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In a state ruled by law, the prison system is nonetheless a social space of normative exception and it can bring the whole State into disrepute. The conformity of punishment practises to this model remains a matter of controversy. This article studies the very definition of the Rechtsstaat vis-à-vis its prisons. Yet, classical legal approaches do not exhaust all the criteria used by the social actors to ground their judgments. Steeped in German prison history, this article shows that given the intrinsic materiality of prison design, the definition of the Rechts staat depends not only on rules, procedures, and institutions, but also on architectural and technological criteria.