Criminology has long understood architecture to be both a problem, in that design might increase the pains of an individual’s experience within the criminal justice system, and its solution. Study of the Japanese koban, or police box, reveals the ways in which the architecture and design of a built form communicate the values and objectives of criminal justice. The article draws upon recent criminological thinking about space and about the senses, in which the materiality of public space is understood to have a powerfully affective dimension, and in which meaning arises through the signifying practices of places, events and experiences. In Japan, police boxes have a lengthy history as an architectural manifestation of a mode of policing designed to surveill, reassure, and monitor. Extensive and immersive research conducted in Japan during a 2-year period investigated the ways in which koban both ‘take place’, as built forms within public spaces, and also ‘make sense’, as signifying practice designed to communicate the values and intentions of Japanese community policing and an ‘affective atmosphere’ of law enforcement.

犯罪学长期以来一直将体系结构视为一个问题，因为设计可能会增加个人在刑事司法系统及其解决方案中的经历之苦。日本神ban的研究或警察岗亭，揭示了建筑形式的体系结构和设计如何传达刑事司法的价值观和目标。本文借鉴了关于空间和感官的最新犯罪学思想，在这些思想中，公共空间的重要性被理解为具有强大的情感维度，而意义则通过地点，事件和体验的象征性实践而产生。在日本，警察岗亭历史悠久，是警务监视，安心和监视的治安模式的建筑体现。在日本进行的为期2年的广泛而沉浸式研究调查了koban的方式 既是“发生”（作为公共空间中的建筑形式），也是“有意义的”（作为旨在传达日本社区警务的价值和意图以及执法的“情感氛围”的象征性实践）。