How the Prison System in Norway is so advanced and luxurious?
By Ishank Katyal
Imagine police have arrested you for some crime you did and then they take you to a place to imprison you where the cell is even cleaner and safer than your own house, you have an access to the recording studio, fully equipped kitchen, great friendship with guards, health services, education, library, and not a requirement to wear that weird orange prisoner uniform. Yes! You read this right!
These are the prisons are Halden Prison and Bastoy Prison which are considered as one of the safest and humane prisons not only in Norway, but in the whole world.
“This is prison utopia,” American prison warden James Conway said in “The Norden,” a made-for-TV documentary. “I don’t think you can go any more liberal – other than giving the inmates the keys.” The production explored Conway’s experience visiting Halden.
In terms of entertainment, The prison also have its own recording studio where the inmates.
Like many prisons, Halden seeks to prepare inmates for life on the outside with vocational programs: wood-working, assembly workshops, and even a recording studio.
In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking. In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings, said Arne Wilson, the governor and a psychologist of Bastoy Prison.
All of these characteristics are starkly different from America’s system. When a retired warden from New York visited Halden,he could barely believe the accomodations . “This is prison utopia,” he said in a documentary about his trip. “I don’t think you can go any more liberal – other than giving the inmates the keys.”
In general, prison should have five goals, as described by criminologist Bob Cameron : retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, restoration, and rehabilitation. In his words though, “Americans want their prisoners punished first and rehabilitated second.” He added