As presently organised, our prisons are violent places, but it doesn’t have to be that way. One country with an enlightened prison policy is Norway, which has much less prison violence and a lower reoffending or recidivism rate.
In Norway the answer is not more guards, but treating prisoners with respect and giving them a lifestyle similar to that outside the wall. Prisoners live in civilized group accommodation, purchasing and cooking their own food and moving around in relative freedom. They have access to computers, classes, a variety of work opportunities, and pretty much all the normal things of life.
The guards are more like social workers whose role includes trying to “understand how they came to be criminals and then help them to change.” The guards “socialize with the inmates every day, often over tea, coffee and meals.”
Being a prison guard is high status. One guard told journalist Erwin James that her family were “very proud” of her: “It takes three years to train to be a prison guard in Norway. She looks at me in disbelief when I tell her that in the UK prison officer training is just six weeks.”
As Bastoy prison governor Arne Nilsen puts it, “the [only] punishment [for a prisoner] is that you lose your freedom.” Everything else is geared to helping them and facilitating rehabilitation. “If we treat people like animals when they are in prison,” says Nilsen, “they are likely to behave like animals. Here were pay attention to you as human beings.”
Although prison practices have improved in New Zealand there is still too much regimentation and too little attention to the individual needs of prisoners. It is no accident that prisoners often resort to violence. Commonly, it is to get respect, especially from other prisoners. Norwegian inmates don’t need to use their fists to get respect: the prison environment is already structured to provide it.
Norwegian prisoners from a violent background are probably in a less violent situation inside the prison than they were outside. The opposite is often true in New Zealand jails, where there are benefits for being on side with most physically powerful prisoners, or groups of prisoners – and a code of silence is strictly enforced.
Retribution for narking is the main reason that authorities could get no “hard evidence” of the Mt Eden prison “Fight Clubs” before the recent videos appeared. My information is that every Mt Eden inmate knew about it – gossip is the main currency in prisons – but that the authorities turned a blind eye.
the norway model is great..but in the short-term..
..giving them access to cannabis would reduce violence/tension..to a huge degree..
(..i know pigs will take flight before that happens..but that doesn’t reduce the efficacies of that approach/prescription..)
..i did a lag some decades back..and there were only a handful of days over a couple of years i was unable to get toasted..
(and pretty much nil violence..the screws knew..they also knew that pot made the place a lot more mellow/easier for them..)
we prisoners worked in a co-op model..five or six of us..and if anyone was holding..we all got stoned..and it was always high-quality pot/hash or honey-oil..(the honey-oil was the best..minimal-smell/ease of use..great high..!..)
(in fact..on one home-leave..i was given a heads-up there was a pot-drought in auckland..so i smuggled a bunch out with me..and went around auckland turning on (grateful) friends with my high-end boob-dope..heh..!..)
so/anyway..back on topic..let them smoke pot…and most prison-violence problems will disappear..in a puff of smoke..(as it were..)
..and to those who say ‘why coddle them?’..i wd note that the punishment of having your freedom taken away from you is more than enough.
..there is no need to also grind boots on the backs of their necks..
I’m totally in agreement with the Norwegian model but my immediate thought on reading the second paragraph was how bizarre their ideas sound!
It’s a testament to the level of debate about prisons in this country that I was literally shocked to read something that wasn’t punishment oriented.
Thanks for the links Keith, I can’t see much hope of things changing soon in NZ but at least a few of us have learnt something today.
I have had some experience; although some time ago, of our penal system. I could never understand why if the aim was to rehabilitate while being punished with lack of freedom, that the place was run by the typical high school bully and the university educated social workers and people interested in rehabilitation were subject to their sadistic whims. I got involved in yoga , toastmasters and higher education and managed to turn my life around, these activities however were not supported by the screws and they seemed to do their best to disrupt these programs. eg forgetting the yoga teacher and leaving him locked in waiting room until to late for class.
It’s called misery and demoralization by design. It’s all going to change very soon as what is known as The Golden Age slowly creeps in and those “on the outside” are quickly re-educated first into understanding that the current rules and regulations – for us all – were never appropriate.
Sir Peter Williams worked extremely hard on prison reform, but unfortunately it is still a long way from becoming a reality.
Sir Peter will be turning in his grave at the latest disgraceful revelations to emerge from Serco/Mt Eden prison!
Yes Keith, I remember a government working party going through the Scandinavian countries quite a few years ago. They came back with all the information you’ve displayed in your blog as well as many recommendations for our own system.
So why has absolutely nothing been done to change to this model?
Well for a start, you’ve got fuckwits like Garth McVicar and his Punishment Eternal group. He carries political clout way out of proportion to his group’s size but gets seized on eagerly by the blockhead neo-liberals who, let’s face it, do not love anyone who is not a big earner, and see this punitive system as a way to save money.
And we have to assume that the dunderheaded middle ground approve of all this shit because, after all, they did vote them in.
Aotearoa/New Zealand has become a nation of very nasty spiteful people and taking the time and money to follow the Scandinavian model is going to continually meet with resistance.
So be proud, New Zealand, that your prisons are such compounds of torture and humiliation and don’t even meet the basic requirements of UN standards. In no time at all we’ll be keeping Saudi Arabia company.
Aren’t you fucking wonderful…
Back in the late 70’s early 80’s the then Justice Department had a psychologist employed by Justice who proposed the exact same thing for New Zealand prisons,
I cannot for the life of me remember his name, Ross some-one-or-other i think, and obviously his idea,(perhaps modeled on that in your post), got a public airing and a bigger ignoring,
Myself having done more than a couple of lags would say that there was pretty much little alternative in light of the behavior which got me the time,
My observations of my fellow prisoners of the time is that half of them probably should not have been in the prison system in the first place and the State would have better spent the taxpayers dollars on having as many residential drug and alcohol treatment placements as it had prison cells,
I would add one more category to alcohol and drug treatment as well and that would be treating the end results of a dysfunctional education among offenders in residential education centers,
The most effective means of rehabilitating an offender is not to send them anywhere near a New Zealand Prison full stop….
You are so right – no doubt it would be smarter and more compassionate to follow the Norweigan model… I wish NZ politicians would use their common sense on this one. It also makes better economic sense to follow Norway. I don’t believe in locking up any but the absolute worst offenders in cages – Prison isn’t an answer. Most people are basically good and will do better and even change if given half the chance.
With this crap government we can only hope and pray for improvements, and for less violence in our prisons, as it is so distant a future to see, it is simply a hopeless dream.
The government under Key and his gang have fully signed up to the same approach to all kinds of social problems and challenges, as the UK governments have done.
There, like here now, it is all about privatising, outsourcing and contracting out services, and to turn the persons that are supposed to get serviced and helped, into nothing but commodities.
Profit is encouraged, yes, they believe people will only do things for a monetary reward, not for any other motivation, and that is their damned ideology.
So they go, whether it is prisons, getting mentally ill into whatever jobs, getting sole parents into unstable, low paid work, getting kids with challenges into charter schools and getting a national convention centre funded by a large casino operator.
Indeed it is a casino mentality that rules this government, that is their mindset, Lotu Iiga was a free market promoter for his whole career, from councillor to his ministerial position now, for central government. He is one of the loyal breed, of the ones Key favours, and English of course, turn every person into a commodity, put a price on their head, and headhunters will chase the profits to be earned, and make bucks, and deliver relief for the state, by simply taking over responsibility, but under shady deals and contracts, where underperformance and failures get hidden from observers.
We will not get less violence in our prisons as long as we follow the UK and US kind of free market, money for whatever purpose and gain, philosophy. Scandinavia is on the other side of the globe, I fear the way they do things there is as far away from this country and society, as their geographical region has ever been.
We need a civil revolt, against this government, as this last week has shown endless failures and shortcomings, and their whole agenda is falling to pieces. Even the likes of Paul Henry and Mike Hosking will not be able to glue over and paint over the cracks that are evident now.
They tried the spin to say this was a bad week for Labour, but look at it closely, it was a disastrous week for National, Key and this government, it showed us all so much the last one to two days.
Maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel, around the corner, just Andrew Little, please do not stuff it up.
Okay, but what about the likes of white-collar crims? And, are we talking about punishment or rehab?
I was under the impression that prison was a punishment for a crime. Rehab is good, and very needed, but the average Joe Blogs who has been a victim of a crime, usually wants some kind of punishment meted out. As a kid, if I spoke back to my parents, I got my face slapped.
Yes, we need to reform criminals, but if they are reformed without any consequence for their crime, then it could be said that they “got away with it.”
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