructive focus;
- nature-themed wall graphics; and
- pops of color that make the environment less visually punitive.
For young people, those elements are not decorative afterthoughts. A window can help establish time of day and offer a momentary mental break. A graphic or color cue can make a corridor easier to identify and a classroom feel distinct from a security checkpoint. Positive distractions need to be selected and maintained with the same care as any therapeutic resource: they should be visible, durable, age-appropriate, and compatible with supervision.
BWBR says studies support nature-inspired design, daylight, and a sense of control as ways to reduce stress or aggression and increase satisfaction, but the article does not name the individual studies. Project teams should therefore treat those principles as a reason to review the underlying literature and establish local measures, not as a license to claim a guaranteed clinical effect.
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Milwaukee juvenile correctional project: ask residents what matters
In an in-progress project at the Juvenile Correctional Facility in Milwaukee, BWBR says designers met with adolescents at the center to select wall graphics. The designers expected residents to prefer nature imagery. Instead, the young people gravitated toward images of people and community.
The lesson is broader than the choice of artwork. Designers can make reasonable assumptions about what feels calming or positive and still miss the meaning a particular population assigns to a space. Structured participation gives residents a way to identify symbols, colors, activities, and places that feel relevant. It also gives the project team information that cannot be obtained from a generic catalog of “therapeutic” images.
Engagement must be genuine and bounded by safety. Explain what can and cannot change, use age-appropriate sessions, protect privacy, and show how feedback affected the design. The Milwaukee example also includes colorful wall paint and windows with nature views, demonstrating that resident input can complement—not replace—professional judgment about security, maintenance, and clinical needs.
Design principles that can be tested in practice
Visibility without constant exposure
Good visibility helps staff detect distress, conflict, and medical emergencies early. It does not require every activity to occur in a fishbowl. Teams should map sightlines from staffed locations, identify places where observation is interrupted, and provide privacy gradients for bedrooms, counseling, hygiene, and health care. Glazing, mirrors, cameras, and borrowed light each have different privacy, acoustic, and maintenance implications; they should be selected for a defined observation task rather than added indiscriminately.
Daylight, views, and nature cues
Windows, views, planting, and nature-themed graphics can provide orientation and positive distraction. In secure buildings, glazing must be coordinated with impact resistance, tamper resistance, glare control, and the ability to maintain a safe temperature. A nature image is not equivalent to an actual view, but both can be part of a layered strategy. Record where daylight reaches, how glare affects observation, and whether residents can perceive changes in weather and time.
A sense of control
Control can be designed through understandable circulation, choices among supervised activities, adjustable lighting where safe, and spaces that let a person regulate stimulation. It does not mean allowing unrestricted access. A resident might choose between a quiet room and a common room, select a reading position, or control a task light within a safe range. The design team should define which choices are clinically useful, who supervises them, and how staff will respond when a choice is not available.
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Acoustics and sensory load
Noise can make communication and de-escalation harder. Absorptive ceilings, resilient finishes, separated loud and quiet functions, and controlled equipment noise can reduce the background load. Acoustic treatments in secure settings must be tamper-resistant and cleanable. Measure reverberation and peak noise in occupied conditions instead of relying only on an empty-room specification.
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Scale, identity, and dignity
Smaller units, recognizable landmarks, varied room types, and non-institutional but durable materials can help people understand and inhabit a facility. Dignity also depends on basics: privacy during personal care, comfortable seating, access to daylight where feasible, and spaces for family or community contact. These decisions should be reviewed with people who understand trauma, disability, culture, gender, age, and the legal conditions of the population served.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A practical EBD process for a new build or renovation
- Define the population and mission. Document legal status, age range, clinical needs, education model, staffing, levels of observation, and the behaviors the facility must safely manage.
- State measurable objectives. Examples include fewer blind spots, shorter response times, lower noise exposure, improved wayfinding, better participation in treatment, or fewer injuries. Assign an owner and a measurement method to each objective.
- Review credible evidence. Summarize what is known about daylight, nature cues, environmental enrichment, visibility, acoustics, and user control. Note where evidence is indirect or incomplete. BWBR’s article presents these principles as supported by studies but does not provide a bibliography for them.
- Map current conditions. Use observation, incident locations, staff interviews, resident feedback, lighting and acoustic measurements, and movement studies. Record when and where problems occur rather than describing the building only in general terms.
- Co-design within clear boundaries. Include direct-care staff, clinicians, maintenance personnel, families where appropriate, and residents or youth. Explain security constraints and test proposed graphics, colors, and room types with the people who will use them.
- Test options before construction. Mock up a bedroom, day space, staff station, or corridor. Walk the sightlines, test acoustics, review cleanability, and run routine and emergency scenarios with actual staff.
- Coordinate safety and operations. Integrate anti-ligature decisions where required, hardware, fire protection, egress, camera coverage, infection control, contraband prevention, and staffing patterns. A visually calm room that cannot be safely supervised is not a successful EBD outcome.
- Commission the building after occupancy. Check lighting levels, glare, temperature, acoustics, door and hardware performance, visibility, and wayfinding with the building occupied. Correct defects before treating the project as an outcome test.
- Evaluate and adjust. Compare measures against a clearly defined baseline, report the time period and population, and look for unintended effects. Use findings to change furniture layouts, programming, maintenance, or policies—not only finishes.
What to measure after opening
A credible evaluation uses several kinds of information because no single indicator captures safety or therapeutic quality.
| Measure family | Possible indicators | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Safety | Staff injuries, resident injuries, aggressive-behavior cases, emergency responses, and locations of incidents | Review definitions, reporting practices, staffing, and population changes before attributing a trend to design. |
| Claims and costs | Workers’ Compensation claims and related absence data | Useful for operational impact, but claims can change with reporting and administrative practice. |
| Care and education | Treatment attendance, classroom participation, time spent in therapeutic areas, and successful transitions | Interpret alongside clinical policy and program capacity; a room cannot create a service that is not staffed. |
| Experience | Resident, family, clinician, and staff surveys or structured interviews | Track satisfaction, perceived safety, dignity, privacy, and control, while protecting confidentiality. |
| Building performance | Noise, glare, temperature, lighting, equipment failures, maintenance calls, and visibility audits | Shows whether the designed conditions persist under real use. |
Publish the baseline, observation period, definitions, and limitations with every result. BWBR’s MSH figures illustrate why this matters: the reported percentages identify a facility and a three-year period, but the available account does not supply the comparison group or underlying data needed to establish causation.
Emerging directions and unresolved questions
Community-engaged facilities
BWBR describes community engagement as an emerging EBD direction. A secure or behavioral-health facility may be planned to host meetings, classes, conferences, or other appropriate community activities. Such uses can reduce stigma by making the building part of civic life rather than an isolated place that the public only associates with crisis or punishment. They also create operational questions about access control, scheduling, privacy, and separation of public and secure circulation. Those questions should be resolved during programming, not after the doors open.
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The article also points to ongoing research into environmental enrichment: dynamic settings that provide motor, sensory, cognitive, and social stimulation may support positive neurological changes. This is a developing field, not a settled prescription. In practice, enrichment can mean varied activity spaces, opportunities for movement, social interaction, learning, and safe sensory choice. Teams should pilot these features, monitor participation and incidents, and revise them as evidence and local experience accumulate.
Limits of design claims
Facility outcomes are shaped by leadership, staffing ratios, training, clinical methods, population turnover, policy, community conditions, and maintenance. A renovation may coincide with changes in any of these variables. EBD is strongest when it makes those influences visible and tests claims honestly. It is weakest when a project cites “research” without naming the question, measuring the result, or acknowledging uncertainty.
Quick Recap
Key takeaways for project owners
- Start with a defined safety and treatment problem, not a preferred aesthetic.
- Use visibility, daylight, nature cues, understandable scale, acoustics, and controlled choice as coordinated interventions.
- Ask residents and staff what feels meaningful; the Milwaukee project shows that their preferences may differ from professional assumptions.
- Plan evaluation before construction and report the time period, measures, and limitations.
- Treat BWBR’s MSH percentages as reported project results, not proof that design alone caused the changes.
- Consider community use and environmental enrichment as promising directions that require careful operational planning and continued study.
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