The Failure of the UK Prison System
Written By Logan McKinnon
24/02/2022
The UK Prison system does not work. That’s right. It simply does not work. Is a prison system really working if it is overcrowded? Is a prison system with skyrocketing rates of self-harm really working? Is a prison system really working if there is a recidivism rate of 46% a year after release in Scotland? This all reeks of a prison system that is in tatters. The UK prison system has fundamental flaws that we should be advocating to eliminate immediately. However, the chances of that are incredibly slim while those in government put up the classically ineffective façade of being “tough on crime” and only exacerbate the issue further. We should be aiming to mimic the system that has worked so well for our Norwegian neighbours, who set the gold standard for prisons in the present. The government frankly should be ashamed of the scandalous state of the UK prison system, yet the continue to sit around twiddling their thumbs irresponsibly watching the problem grow larger. We need action now.
“The place is absolutely rammed, and you can feel the tension rising. It wouldn’t take much to spark a major incident.” These comments by a prison officer help us to visualise the atrocious state of HMP Barlinnie. The prison was already running at 140% capacity with an average of 1449 inmates, 430 above the prison’s capacity of 1019. Since then, the figure has swelled to an estimated 1600 inmates: 157% capacity. This has resulted in most prisoners having to share cells. The prison just outside of Glasgow was first condemned over 25 years ago, with there being concerns that the holding cells just outside of reception may possibly violate prisoners’ human rights. There are additional concerns for the human rights of disabled prisoners who have limited opportunity to take part in the prisons already limited opportunities for rehabilitation, this could “amount to cruel and degrading treatment, breaching the European convention on Human Rights.” The prison has been branded “no longer fit for purpose” and should be considered as a national disgrace and it is suspected that a new prison will have to be built in the Glasgow area to alleviate some of the stress on the countries largest prison, but without fundamental changes to the way Scottish and British prisons are run, I expect little will change. Our situation is in sharp contrast to that of the Netherlands who have shut down 23 prisons since 2013. These prisons have been converted into hotels, housing, and refugee centres. The Netherlands has a rate of 63 prisoners per 100,000 people, modest compared to the UK’s startling rate of 123 per 100,000. The UK’s rate can be compared to that of China who have a rate of 121 prisoners per 100,000 according to the United Nations, this is of course despite China famously using internment camps. When we see figures like these, we realise that action has to be taken, or a serious incident will take place. We should turn our attention to Norway with an outstanding rate of 49 prisoners per 100,000. This is a rate which when you exclude city-states and territories this is the best rate in Europe and one of the best in the world.
A few decades ago, the government of Norway undertook a major overhaul of their prison to reduce recidivism. The result has been two of the finest examples of progressive imprisonment practices in the world, Halden Fengsel and Bastøy Fengsel.
Halden was opened in 2010 and is a maximum-security prison which houses some of the most dangerous and despicable people in the world including rapists, murderers, and child molesters, these three types of offenders comprise of half of Halden’s population alone. A further third of the prisons total population of 250 is made up of drug offenders.
The prison is split up into three units, A, B and C as well as one sub-unit C8. Unit A includes prisoners who require close psychiatric or medical supervision as well as sex offenders, who are likely to be attacked by other inmates. Most prisoners, however, are housed in Units B and C which are ‘freer’ and have mixed cell blocks, Unit C8 is focused on addiction recovery.
The prison accepts international prisoners are both English and Norwegian are spoken within the prison, English teachers are available within the prison for those who cannot speak or want to improve their English. However, unit C8 is only available to Norwegian speakers. While the prison has been almost universally praised, this is where most of the prison’s criticism has been directed to, the percentage of foreigners in Norwegian prisons increased from 8.6% to 34.2% in 2014, this has drawn criticism from the right-wing populist, anti-immigration Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party) who have attributed this to the high standard of the prison and used this as a platform to argue that these facilities should be reserved for Norwegian citizens.
The prison does not contain most of the traditional defences seen at prisons throughout the world, there are no electric fences, barbed wire, towers, or snipers. There is safety glass, and the prison is surrounded by a wall made of concrete and steel. There are tunnels underneath the prison for the guards. There Is no surveillance in cells, cell hallways, common rooms, classrooms, and most workshops.
Around the prison there is lots of greenery both within and outside the prison and one of the walls is graffitied by contemporary stencil artist Dolk.
Violence is very uncommon in Halden and is only typically seen in Unit A, “If two inmates have a dispute, they engage in a meditation session under staff supervision. If meditation fails, repeated misbehaviour or rule violations are punished with cell confinement or prison transference.”
The cells themselves are 10sqm large and contain a flat screen TV, desk, mini fridge, a toilet with a shower and an unbarred vertical window. A group of 10-12 cells share a common room with a kitchen and a living room. Prisoners can either be provided with food or go to the prison store to buy ingredients to cook for themselves which they can purchase with their salary of £5.60 per day that they receive if they leave their cell.
The prison has a number of activities available daily in the prison’s activities house from 8 till 8. There are jogging trails to practice on, a football field, and many other opportunities for physical recreation. Classes are available in many areas including cooking, music, and woodwork. There is even a mixing station known as ‘criminal records’ where prisoners can record music, the station even broadcasts a program on the local radio station. There is a prison library which as well as books includes magazines, CD’s, and DVD’s. The prison includes a gym which has a rock-climbing wall. The prison also contains a chapel. Prisoners are frequently asked how their prison experience can be improved.
A prison who achieved a diploma in graphic design while in Halden commented on the way other prisons are ran, “If you don’t have opportunities and are just locked in a cage you don’t become a good citizen”. They have aspirations of achieving a degree, masters or even a doctorate when they are transferred from Halden to an open prison.
While Halden has many courses, activities and classes that significantly contribute to the rehabilitation of the prisoners within when thinking of how to rehabilitate prisoners the first place which we should look at is at the very fundamentals: the design and architecture of the prison. Common designs for prisons include designs such as the courtyard design where the prison is designed around a central outdoor space, there is also the telephone pole design where rows of prison cells are stacked or even the radial design where corridors stem off from a central point.
The issue with approaches like these is while they may be effective in moving prisoners about quickly, they keep them looking at the same scenery everyday over and over again through tight corridors, this unsurprisingly leads to tension. Instead, progressive prisons such as Halden, employ a campus design where the prisons facilities are split throughout separate buildings with a surrounding wall. This design is effective as it mimics the real world in a way, in that prisons will have to ‘go to their work’ for example, this additionally allows for easy physical activity.
In your typical British prison where prisoners can be contained for 23 hours of the day, it is unlikely that they will feel the passage of time, additionally it is unlikely that prisoners will get nearly any physical activity. This may hinder their rehabilitation; campus design solves this problem by giving prisoners access to the outside world daily allowing them to recognize the passage of time. The issue of 23 hour lock up is also avoided with the campus design as it is essential for the operation of the prison that prisoners can move about.
Designers of Halden also looked at the materials that the prison is made out of itself, a typical British prison may be made out of brutalist materials such as concrete, linoleum and steel, these are typically seen as visually unappealing, and they block light and cause echoes. Halden instead uses materials such as Glass, Cork and Wood which allows light to flood in and dampen noise.
Within the common rooms, there are guards’ rooms, these are made intentionally too small as to force the guards out into the common rooms and forcing them to interact with prisoners – improving prisoner-staff relations. The campus design has been proven to have the best inmate-staff relationships and it has been found this directly leads to reduced violence.
Bastøy is a minimum-security prison on Bastøy Island about 75 kilometres out from Oslo. There are only about 70 members of staff on the island during the day of which about half are uniformed guards. After 4pm this figure shrinks to only four, a figure which is unimaginable for any prison in the UK. The prison is notable for its complete lack of fencing, there has been only one attempted escape since the prisons opening in 1982 as prisoners know that they are treated fairly and that the punishment for escape would not be worth it, with them being sent to one of Norway’s marginally stricter, possibly higher security prisons.
The purpose of Bastøy is to prepare prisoners for their release back into society, to get a place at the prison you have to apply and can only be transferred here if you have 5 years or less left on your sentence, it does not matter which crime you have committed.
The prison is supposed to emulate life in regular society as much as possible, prisoners on the island may spend their days tending to sheep, cows or chickens or growing fruit or vegetables, or taking part in many of the other classes or courses seen in other prisons in Norway. They can also get jobs in the laundry, the stable - to tend to the islands horses which pull the islands, the bicycle repair shop, on ground maintenance or the timber workshop.
On the Island prisoners will typically spend their time outside, on the island there is a football pitch, and many prisoners will take up cross country skiing throughout the winter. Thobjorn a guard at the prison commented, “You know, on this island I feel safter than when I walk on the streets in Oslo.” The prison even allowed a prison blues band to participate in a music festival.
The Norwegian prison system is based on two key principles: every prisoner will be released and that taking someone’s freedom away is punishment enough. The first of these is due to Norwegian law limiting all prison sentences to a maximum of 21 years (if a prison is given a 21 year sentence then unlimited increments of 5 years can be added to their sentence if they are still deemed a threat to society) this means that in theory even the worst people in Norwegian society, even someone such as Anders Breivik will eventually be released if it is felt that they have been rehabilitated, as a result the system has to be designed to prepare and account for this, as soon as a person is imprisoned in Norway the system is working to sufficiently prepare them and rehabilitate them for their release. The other key principle is that punishment enough is taking someone’s freedom away, it is underestimated just how soul crushing taking away an individual’s freedom away can be, to keep beating them down after that is not going to produce a good result, and this is only shown in statistics. Treating people with respect offers a pretty universal response, something which prisoners in the UK are not offered by the guards, prison governors, the public, the media, or the government.
In 2015, North Dakota prison directors travelled to Norway to see how the prison system was so successful, the developments that followed as a result of this trip have been a major contributing factor in North Dakota’s incarcerated population declining by 6.5%
Guards in the UK are also undertrained, in the UK it takes just a measly 12 weeks to become a prison guard, in Norway it takes 2 to 3 years.
People might first argue that justice is simply getting what you deserve and that criminals deserve punishment. This is a sentiment that I firmly disagree with, and one which is frankly toxic and helps lead to many of the problems with the UK prison system today. Numerous studies have shown that those growing up in poverty and up to 7 times more likely to harm themselves and commit violent crime. When we see statistics like these, we should consider this and work to rehabilitate disadvantages people into normal society, they deserve help. Not punishment.
The next area of concern for some may be the costs involved, a place at Halden costs an average of £98,000 per prisoner per year, compare this to the fee of £59,000 in a UK category A prison and you might pour scorn on this idea. But the UK prison system is so much more expensive in the long-term costing the taxpayer between £15 billion and £18 billion per year. We also additionally have to consider an invaluable decrease in crime rates which is to be expected with a decline in recidivism rates, consequently this would create a much safter society, we need to eradicate the short-term thinking that is engrained into the public and almost all policy in the UK.
Another argument may be that this would take years to implement and would fail to address the problems of the British prison system in a timely manner. This is false as the Norwegian government only implemented this new progressive system of imprisonment in the 90s when Norway switched from a system that focused on the punishment of inmates to one that focused on the rehabilitation of inmates. The British Government also claims that the UK system is focused on rehabilitation, something which is either a flat-out law, or the government does not know the meaning of the word rehabilitation, UK recidivism rates stand at almost 50% after a year of release, compare this to Norway where the figure stands at 20% after two years. At Bastøy Island recidivism stands at only 16%. Another argument may be that your country is culturally different to Norway and the system would not work in your home country, people who claim this should consider that the prison population of Halden consists of 40-45% of non-Norwegian inmates.
Another popular argument that is a favourite of the right-wing media, is that prisons are becoming too much like ‘holiday camps’, when questioned on the ‘luxurious’ conditions offered by Bastøy Island Prison Governor Arne Kvernvik Nilsen responded, “if we have created a holiday camp for criminals here, so what? We should reduce the risk of reoffending. Because if we don’t what’s the point of punishment except for leaning toward the primitive side of humanity?
Shambolic and Chaotic. Those two words paint a perfect picture of the prison system in the UK. A prison system that currently epitomises the idiom ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’. One more cut could send the whole system into a spiral. With repeated cuts from 2010-2015 as part of the coalition government’s austerity measures, reducing the number of guards by a third our system has been sent into complete chaos. Recently, a prison doctor had to beg to send a prisoner, with a life-threatening condition, to the hospital, something which could potentially be considered a human rights violation. Shambolic. Guards are struggling to meet their weekly caseload targets. Shambolic. Some prisoners are having to spend 23 hours behind bars. Shambolic. All of these scenarios have been caused by staff shortages directly linked to the cuts. However, surging self-harm rates reflect the horrific impact of a failing system. In the 12 months to September 2019, there were 61,461 self-harm incidents, a 16% increase from the previous 12 months. Furthermore, there have been mortifying increases of 93% in youth establishments. There were also 3007 incidents per 100 prisoners in female establishments. Incidents requiring hospital attention rose from 2.5% to 4.8%. Deaths in custody rose from 2.0 to 3.6 and, self-harm incidents from 300 to 750 and assaults from 190 to 400, per 1000 from January 2009 to January 2019. If action is not taken the government will have blood on its hands. These figures are serious cause for concern and illustrate a clear picture of the state of disrepute that the prison system is currently in. It shows how desperately change is needed. 60% of women are released form prison to no address which forces them back into crime through the struggle of homelessness. Employment is difficult to find when you are put in a situation where you have little education and next to no opportunity to improve this due to both poor finances post release and staff shortages that robbed you of this opportunity during your stint. Employers also don’t want to hire you because of the stigma of being a prisoner, this begs the question, what are these people supposed to do? The average budget for a prisoner in the UK per day ranges from between £1.15 to £2.10, this amount can hardly buy you a dairy milk and a Lucozade never mind effectively rehabilitate a prisoner. Prisoners only receive a pay of £5 per week compared to those in Norwegian prisons who receive nearly £6 per day, prisoner pay in the UK has remained unchanged since 1997. The ministry of justice currently makes £500,000 per year of in prison spending. BT currently has a ‘monopoly’ on prison phones charging eight times as much as it does to customers on the outside world. Sadly, we are actually moving in the wrong direction, our prisons are becoming more and more like the failed US prison system as prisoner numbers soar and aspects begin to ring eerily of the prison industrial complex. More funding is desperately needed to save the system, in the UK there were 4.8 prisoners to a guard whereas this figure at Halden is 3 prisoners to a guard.
A US study found that a stint in a prison increases the likelihood that inmates will reoffend. This may be due to prisoners being “rendered incapable of functioning on the outside by the trauma of incarceration or being housed with the country’s worst has rubbed off.” Young people are also come off particularly bad from the prison system with juvenile detention seeing them more likely to graduate from low-level juvenile offenders to lifetime criminals. Australia have taken note of this with their prison system also suffering from severe issues with a prisoner per 100,000 rates of 160 they have employed community correction to try to fix these issues. Offenders report to a case manager who funnels the offender through educational programs, community work and treatment programs, an offender will however be imprisoned if they break the rules. Non-custodial drug programs are used to help drug addicts instead of sending them to prison, drug courts have operated in Australia since 1999 and have been found to reduce recidivism programs more efficiently than custodial sentences. We should be aiming to completely eliminate custodial sentences for victimless crimes, such as drug offences, instead we should be aiming to work to help these people or legalise these industries to improve safety. With an ongoing crisis that is crippling the UK prison system we should seriously be considering alternative non-custodial punishment wherever possible.
Nelson Mandela once said, “…that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” If the UK is to be judged purely by its prisons it should be ashamed. Our prison system is truly shameful: it is estimated that half of the prison population are functionally illiterate. This paired with the crippling of prison education programmes results in a challenging set of circumstances for prisoner’s post-release. When you add the disdain that the British public holds for ex-convicts, we should seriously question what these people are supposed to do. Chris Atkins commented, “The British public has developed a sadistic mindset towards prisons and fiercely resists any policies that actually rehabilitate offenders.” While governments past and present should rightly be condemned for their acquiescent quiescence regarding the problem, the public has also played a hand in the stagnation in improvements to rehabilitation. Even in 1910 Winston Churchill commented, “the mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.” Based upon this the UK could be considered uncivilized with the media, left and right, rambling on about the luxurious conditions which the prisoners who they treat as less than human get access to. Why is it that we cannot treat prisoners with humanity, respect, dignity, and decency? While adopting progressive principles is a step in the right direction, we must get to a stage where we can be proud of our prison system. This requires a sea change in public and government attitudes, something which seems awfully unlikely with the Prime Minister rejecting a recommendation to remove any sentence six months or shorter even when it has been proven that sentences at this length are ineffective and make the situation worse. To save the UK prison system we need a comprehensive overhaul of our whole system to replicate the progressive system seen in Norway, additionally we need a major shift in the attitudes of all, from the government, to prison governors, to the media, to the general population, and we desperately need that change.
24/02/2022
The UK Prison system does not work. That’s right. It simply does not work. Is a prison system really working if it is overcrowded? Is a prison system with skyrocketing rates of self-harm really working? Is a prison system really working if there is a recidivism rate of 46% a year after release in Scotland? This all reeks of a prison system that is in tatters. The UK prison system has fundamental flaws that we should be advocating to eliminate immediately. However, the chances of that are incredibly slim while those in government put up the classically ineffective façade of being “tough on crime” and only exacerbate the issue further. We should be aiming to mimic the system that has worked so well for our Norwegian neighbours, who set the gold standard for prisons in the present. The government frankly should be ashamed of the scandalous state of the UK prison system, yet the continue to sit around twiddling their thumbs irresponsibly watching the problem grow larger. We need action now.
“The place is absolutely rammed, and you can feel the tension rising. It wouldn’t take much to spark a major incident.” These comments by a prison officer help us to visualise the atrocious state of HMP Barlinnie. The prison was already running at 140% capacity with an average of 1449 inmates, 430 above the prison’s capacity of 1019. Since then, the figure has swelled to an estimated 1600 inmates: 157% capacity. This has resulted in most prisoners having to share cells. The prison just outside of Glasgow was first condemned over 25 years ago, with there being concerns that the holding cells just outside of reception may possibly violate prisoners’ human rights. There are additional concerns for the human rights of disabled prisoners who have limited opportunity to take part in the prisons already limited opportunities for rehabilitation, this could “amount to cruel and degrading treatment, breaching the European convention on Human Rights.” The prison has been branded “no longer fit for purpose” and should be considered as a national disgrace and it is suspected that a new prison will have to be built in the Glasgow area to alleviate some of the stress on the countries largest prison, but without fundamental changes to the way Scottish and British prisons are run, I expect little will change. Our situation is in sharp contrast to that of the Netherlands who have shut down 23 prisons since 2013. These prisons have been converted into hotels, housing, and refugee centres. The Netherlands has a rate of 63 prisoners per 100,000 people, modest compared to the UK’s startling rate of 123 per 100,000. The UK’s rate can be compared to that of China who have a rate of 121 prisoners per 100,000 according to the United Nations, this is of course despite China famously using internment camps. When we see figures like these, we realise that action has to be taken, or a serious incident will take place. We should turn our attention to Norway with an outstanding rate of 49 prisoners per 100,000. This is a rate which when you exclude city-states and territories this is the best rate in Europe and one of the best in the world.
A few decades ago, the government of Norway undertook a major overhaul of their prison to reduce recidivism. The result has been two of the finest examples of progressive imprisonment practices in the world, Halden Fengsel and Bastøy Fengsel.
Halden was opened in 2010 and is a maximum-security prison which houses some of the most dangerous and despicable people in the world including rapists, murderers, and child molesters, these three types of offenders comprise of half of Halden’s population alone. A further third of the prisons total population of 250 is made up of drug offenders.
The prison is split up into three units, A, B and C as well as one sub-unit C8. Unit A includes prisoners who require close psychiatric or medical supervision as well as sex offenders, who are likely to be attacked by other inmates. Most prisoners, however, are housed in Units B and C which are ‘freer’ and have mixed cell blocks, Unit C8 is focused on addiction recovery.
The prison accepts international prisoners are both English and Norwegian are spoken within the prison, English teachers are available within the prison for those who cannot speak or want to improve their English. However, unit C8 is only available to Norwegian speakers. While the prison has been almost universally praised, this is where most of the prison’s criticism has been directed to, the percentage of foreigners in Norwegian prisons increased from 8.6% to 34.2% in 2014, this has drawn criticism from the right-wing populist, anti-immigration Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party) who have attributed this to the high standard of the prison and used this as a platform to argue that these facilities should be reserved for Norwegian citizens.
The prison does not contain most of the traditional defences seen at prisons throughout the world, there are no electric fences, barbed wire, towers, or snipers. There is safety glass, and the prison is surrounded by a wall made of concrete and steel. There are tunnels underneath the prison for the guards. There Is no surveillance in cells, cell hallways, common rooms, classrooms, and most workshops.
Around the prison there is lots of greenery both within and outside the prison and one of the walls is graffitied by contemporary stencil artist Dolk.
Violence is very uncommon in Halden and is only typically seen in Unit A, “If two inmates have a dispute, they engage in a meditation session under staff supervision. If meditation fails, repeated misbehaviour or rule violations are punished with cell confinement or prison transference.”
The cells themselves are 10sqm large and contain a flat screen TV, desk, mini fridge, a toilet with a shower and an unbarred vertical window. A group of 10-12 cells share a common room with a kitchen and a living room. Prisoners can either be provided with food or go to the prison store to buy ingredients to cook for themselves which they can purchase with their salary of £5.60 per day that they receive if they leave their cell.
The prison has a number of activities available daily in the prison’s activities house from 8 till 8. There are jogging trails to practice on, a football field, and many other opportunities for physical recreation. Classes are available in many areas including cooking, music, and woodwork. There is even a mixing station known as ‘criminal records’ where prisoners can record music, the station even broadcasts a program on the local radio station. There is a prison library which as well as books includes magazines, CD’s, and DVD’s. The prison includes a gym which has a rock-climbing wall. The prison also contains a chapel. Prisoners are frequently asked how their prison experience can be improved.
A prison who achieved a diploma in graphic design while in Halden commented on the way other prisons are ran, “If you don’t have opportunities and are just locked in a cage you don’t become a good citizen”. They have aspirations of achieving a degree, masters or even a doctorate when they are transferred from Halden to an open prison.
While Halden has many courses, activities and classes that significantly contribute to the rehabilitation of the prisoners within when thinking of how to rehabilitate prisoners the first place which we should look at is at the very fundamentals: the design and architecture of the prison. Common designs for prisons include designs such as the courtyard design where the prison is designed around a central outdoor space, there is also the telephone pole design where rows of prison cells are stacked or even the radial design where corridors stem off from a central point.
The issue with approaches like these is while they may be effective in moving prisoners about quickly, they keep them looking at the same scenery everyday over and over again through tight corridors, this unsurprisingly leads to tension. Instead, progressive prisons such as Halden, employ a campus design where the prisons facilities are split throughout separate buildings with a surrounding wall. This design is effective as it mimics the real world in a way, in that prisons will have to ‘go to their work’ for example, this additionally allows for easy physical activity.
In your typical British prison where prisoners can be contained for 23 hours of the day, it is unlikely that they will feel the passage of time, additionally it is unlikely that prisoners will get nearly any physical activity. This may hinder their rehabilitation; campus design solves this problem by giving prisoners access to the outside world daily allowing them to recognize the passage of time. The issue of 23 hour lock up is also avoided with the campus design as it is essential for the operation of the prison that prisoners can move about.
Designers of Halden also looked at the materials that the prison is made out of itself, a typical British prison may be made out of brutalist materials such as concrete, linoleum and steel, these are typically seen as visually unappealing, and they block light and cause echoes. Halden instead uses materials such as Glass, Cork and Wood which allows light to flood in and dampen noise.
Within the common rooms, there are guards’ rooms, these are made intentionally too small as to force the guards out into the common rooms and forcing them to interact with prisoners – improving prisoner-staff relations. The campus design has been proven to have the best inmate-staff relationships and it has been found this directly leads to reduced violence.
Bastøy is a minimum-security prison on Bastøy Island about 75 kilometres out from Oslo. There are only about 70 members of staff on the island during the day of which about half are uniformed guards. After 4pm this figure shrinks to only four, a figure which is unimaginable for any prison in the UK. The prison is notable for its complete lack of fencing, there has been only one attempted escape since the prisons opening in 1982 as prisoners know that they are treated fairly and that the punishment for escape would not be worth it, with them being sent to one of Norway’s marginally stricter, possibly higher security prisons.
The purpose of Bastøy is to prepare prisoners for their release back into society, to get a place at the prison you have to apply and can only be transferred here if you have 5 years or less left on your sentence, it does not matter which crime you have committed.
The prison is supposed to emulate life in regular society as much as possible, prisoners on the island may spend their days tending to sheep, cows or chickens or growing fruit or vegetables, or taking part in many of the other classes or courses seen in other prisons in Norway. They can also get jobs in the laundry, the stable - to tend to the islands horses which pull the islands, the bicycle repair shop, on ground maintenance or the timber workshop.
On the Island prisoners will typically spend their time outside, on the island there is a football pitch, and many prisoners will take up cross country skiing throughout the winter. Thobjorn a guard at the prison commented, “You know, on this island I feel safter than when I walk on the streets in Oslo.” The prison even allowed a prison blues band to participate in a music festival.
The Norwegian prison system is based on two key principles: every prisoner will be released and that taking someone’s freedom away is punishment enough. The first of these is due to Norwegian law limiting all prison sentences to a maximum of 21 years (if a prison is given a 21 year sentence then unlimited increments of 5 years can be added to their sentence if they are still deemed a threat to society) this means that in theory even the worst people in Norwegian society, even someone such as Anders Breivik will eventually be released if it is felt that they have been rehabilitated, as a result the system has to be designed to prepare and account for this, as soon as a person is imprisoned in Norway the system is working to sufficiently prepare them and rehabilitate them for their release. The other key principle is that punishment enough is taking someone’s freedom away, it is underestimated just how soul crushing taking away an individual’s freedom away can be, to keep beating them down after that is not going to produce a good result, and this is only shown in statistics. Treating people with respect offers a pretty universal response, something which prisoners in the UK are not offered by the guards, prison governors, the public, the media, or the government.
In 2015, North Dakota prison directors travelled to Norway to see how the prison system was so successful, the developments that followed as a result of this trip have been a major contributing factor in North Dakota’s incarcerated population declining by 6.5%
Guards in the UK are also undertrained, in the UK it takes just a measly 12 weeks to become a prison guard, in Norway it takes 2 to 3 years.
People might first argue that justice is simply getting what you deserve and that criminals deserve punishment. This is a sentiment that I firmly disagree with, and one which is frankly toxic and helps lead to many of the problems with the UK prison system today. Numerous studies have shown that those growing up in poverty and up to 7 times more likely to harm themselves and commit violent crime. When we see statistics like these, we should consider this and work to rehabilitate disadvantages people into normal society, they deserve help. Not punishment.
The next area of concern for some may be the costs involved, a place at Halden costs an average of £98,000 per prisoner per year, compare this to the fee of £59,000 in a UK category A prison and you might pour scorn on this idea. But the UK prison system is so much more expensive in the long-term costing the taxpayer between £15 billion and £18 billion per year. We also additionally have to consider an invaluable decrease in crime rates which is to be expected with a decline in recidivism rates, consequently this would create a much safter society, we need to eradicate the short-term thinking that is engrained into the public and almost all policy in the UK.
Another argument may be that this would take years to implement and would fail to address the problems of the British prison system in a timely manner. This is false as the Norwegian government only implemented this new progressive system of imprisonment in the 90s when Norway switched from a system that focused on the punishment of inmates to one that focused on the rehabilitation of inmates. The British Government also claims that the UK system is focused on rehabilitation, something which is either a flat-out law, or the government does not know the meaning of the word rehabilitation, UK recidivism rates stand at almost 50% after a year of release, compare this to Norway where the figure stands at 20% after two years. At Bastøy Island recidivism stands at only 16%. Another argument may be that your country is culturally different to Norway and the system would not work in your home country, people who claim this should consider that the prison population of Halden consists of 40-45% of non-Norwegian inmates.
Another popular argument that is a favourite of the right-wing media, is that prisons are becoming too much like ‘holiday camps’, when questioned on the ‘luxurious’ conditions offered by Bastøy Island Prison Governor Arne Kvernvik Nilsen responded, “if we have created a holiday camp for criminals here, so what? We should reduce the risk of reoffending. Because if we don’t what’s the point of punishment except for leaning toward the primitive side of humanity?
Shambolic and Chaotic. Those two words paint a perfect picture of the prison system in the UK. A prison system that currently epitomises the idiom ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’. One more cut could send the whole system into a spiral. With repeated cuts from 2010-2015 as part of the coalition government’s austerity measures, reducing the number of guards by a third our system has been sent into complete chaos. Recently, a prison doctor had to beg to send a prisoner, with a life-threatening condition, to the hospital, something which could potentially be considered a human rights violation. Shambolic. Guards are struggling to meet their weekly caseload targets. Shambolic. Some prisoners are having to spend 23 hours behind bars. Shambolic. All of these scenarios have been caused by staff shortages directly linked to the cuts. However, surging self-harm rates reflect the horrific impact of a failing system. In the 12 months to September 2019, there were 61,461 self-harm incidents, a 16% increase from the previous 12 months. Furthermore, there have been mortifying increases of 93% in youth establishments. There were also 3007 incidents per 100 prisoners in female establishments. Incidents requiring hospital attention rose from 2.5% to 4.8%. Deaths in custody rose from 2.0 to 3.6 and, self-harm incidents from 300 to 750 and assaults from 190 to 400, per 1000 from January 2009 to January 2019. If action is not taken the government will have blood on its hands. These figures are serious cause for concern and illustrate a clear picture of the state of disrepute that the prison system is currently in. It shows how desperately change is needed. 60% of women are released form prison to no address which forces them back into crime through the struggle of homelessness. Employment is difficult to find when you are put in a situation where you have little education and next to no opportunity to improve this due to both poor finances post release and staff shortages that robbed you of this opportunity during your stint. Employers also don’t want to hire you because of the stigma of being a prisoner, this begs the question, what are these people supposed to do? The average budget for a prisoner in the UK per day ranges from between £1.15 to £2.10, this amount can hardly buy you a dairy milk and a Lucozade never mind effectively rehabilitate a prisoner. Prisoners only receive a pay of £5 per week compared to those in Norwegian prisons who receive nearly £6 per day, prisoner pay in the UK has remained unchanged since 1997. The ministry of justice currently makes £500,000 per year of in prison spending. BT currently has a ‘monopoly’ on prison phones charging eight times as much as it does to customers on the outside world. Sadly, we are actually moving in the wrong direction, our prisons are becoming more and more like the failed US prison system as prisoner numbers soar and aspects begin to ring eerily of the prison industrial complex. More funding is desperately needed to save the system, in the UK there were 4.8 prisoners to a guard whereas this figure at Halden is 3 prisoners to a guard.
A US study found that a stint in a prison increases the likelihood that inmates will reoffend. This may be due to prisoners being “rendered incapable of functioning on the outside by the trauma of incarceration or being housed with the country’s worst has rubbed off.” Young people are also come off particularly bad from the prison system with juvenile detention seeing them more likely to graduate from low-level juvenile offenders to lifetime criminals. Australia have taken note of this with their prison system also suffering from severe issues with a prisoner per 100,000 rates of 160 they have employed community correction to try to fix these issues. Offenders report to a case manager who funnels the offender through educational programs, community work and treatment programs, an offender will however be imprisoned if they break the rules. Non-custodial drug programs are used to help drug addicts instead of sending them to prison, drug courts have operated in Australia since 1999 and have been found to reduce recidivism programs more efficiently than custodial sentences. We should be aiming to completely eliminate custodial sentences for victimless crimes, such as drug offences, instead we should be aiming to work to help these people or legalise these industries to improve safety. With an ongoing crisis that is crippling the UK prison system we should seriously be considering alternative non-custodial punishment wherever possible.
Nelson Mandela once said, “…that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” If the UK is to be judged purely by its prisons it should be ashamed. Our prison system is truly shameful: it is estimated that half of the prison population are functionally illiterate. This paired with the crippling of prison education programmes results in a challenging set of circumstances for prisoner’s post-release. When you add the disdain that the British public holds for ex-convicts, we should seriously question what these people are supposed to do. Chris Atkins commented, “The British public has developed a sadistic mindset towards prisons and fiercely resists any policies that actually rehabilitate offenders.” While governments past and present should rightly be condemned for their acquiescent quiescence regarding the problem, the public has also played a hand in the stagnation in improvements to rehabilitation. Even in 1910 Winston Churchill commented, “the mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.” Based upon this the UK could be considered uncivilized with the media, left and right, rambling on about the luxurious conditions which the prisoners who they treat as less than human get access to. Why is it that we cannot treat prisoners with humanity, respect, dignity, and decency? While adopting progressive principles is a step in the right direction, we must get to a stage where we can be proud of our prison system. This requires a sea change in public and government attitudes, something which seems awfully unlikely with the Prime Minister rejecting a recommendation to remove any sentence six months or shorter even when it has been proven that sentences at this length are ineffective and make the situation worse. To save the UK prison system we need a comprehensive overhaul of our whole system to replicate the progressive system seen in Norway, additionally we need a major shift in the attitudes of all, from the government, to prison governors, to the media, to the general population, and we desperately need that change.