Police stations are complex buildings, not only because of the specialized nature of activities that take place within them or the vital need for security and access control, but also because of the need for constantly adjusted layers of privacy and propriety.

What Does Privacy and Propriety have to do with Police Design?

Privacy is defined as freedom from unauthorized intrusion, and propriety is defined as the quality or state of being proper or suitable.

The types of occupants that use police stations—citizens, suspects, victims, and police officers (in no certain order)—must coexist in the same space. With these highly disparate occupants coexisting in police stations, keeping them from seeing things they aren't supposed to see and making sure the intended people stay in their intended spaces are vitally important traits when maintaining an ideal policing environment.

Separate Bond Out Areas

One easy-to-understand application of where privacy and propriety can be applied to police design is in separate bond out areas. This is where suspects are released from lock-ups by the payment of a bond to the police department by a friend or relative.

Best practice is to have a bond out area that is completely distinct from the main lobby, allowing the released suspect to maintain a certain level of privacy. This also keeps the process out of the view from potential victims who may have been involved in a common incident with this offender, or other sensitive members of the public. Thus, maintaining critical propriety.

Interview Settings

Interview settings are another area in which design can smartly employ careful tactics of privacy and propriety. Placing interview rooms so occupants of one interview room cannot hear or see the occupants of another interview room can ensure a level of propriety that guarantees unbiased results for the investigators working with multiple parties in the same case. This is common, particularly in larger police stations.

Soft interview rooms—in which a multitude of potentially sensitive situations can be mitigated—are rooms with comfortable accommodations, where, for example, children can be kept entertained while their parents are seeing a social worker about a potential domestic situation. This maintains privacy for the individuals needing counseling and propriety for the children who are kept from having to take part in a mature discussion.

Privacy and Propriety of Police Officers

These examples illustrate how privacy and propriety can be maintained in interactions between citizens, victims, and suspects. But one last example shows how privacy and propriety can be maintained between police officers within their own police station.

The police records section is a particularly sensitive space within a police station. Patrol officers and investigators need to pull records in the course of their work. The best designs limit access to the records sections by use of a transaction window, allowing records clerks to deliver the appropriate record without allowing the officers to walk through the records space. This protects the sanctity of the information within, the privacy of the records, and the propriety of the records clerks.

Since there are many different users of a police station, as well as sensitive contexts, careful design can ensure that privacy and propriety of all users.