Introduction

This is a Norwegian prison cell. Here, prisoners have their own bedrooms, with their own TVs, their own desks, their own bathrooms, and their own showers.

12 hours a day, they can leave the cell and do whatever they want: exercise, cook, play sports or video games, and more. (A)

It’s strange, comparing this to an American prison cell. Here, two prisoners share a bunk. There is no TV, no desk, no shower, no…amenities.

Here, prisoners have only a few hours of leisure time and spend much of their days working for corporations for less than $1 per hour. (U)

So which works? One way to measure it:

how often prisoners, once they’re out, end up back in after committing more crimes. In Norway, the rate is 25%. (A, 25-27) In America, it’s 76%. (T)

And this difference adds up—fast.

If only one out of every four prisoners in America stays out of prison, the population grows and grows and grows. Add in the fact that the average American prison sentence is 32 months—four times longer than Norway’s 8—and it’s easy to see how America has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. (✱)

You might think, well, bad guys should stay in prison; it keeps us safe. But if that’s how this worked, why is America’s homicide rate still 8x higher than Norway’s? (S)

Because this is about punishment, and this is about rehabilitation.

Maybe that sounds like a liberal fantasy. After all, how could playing video games be rehabilitative? And maybe this is just a product of a different culture in Norway. At least, that’s what I thought when I started digging into this.

But then I learned two crucial things. First, in the 1980s, Norway’s rate of ex-cons returning to prison was as high as 80%, higher than America’s, and crime there was twice as common as it is today. (A, xv; R) It’s not as though Norwegians have crime-resistant antibodies in their viking blood.

They did something in the 1990s that changed everything, and that’s the second thing I learned. Norway had a revolution in prison philosophy that’s about so much more than leisure time and video games.

I discovered four really thoughtful and unconventional ideas that define their approach: Fengselsbetjent, Normalitetsprinsippet, Fengselsstrappen, and—perhaps the most important secret weapon—Samfunn.

So I’m gonna dig into those four concepts and explain how they work, because I’m convinced they do work, not just on Norwegians, but on humans.

Along the way, I’ll be honest about the serious challenges facing the Norwegian system. How does it handle illegal immigrants? Is it just too expensive? Can other countries really use this? And above all, how does this system cope with a mass murderer like Anders Breivik—who killed 77 people in Norway in one day in 2011?

So, this is how Norway did it: how they reinvented the prison, their secret formula for success, and the big challenges still ahead.

Origins

As a matter of fact, Norway’s prisons used to look just like this. So how did Norway get here? This paper explains everything, and it holds many of the secrets that make Norway’s prisons work. It’s a study commissioned by the government in the 1970s, about how to fix the country’s broken prison system.

You see, not long ago, Norway’s prisons were basically stuck in the mid 1800s. Back then, Norway built their first formal prisons or penitentiaries. The philosophy of these institutions was that though isolation, prayer, and bible study, criminals could see their errors and change themselves.

But 100 years later, it was becoming clear that penitentiaries just didn’t work. Intensive isolation produced madness as often as enlightenment, and by the 1970s, things were getting bad. The country was urbanizing. Crime was rising, and without functional prisons, reincarceration rates climbed too. Prisons became incubators for more crime, and many Norwegians could see this old approach just wasn’t working. (B)

So, the government commissioned this report. Inside, the findings and the recommendations were radical. Instead of individual moral sin,

the report blamed systemic social ills for most crime. Instead of physical or spiritual punishment, the report recommended sympathetic rehabilitation.

When the Justice Minister Inger Louise Valle presented it, she was nearly laughed out of Parliament by her own party. (A, 39; C)

In the end, her reforms were ignored, so in the 1980s, things got worse. Crime rose further, as drug use and trafficking exploded. Recidivism reached rates of 80%. Norway wasn’t safe. Neither were its prisons.

In 1989, a guard was killed by an inmate. Two years later, it happened again. While many could tell Norway’s penal philosophy wasn’t working, nobody felt it like the prison guards. To them, change couldn’t come fast enough.

So in the 1990s, they looked back at this report, found some lessons, and catapulted Norway’s prisons out of the 1800s with the first of four principles: no more fengselsvakt — no more prison guards. (A, 39-40)

I. Fengselsbetjent

In place of the fengselsvakt would be fengselsbetjent. Prison guards were now prison officers. But this was much more than a name change.

Instead of merely enforcing punishment and restrictions, the prison officer was tasked with actively facilitating rehabilitation. That required three big changes: education, contact officers, and dynamic security.

For education, in Norway they have a university specifically for prison officers. Here, they spend two full years with pay studying psychology, criminology, law, human rights, and ethics. Before this, prison guards had only a nine-week training course.

In America, many states require four weeks or less of training. Some only require 48 hours. (P, Q)

According to Harald Føsker—who directed Norway’s prison officer university for 30 years—the objective is to produce officers who can “handle the responsibility that is entailed in having power…[and who have] the belief that people can change their pattern of action.” (A, 19) By the way, I want you to remember this guy, Harald Føsker. He’s going to suffer a terrible catastrophe later, and his perspective is really important. But first, let’s continue.

Now, the fengselsbetjent is not responsible for rehabilitation. That lies with the prisoner alone. But the well-educated prison officer can support that process. To that end, every prison officer also serves as a contact officer to at least one inmate. Kind of like guidance counselors, they help inmates navigate their time in prison, advise them on their life plan after release, and even assist them with job and housing applications. (A, 16)

For this relationship to be productive, Norway employs one of its strangest tools: “dynamic security.” Imagine security in an American prison. What do you picture?

Guards standing on elevated walkways, watching with guns in their hands, ready to unleash a hail of rubber bullets. Punisher tattoos. An iron first. They are enforcers.

In Norway, however, prison officers aren’t armed with guns. They don’t stand aloof, stepping in only to intervene or to punish. Instead, they walk among the prisoners. They join them in workouts. They eat their meals together, play soccer and video games together. Dynamic security means living with the prisoners, joining them in their daily activities.

This may sound crazy, but it allows officers to establish relationships vital to really understanding the inmates—their strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and risks. (A, 15) And this completely turns the traditional prisoner-guard relationship on its head. Yes, the prison officer is still an authority figure. But he’s like a mentor, a colleague. A boss you can play pick up ball with. A teacher you can talk to about real life.

II. Normalitetsprinsippet

Above all, dynamic security introduces the inmates to normal daily interactions with normal people—rather than criminals. Which is also why you heard that right; many Norwegian prisoners cook their own meals and play video games. Giving prisoners access to kitchen knives and a playstation might sound indulgent or even dangerous, but outside of prison, this is normal.

And that is the second of Norway’s four genius principles: normalitetsprinsippent, or the normality principle.

According to Are Høidal and Nina Hanssen—authors of The Norwegian Prison System—the normality principle is “the idea that life inside prison should be as close as possible to life in the community.” (A, xvii) Four standout examples show what this means in practice: bedrooms, political rights, skills training, and community contact.

First, the bedrooms. Norwegian prisoners have their own cells, frequently with their own bathrooms, showers, televisions, desks, and more — just as normal people do in the normal world. This affords them not just privacy, but responsibility for the maintenance of their own spaces—a crucial skill for living an upright, organized life once released. (A, 47)

Norwegian prisoners also have the same political rights as any other citizen. Convicts retain the right to vote and receive the same social services everyone in Norway receives: healthcare, education, and more. The point is not to cast criminals out of society. It’s to train them to participate in it peacefully and productively. And you can’t do that if you don’t treat them like fellow citizens. (A, 99)

Of course, that means learning to work productively too. At Halden, one of Norway’s newest and most famous prisons, most inmates go to work each morning, partake in recreation in the afternoon, and are not locked up again until 8:30 at night. Like cooking for themselves, this builds normal and healthy daily routines, and it even builds real qualifications to work as mechanics, carpenters, or chefs. (D)

And lastly, prisons seek to maintain inmates’ connections to their outside communities. Prisoners are allowed regular conjugal visits, and at Halden, fathers in prison can even reserve a separate cabin within the prison to stay privately with their family for up to 48 hours. Maintaining social bonds improves re-entry into society and preserves community ties which are essential to avoiding reincarceration in the future. (A, xvi)

It can almost seem like this obsession with “normality” is an attempt to make prison not a punishment, but this is a mistake. In Norway, the principle is that the prison sentence—the loss of liberty—is itself punishment enough. Beyond this, there’s no reason to seek to make someone’s life miserable. In fact, that’s just counter-productive.

As Are Høidal, co-author of this book and director of Halden prison points out, “In Norway, all will be released — there are no life sentences. So we are releasing your neighbor. If we treat inmates like animals in prison, then we will release animals on to your street.” (D)

III. Fengselsstrappen

That’s why people like Høidal prefer not to call the prison sentence by its literal Norwegian name, “fengselsstraffen.” Instead, they prefer, “fengselsstrappen”—“prison staircase.”

Because a time in prison is not a sentence to be served out. It’s a transitional period from social dysfunction to social function—a staircase from one place to another. That is why the fengselsstrappen is the third Norwegian prison principle, and this is what it means.

Norway has three types of prisons: closed prisons, open prisons, and transitional housing. Closed prisons are typical prisons—walls, fences, etc—albeit with all of the odd Norwegian additions we've been talking about. Open prisons allow inmates out into the community during the day. And transitional housing allows inmates to live independent lives with some restrictions and monitoring by social workers.

On their own, these categories aren’t all that unusual, but it’s how Norway uses them. Here, the plan is for all high-security prisoner to eventually take steps down the fengselsstrappen, down the staircase, to lower security institutions before release. On top of that, Norway also uses ankle-bracelet location monitoring as an even less life-disruptive correctional tool.

Not only does this graduated process ease the transition back into society, ask yourself—if the prison can’t move someone into a lower security facility, how can they release them into the public? (A, 7) Norway is so confident in the fengselsstrappen that—unlike in many American states—ex cons aren't required to disclose their criminal history on job applications, except for some sensitive jobs like school-teachers. And it’s easy to see why, when only one in four will return to a life of crime.

Of course, this transition can still be rocky. Employers do discriminate, if they suspect applicants are former prisoners. Worse, debt and economic despair frequently accompany and motivate criminality. When someone is sent to prison for 8 months—the average Norwegian sentence—interest on their debts continues to grow. And though they retain rights to vote and receive social services, Norwegian convicts lose any government pensions they might have, while they’re in prison.

IV. Samfunn

All this should combine into a serious economic hurdle that drives up the rate of reincarceration, but this is where Norway’s fourth principle comes in. It may be the country’s most essential secret ingredient in this whole recipe: samfunn, or society.

Norway has a high trust society. They have an extensive welfare state that provides for citizens from cradle to grave—from family leave to education, from labor laws to medical treatment, all the way to generous government pensions. Across the political spectrum people believe in providing for everyone; not just for some. (E, F, G) This is subsidized by Norway’s oil wealth, but Norwegians also pay high taxes, and other less-resource-rich Scandinavian and European countries have similar social philosophies.

And this egalitarian samfunn or society picks up a lot of the slack for those who have trouble finding their feet outside prison. Though not omnipotent, the social safety net significantly reduces pressure to return to crime to make ends meet, and volunteer organizations like Nettverk etter Soning—”Network After Prison”—help bridge the gap that’s left. (A, 77)

So I’ve led you on a little bit. I’ve made it seem like if only we copied the Norwegians systems—the fengselsbetjent or prison officers, the normalitetsprinsippet or normality principle, and the fengselsstrappen or prison staircase—we could turn our prisons from hellscapes of rape and gang violence and criminal incubation into idyllic institutions. Of course it was never going to be that simple. Norway’s genius prisons are downstream of Norway’s healthy samfunn. But that society isn’t perfect and neither are the prisons.

Challenges

Rates of suicide in Norwegian prisons are very high: out of every 100,000 prisoners, as many as 180 may kill themselves. In the United States, it may be as low as 24 per 100,000. (I)

For this, you can blame a small sample size but also probably the greater independence afforded to Norwegian prisoners. That’s also probably why drug use remains a big problem in Norwegian prisons, compared to other countries. (A, 59)

Norway also continues to practice solitary confinement more than most European peers. However, it is used far less than in America, and—unlike in America—there are extensive rules surrounding when it can be used and for how long. (A, 57-63)

Moreover, what seem like smart solutions in the Norwegian system may sometimes be counter-productive. Ankle bracelet monitoring has become much more common, but this practice has removed a lot of lower-level offenders from the prison system, who were helpful in generating normality in the prisons compared to more serious criminals. (A, 83)

There’s also, of course, the cost. Norwegian prisons are expensive; it’s no surprise. Here, imprisoning one person for a year costs about $100,000, on average. In America, the cost varies wildly across the country, but on average is probably close to $40,000: less than half Norway’s spend.

Increased rates of immigration have also caused difficulties. Norway spends so much on its prisoners because they want to make good neighbors. But, what if a criminal is to be deported, rather than become someone’s neighbor?

In recent years, the percentage of the prison population that is foreign born has increased, reaching 25% today. (A, 21) Though most have legally migrated from elsewhere in the EU, approximately half of this 25% will be deported at the end of their sentence. (K)

That’s why Norway imprisons most illegal migrants at a special facility near Oslo that lacks many of the humane features that characterize their other prisons.

Yet these challenges are not fatal. Immigration is a thorny issue in every democratic society—not just Norway, and hardly just in their prisons. And while Norwegian prisoners are two-and-a-half times as expensive as American prisoners, that’s leaving a lot out.

America imprisons people ten times more often than Norway does. (H) In prison, they serve four times longer. And when they get out, they’re three times as likely to return. Put all that together, and suddenly Norway’s approach doesn’t seem so expensive after all.

Conclusion

Yet there is a deeper problem, beyond mere practicality. Even in the progressive Norwegian system, prisons are still a place of punishment. That punishment may be limited—restricted as much as possible merely to deprivation of liberty—on account of “human” rights.

But what do you do with the criminal who seems almost…inhuman? In 2011, Anders Breivik bombed a government building in downtown Oslo. At the same time, he traveled to a youth summer camp on an island and executed dozens of teenagers. He killed 77 people in one day.

In court, Breivik disputed the label of “child-murderer” by saying, “I killed no one under fourteen.” He called his murder spree, “sophisticated and spectacular” and justified it as a response to, “feminism, gender quotas, … the destruction of social norms, … [and] multicultural ideology.” (L, 441)

How do you deal with someone like this, when you have no life sentence? No death penalty? How could he ever be someone’s neighbor again?

In Norway, they sentenced him to 21 years, the legal maximum sentence. In prison, he has a private multi-room apartment. In his abundant free time, he plays video games, composes musings on white racial supremacy, and concocts ludicrous faux old norse names for himself. (M, N) He will never be rehabilitated.

But even Breivik does not pose a fatal challenge to the Norwegian system. Because that 21-year maximum sentence can actually be extended indefinitely every five years. It’s unlikely he ever sets foot outside those walls again, and that’s a good thing.

But perhaps you still feel something is missing. I know I do. I want someone like that to suffer. The idea of him enjoying himself, at all, is honestly disturbing. But what right do I have to say what is just?

Remember this guy from the beginning of the video? His name is Harald Føsker. He directed Norway’s prison officer university for 30 years and said his mission was to train officers who believed that “people can change their pattern of action.” (A, 19)

He’s wearing those dark glasses because in 2011, he was blinded by a bomb in downtown Oslo planted by Anders Breivik. This man lost his sight and spent months in a hospital because of Breivik. Yet when he was face-to-face with Breivik in court, Føsker still defended the Norwegian prison system and said, “I haven’t changed these attitudes and values.” (A, 49)

And, in the end, that is the secret. That is how Norway has the world’s softest prisons and also one of the safest societies. Because Norwegians believe in their prison system, in rehabilitation, even when they are faced with some of the most barbaric cruelty imaginable, because they believe in and trust each other. Norway’s humane prisons work because they’re an extension of a humane society built on a foundation of sincerely held public values.

In America, as many as one in five inmates may be raped in prison. Three in four will return to prison within five years. Few will ever be granted a real opportunity to re-enter society.

We have a broken system. I do believe that if America adopted some of Norway’s practices—the fengselsbetjent or prison officers, the normalitetsprinsippet or normality principle, and the fengselsstrappen or prison staircase—these strategies would do real, lasting good to many.

But they alone can't truly fix the inhuman prison regime we have in this country, because they are all downstream of Norway's society, its samfunn. Theirs is a system that asserts, in every facet of life, from welfare to prisons, that a human being deserves to be treated as human, and as equal to all fellow humans.

As the prisoner-turned-statesman Nelson Mandela said, “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”

To reform America’s broken prisons, then, means to reform America itself. A tall task, to be sure, but taking some notes is a good place to start.

Postscript

Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed that, consider subscribing, sharing, and helping us tell more stories that matter to democracy by grabbing some merch or joining the Patreon for an exclusive behind-the-scenes podcast. And leave a comment — do you think the Norwegian system works?

Sources

✱. Sources on average sentence lengths in America are very challenging to find, mostly because the US prison system is so diffuse. The average federal sentence is about 50 months, but this number is distorted by the typically more severe nature of federal crimes and sentences. Our estimate of 32 months is based on all my research and reading from many sources. It is probably an underestimate. The same disclaimer about diffuse data applies to all other statistics about American prisons. This should itself be an indictment of the American system. We cannot fix what we cannot understand.

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