Yves here. While it makes sense on a lot of levels to implement less brutal prisons, they are unlikely to be anything other than isolated experiments in the US. The point of having a prison system is profit, so the more recidivism, the better.
By Jordan Hyatt, Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, Drexel University and Synøve Nygaard Andersen, Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology, University of Oslo. Originally published at The Conversation
The United States has the largest number of people incarcerated in the world – about 25% of all people imprisoned worldwide are in American prisons and jails.
Overcrowding, violence and long sentences are common in U.S. prisons, often creating a climate of hopelessness for incarcerated people, as well as people who work there.
Additionally, correctional officers, often challenged by long shifts, worries about their own safety and stressful working conditions, have a life expectancy that is on average a decade lessthan the general population.
Some advocates have called for diverting people away from prisons, especially low-risk individuals. Others encourage shorter sentences and earlier releases.
But reform efforts could also extend to changing the prison environment itself.
We are American and Norwegian criminologists. While trying to better understand our countries’ justice systems, we have spent significant time in correctional facilities across Scandinavia and the U.S. There, we often try to identify overlooked similaritieswithin these very different places – and ways they could learn from each other.
A recent collaboration between correctional services in Pennsylvania and several Scandinavian countries presents an opportunity to test these ideas. One Pennsylvania prison unit we are researching adapts elements from Scandinavian prisons, and offers a window into what drawing from other penal systems might look like in the U.S.
This remodeled prison unit in Pennsylvania is home to 64 male residents. Creative Commonwealth Media
Prisons in Scandinavia
Correctional systems throughout much of Scandinavia are guided by a general set of philosophical principles. In Sweden, these standards emphasize rehabilitation and encourage meaningful change, so incarcerated people can lead a better life.
In Norway, core values of safety, transparency and innovationare considered fundamental to the idea of creating normality in prison, the feeling that life as part of a community continues, even behind walls and bars.
Adhering to these principles means that, in some cases, incarcerated people can wear their own clothes, work in jobs that prepare them for employment and cook their own meals.
Prisons in Scandinavia are also small, with some housing roughly a dozen people – which is possible, given relatively low incarceration rates in the region.
In most cases, people in prison in Norway have access to many of the same social and educational services and programs as people who are not incarcerated.
Many prisons, especially in Norway, are designed in a fundamentally different way than in the U.S. Proximity to natureis often considered, for example. Cells in Norway are also for a single person – not multiple people, as in most cases in the U.S. Norway, perhaps unsurprisingly, has attracted manyinternational visitors who come to observe their prison system.
Importantly, correctional officers have at least a two-year, university-level education and are directly involved in rehabilitation and planning for the incarcerated person’s re-entry into the world outside of prison. In the U.S., most officers receive just a few weeks of training, and their work focuses mostly on maintaining safety and security.
It is also worth noting that recidivism rates in Scandinavia are low. In Norway, it has been reported that less than half of people released from prison are rearrested after three years. In Pennsylvania, that figure is closer to 70%. The implications for correctional systems are profound.
Norway and the US
There are, of course, other fundamental differences between the Scandinavian countries and the U.S.
Norway, like the other countries in the region, is much smallerthan the U.S., in both population and geography. Crime rates are lower there than in the U.S., and social support systems are more robust. Gun violence is also almost unheard of.
In Norway, the longest prison sentence in most cases is 21 years – with most people serving less than a year. In Pennsylvania, life sentences are not uncommon, and many crimes – including nonviolent ones – can results in decades of imprisonment.
Despite this, the two systems may not be completely incompatible, at least not when the goal is to reform the prison environment.
The Scandinavian Prison Project
In State Correctional Institution Chester, known as SCI Chester, a medium-security prison located just outside of Philadelphia, a correctional officer-guided team has worked since 2018 to incorporate Scandinavian penal principles into its own institution. Based on their direct experiences, the correctional officers and facility leaders sought to reconsider what incarceration could look like at SCI Chester. This initiative has uniquely focused on developing a single housing unit within the prison.
In 2019, the group, which also included outside researchers and correctional leaders, spent weeks visiting a range of facilities across Scandinavia, and the officers worked in Norwegian prisons alongside peer mentors.
In March 2020, six men in SCI Chester – each sentenced to life in prison – were selected to participate in the project as mentors. They then moved on to the new housing unit, which had come to be known as “Little Scandinavia.”
In early 2022, the researchers and correctional leaders returned for a follow-up visit to several prisons in Sweden. Though delayed by the pandemic, 29 more residents of SCI Chester were selected from the prison’s general population to join the Scandinavian-inspired housing unit that May.
With single cells, a communal kitchen, Nordic-like furnishings and a landscaped, outdoor green space, Little Scandinavia looks unlike any other U.S. prison. Plants grow throughout the common areas. A large fish tank, maintained by staff and residents, is the centerpiece of an area designed to encourage people to gather.
A grocery program allows all of the residents to purchase fresh foods – a rarity in prison – and work directly with staff to send orders to a local store.
Each day, residents are expected to go to work, treatment or school, all within the prison.
Importantly, the correctional officers overseeing Little Scandinavia have received a range of training to facilitate communication with their assigned residents.
Drawing from Norway’s model, there is also a uniquely low ratio of trained staff to incarcerated men – one officer for eight residents, compared with the typical average of one staff member for 128 residents.
Although the community is still evolving, there have been no acts of violence, as some speculated would happen – even with access to kitchen equipment.
Little Scandinavia has other features, like couches and a shared kitchen, that are designed to give prisoners a sense of autonomy over their space. Creative Commonwealth Media
Learning from Little Scandinavia
As part of our research, we are examining correctional staff’s first-hand experiences with this international project.
Some analyses have shown that a Scandinavian approach, focused on normality and reintegration, can be potentially good for correctional officers, boosting their morale, independence and well-being.
Incarcerated people have also reported feeling safer and having more positive relationships with staff and other people living in the prisons. They also indicated greater satisfaction with their access to food and the reintegration support available to them.
SCI Chester shows that it is, in fact, possible to adapt Scandinavian-style penal philosophies and incorporate them into a Pennsylvania prison. This effort is a pilot, however, with significant costs, foundational support from committed leaders, and in partnership with many outside experts.
It remains to be seen how these efforts will play out in the long term. Data from this project, and rigorous research on other efforts, can inform conversations about what the future of prison reform in the U.S. could look like.
After all, as they say in Norway, a prison is responsible for enabling the people who are incarcerated to return to society as good neighbors – a fact that, in most cases, is as true in Philadelphia as it is in Stockholm or Oslo.
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Chester https://www.cor.pa.gov/Facilities/StatePrisons/Pages/Chester.aspx appears to have been built as a rehab operation for substance abusers, which is often a relatively easy, nonviolent population to deal with.
Norway is a very rich country with the highest per capital production of petroleum products in the world. It has been able to maintain “the Scandinavian model” better than its neighbors Sweden and Finland because of that wealth.
As an aside I do not believe that the profit motive is the driver of US. prison problems. Private prisons are largely restricted to non-violent crimes, pretrial detention or used for immigration detention. Only 8% of US. prisoners are in private jails https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/) and the US private prison population on a per capita basis has been trending down for a number of years (https://www.statista.com/chart/24031/prisoners-in-private-prisons-in-the-united-states/). The total number of incarcerations in the US peaked in 2005 and has been trending down slowly since then https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/u-s-prison-population-trends-massive-buildup-and-modest-decline/.
>>>As an aside I do not believe that the profit motive is the driver of US. prison problems.
The profit motive is what is profitable for someone and not necessarily the business, which much of the prison industrial complex is. Like the investors or a community’s tax base. The politicians who take the bribes to have the prisons built. It does not mean that the prison itself is profitable.
There is also the incentive for politicians’ “tough on crime” speeches when campaigning. “I am tough on crime. Life for jaywalking and I will sponsor the bill to pay for those prisons.”
Yeah, prisons are a great conduit for getting public tax-dollars into private pockets, plus they are patronage machines– hell, $200 was all it took to get a job (w. paid vacation, insurance for you and family, pension (a real one!), etc.) at a nearby county jail– if you knew the right people. Contracts get steered to outside vendors with the right political connections (telephone, commissary, kitchen, medical, laundry, monitoring, rehab/treatment, prison contract labor (aka “job readiness”), etc.), the “right people” get jobs and promotions, politicians get to look tough… …it’s a game to them.
Yves is right: our prisons are cash-cows that are mostly filled with nobodies, disposable people who couldn’t afford a lawyer who had the right connections. Too many interests vested in the current system for it to change anytime soon.
You really know nothing about our criminal justice system. The entire system is built on the profit motive, just as is true with everything else in America. Our justice system is anything but just. If you already have obscene amounts of money, you won’t be trapped in our “justice system”, you can purchase your get out of jail card. Otherwise, your life is over. We warehouse human beings. Just like cattle for the slaughter. Wake up. I actually have lived and breathed this insanity for over 20 years. I know 1st hand what is injust.
Sometimes I wonder if debtor’s prisons will make a return in the near future…
They already have.
I do not understand all the ins-and-outs of the debtors’ jails, but I understand that most, if not all of them, are illegal and popping up in the more isolated and/or corrupt areas. I emphasize jails over prisons because at the state level such things usually get stopped. However, since it is mostly poor people who can’t afford their own lawyers, it can be years, if not decades, before someone challenges the local government.
The link above is to ProPublica, which has done some real reporting on the problem; I can’t help think of California possibly having them as much of the state is a bit isolated and poor. Add the increasing corruption at both the municipal and state levels as well as the collapse of local reporting, and you have a good environment for such things to happen. It not something I like thinking about, but to pretend that it can’t happen because I would not like it is just stupid. And California really has gotten worse over the decades.
This is something I should research, which I don’t want to do as I am lazy and don’t want to bother the local governments. The people who have the police and the courts. Someone probably has done the work. Or maybe not. I’ll just add to my homework next semester. Maybe I can use it on that Political Economy degree that I am slowly getting. After all it is local politics, law, and often businesses colluding to illegally extract money from the poor. I should have the car in good condition by then and hopefully gas will be less than $6.40/gallon. (Let’s say that again: $6.40 per gallon.)
And maybe I will find that I am being overly worried. Or maybe not.
That’s what it is now!!!! And it’s where we warehouse the infirm, the mentally ill; all those that wealthy polite socideems unnecessary. This nothing new.
In Canada, we sometimes include work for prisoners during their stay. Of course, this depends on what kinds of misdemeanors that the prisoners are incarcerated for. One prison in the Atlantic region included a farm where the inmates worked milking cows, looking after other animals, haying, feeding, using heavy equipment, etc. When a Conservatice Prime Minister got elected, he shut down the farm because it was being too nice to the prisoners, I guess. When he left his job, the farm was re-opened for inmates.
A big problem is that that prison looks nicer than a lot of housing options for younger working people, at least here in Boston, where working class people tend to live in fire-trap tenements.
Not to be facetious, because of course no one would choose a comfortable prison over even the worst slum, but it’s hard not to feel wistful seeing those spacious common areas with free housekeeping when I think of what that would cost as a market-rate “coliving community” in Greater Boston.
Here is a crazy chart:
US prison population 1922-2017, with projected declines to 2091 (Sentencing Project)
The population skyrocketed in the 1980s and 1990s, then started to decline gradually in the 2010s, but at that rate, we would be well into the 22nd century before the prison population went back to where it was in the 1970s. (Numbers not adjusted for general population growth, but still, when you think of the levels of street crime in the 1970s and 1980s, the idea that we have a larger prison population is still insane).
Sorry if this is a kinda duplication of a comment perhaps still in moderation but adding value with a link. Here are some more astounding stats posted by Mikel on the quietly quitting article
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/10/great-resignation-quiet-quitting-if-youre-surprised-by-americas-anti-work-movement-maybe-you-need-to-watch-more-movies.html#comment-3796211
““2. Labor scarcities are permanent due to demographic and social dynamics.”
He forgets to mention these dynamics:
The Court of Mass Incarceration (PDF) Rachel E. Barkow, CATO Institute. “One out of every 52 people in the United States is under some form of criminal justice supervision (such as probation or parole). In some states and communities, the rates are even higher. In Georgia, for example, one out of every 18 people is on probation or parole. We are now living in a country where one out of every three adults in America has a criminal record.”
And I’m going to add this: I suspect some regions are handling the demographic changes that are readily visible in the younger generations better than others.”
Every time I watch the Swedish version of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” et al. I am struck by the scenes in the Swedish prisons and their remarkable contrast with what I have seen — just the outside visitor interface — of a u.s. jail in a relatively enlightened portion of a relatively enlightened state.
Is it overly cynical to wonder whether study of the Scandinavian prison systems anticipates a possible rise in the prosecution of high level white collar crimes by politicians and Corporate executives — or am I merely overly hopeful?
I don’t think that is cynical. Assuming those prisons are models for the work-live housing provided to Amazon workers on site would be cynical.
Now if they’d just support the ingenious ideology and progressive actions of “Philly DA”..( check PBS for this special series) “They” are trying to do a recall on him… BIG $ from out of state just happened in San Fra, Ca.maybe we could move beyond this punitive mindset of law and punishment… and raise the bar, putting more $ into mental health diversion programs instead of being sent to jail… skill building and restitution for those who are jailed so they can build a life when they get out… building for real, affordable housing, safe schools teaching full stories, real cost of living paid jobs that people love, Start EARLY> teach non violent communication and mediation skills in the schools and communities, grocery stores instead of corner stores, community oversight of Police and City Council, overall support communities that care for and and co create their worlds.
I knew a few guys who did time ,one did 19 years for drug offenses, while there are very dangerous criminals ,most just seem to have been born into bad circumstances and not very smart ,it is true that prisons keep alot of towns alive ,its like a medical facility is etc ,The one guy who did 19 years really seemed broken.
If you look at the problem from 30,000 ft. it can be explained by the huge lack of pre-school education in the US compared to other countries. All the research says pre-school can get kids out of chaotic abusive households and into a structured loving environment. This translates directly into fewer mental health issues, better grades, better jobs and less crime. But kids don’t vote so it may never come to pass.
I agree with John Ray. Kids model on their parents. If the father does not work a regular job and deals drugs and does petty crime the son will be inclined more often than not to do the same thing. If we are not going to make decisions regarding whether a given person is a suitable parent and we allow all to have as many children as they want or can then we must have some sort of system where the young can be trained to fit into society. In the past with nuclear families and living wages this could be done to a degree. Now with endemic poverty and masses of unemployed (as measured by labor force participation as opposed to the more political unemployment rate) a large proportion of children do not have adult role models that they can use to learn how to socialize. So preschool is a much better solution. In addition, private employers will not hire native US people if they can avoid it. Too expensive, too many complaints, too many lawsuits and terrible productivity. Other than in government jobs that have quotas one does not see many domestic workers in most businesses here in California. US minorities are underrepresented in the private sector for a reason. Employers do not want to serve in loco parentis for adults. Another strategy would be to force US employers to hire native workers even if they are not so good. An employer can act as a parent in a way enforcing attendance and performance but then the employer cannot be allowed to terminate workers for absenteeism, drugs or poor performance. All employers would have to more or less hire like the government with similar rules……and outcomes. And with a jobs guarantee it would be important to guarantee a reasonable wagee and benefits so workers really have no choice but to do some sort of work, no matter how menial. So preschool and a jobs guarantee…….wait…….isn’t that what Sanders proposed in his campaign?