Heather Ann Thompson, professor of in the Afroamerican and African Studies Department and Pulitzer prize winner, then introduced her position on the role of the “built environment” in the criminal justice system. Though she echoed some of Thacher’s sentiments, she explained her viewpoint through the lens of modern-day prisons.¶¶“The ‘built environment’ is the world we all walk in and the world we all create … and part of that built environment is creating spaces where people live, but it’s also where people are punished, and adjudicated and everything else,” she said.¶¶Thompson then delved deeper into the notion the cement construction and isolated location of prisons promote apathy among the public regarding the wrong-doings that may take place inside. ¶¶“We are never going to fully move the needle on our criminal justice system anywhere substantive until we ask the fundamental question about prisons and their intentionality,” Thompson said. “What is it that they are supposed to do and can they be humane as they are constructed the way they currently are?”¶¶She pondered how a change in the form of prisons could alter the perception of the incarcerated, proposing how the example of jailing someone in a translucent cube in the Diag would change one’s views of that person. She argues the difference in visibility of the prison structure changes the attention it receives.¶¶“The ‘built environment’ in terms of punishment is always thought about as an internal problem, not a problem of the broader society and what we have allowed to let happen precisely because that environment is a closed environment,” she said.¶¶Thompson also explained several contrasting components between our modern-day prisons and prisons of medieval times, which were located in city centers and even allowed whole families to live together within the prison.¶¶“The medieval prison was in the middle of town, right in the center, sentences were incredibly short because they served a direct and immediate purpose … but the entire community surrounding the prison had a stake in what was happening inside of it,” she said.