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This edition of The Razor Wire is available as a full size, full color, fully printable Adobe Acrobat PDF file.

Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility

Established in 1981, ADPSR works for peace, environmental protection, ecological building, social justice and the development of healthy communities.

ADPSR has organized a Prison Design Boycott Campaign, featuring a poster design competition to explain the problems with the current U.S. prison system, and why the refusal to contribute to it is an important and effective response. Featured in this issue are the winning entry and the two runners-up.

Featured on our front cover: "Escaping Identity" - Contest Winner: Miguel Bermudez, Ann Arbor, MI
Above: "Shouldn't You Boycott Prison Design?" - Runner-up: William Arbizu & Kerstin Vogdes, Brooklyn, NY
Below: "Boycott Of Prisons" - Runner-up: Jan Sabach, Brooklyn, NY

It Is Time To Stop Building Prisons

Our prison system is both a devastating moral blight on our society and an overwhelming economic burden on our tax dollars, taking away much needed resources from schools, health care and affordable housing. The prison system is corrupting our society and making us more threatened, rather than protecting us as its proponents claim. It is a system built on fear, racism, and the exploitation of poverty. Our current prison system has no place in a society that aspires to liberty, justice, and equality for all.

As architects, we are responsible for one of the most expensive parts of the prison system, the construction of new prison buildings. Almost all of us would rather be using our professional skills to design positive social institutions such as universities or playgrounds, but these institutions lack funding because of spending on prisons. If we would rather design schools and community centers, we must stop building prisons.

Please join members of Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) in pledging to not participate in the design, construction, or renovation of prisons. We also invite you to learn more about the prison system, to join us in envisioning more just and productive alternatives to incarceration, and to work towards a society that treats all its members with dignity, equality, and justice.

As of July 26, 2006, 614 professionals have signed the ADPSR pledge. If you work in these industries, and would like to pledge your support, see: www.adpsr.org/prisons/form_individual.htm

Prison Design Boycott Pledge for Individual Signers

I believe that too many people are being incarcerated and that our society must immediately develop and implement alternatives to incarceration. I believe in creating design for a society with real security and social justice for all, and I will not contribute my design to the perpetuation of wrongful institutions that abuse others. In recognition of the deep injustice of the present prison system, I pledge not to do any work that furthers the construction of prisons or jails.

Working to end drug war injustice

Meet the People Behind The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines

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