Judicial and criminal justice facilities often serve a variety of purposes and must seamlessly blend features often thought to be at odds: serious and secure, yet open and inviting; effective and formidable, yet safe and rehabilitative.

At AECOM, our embedded experience in the communities where we work—combined with our understanding of how public needs and services intersect—has helped us become a leader in the justice market. We provide multidisciplinary planning and design for justice-related projects.

Our mission is to leverage the most current technologies to create spaces that reflect the transparency of justice and respond to local cultural and physical context, while seamlessly addressing security, flexibility, functionality, efficiency, and sustainability. We work to leverage an area’s emerging assets to create projects that foster additional renewal and development.

Court Planning and Design

Court planning and design have changed dramatically over the past 15 years. The modern courthouse must instill a sense of trust and fairness, as well as be inviting. We work to fulfill this vision by creating places that are uplifting and grounded, secure and open, purposeful and flexible.

Our approach includes collaborating with our national, state, territorial, and municipal government clients to address and incorporate societal changes in how people work and how institutions serve the public. Functionality, technology, wellness, security, and sustainability influence our thinking and strategy as we help our customers plan for increasing and new caseloads, as well as changing community demographics. Essential and integral components of our planning and design process include studying caseload projections in addition to considering the context of the surrounding city, future growth, expanding technologies, and changes in the legal process.

Secure and Inviting Public Safety Facilities

The design of public safety facilities must enhance the ability of law enforcement professionals to provide exceptional services in a modern, inspirational environment and, in doing so, elevate the profile of police departments in the communities they serve. AECOM has more than 40 years of experience in planning and designing efficient and reliable police and public safety facilities.

Changing technology, increased resiliency, and heightened awareness of personal well-being are at the core of the facilities we plan and design. With more than 75 police and public safety projects across the

United States and Canada, we help our clients create environments that allow for both the protection and sharing of information—often in situations where every second count.

Detention and Correctional Facilities

With a 35-year history in the planning, design, and management of detention and correctional facilities, we recognize that every correctional project has the potential to go beyond the function of merely housing inmates. We approach each project as an urban design challenge that considers the needs of the facility, as well as those of surrounding communities.

As a leader in correctional planning and design, our experience encompasses hundreds of criminal justice projects. We deliver high-quality environments that lower operational costs and have introduced successful new design concepts to the field of justice and correctional facilities design—including such innovations as normative environments, unit management, and direct supervision design.