"Criminal weirdness" or can moods truly be affected by color?
Home decorators have been selling us the notion that colors can sooth or stimulate the soul, so why would it seem so crazy to see if middle-American prisoners would react to a new color palette, too?
(It would be interesting to learn if this is the first room make-over any of these inmates ever experienced in their lifetimes.)
For more information about the effects color has on mood and behavior, a good resource to read can be found at About.Com's color psychology page:
Comments
in the penn
Several years ago I worked for the Dutch Justice Department for little over a year. During that project I got to visit the maximum security prisons of Scheveningen. I don't recall the exact colours in the buildings, but the over-all impression I had was the complete lack of homeness. With it's two towered gate it already resembles more a fortress than a home. All public areas were big and sterile, white, grey and blue, being the basic colours. Many people inside this prison stay there for a substantial part of their lives, most have of them having been sentenced for serious crime. I remember the wood shop best, a small toy making workshop, where inmates made rocking horses, doll houses, children's furniture and the like. Most of them were convincted pedophiles.
Choice and selection
Who determines what type and style of furniture the inmates would work on? For instance, why would pedophiles be given child-minded projects and not kept to adult-sized and themed items, so fixation on the child could be limited?
inappropriate
That's exactly my thought at the moment and that's why I recall the wood shop, while I have no recollection of having seen a prison cell from the inside, except for isolation. To me it felt completely inappropriate pedophiles were making children's toys and furniture. I couldn't understand why their fixation on the object of their admiration was being sustained.