Dotted around Bastøy is a church, a school and a library. In their free time, inmates have the opportunity to engage in leisure activities such as horse riding, fishing and tennis. All the guards are highly qualified, having received three years’ training for their post (compared to only six weeks in the UK), and function more like social workers than prison officers. Arne Kvernvik Nilsen, who was in charge of the prison for the five years leading up to 2013, describes his philosophy: ‘I give respect to the prisoners who come here and they respond by respecting themselves, each other and this community.’ Nilsen believes that, ‘We have to respect people’s need for revenge, but not use that as a foundation for how we run our prisons. [. . .] Should I be in charge of adding more problems to the prisoner on behalf of the state, making you an even worse threat to larger society because I have treated you badly while you are in my care?’33 The island houses perpetrators of serious crimes including murder and rape, yet, remarkably, it has the lowest reoffending rates in Europe: 16 per cent compared with a European average of about 70 per cent. And it’s one of the cheapest prisons to run in Norway.
Not all Norwegian prisons are as open and comfortable as Bastøy but they all follow a similar philosophy based on the belief that the only punishment the state should inflict is the loss of liberty. The suffering of prisoners is intentionally minimised. There is no death penalty and no life sentencing. The aim is to heal, not harm. And, whatever critics of this philosophy might say, it produces results. Across Norway, reoffending rates may be higher than for Bastøy, but they are still the lowest in Europe at 30 per cent. Across Scandinavia, penal policy is largely left to the experts. Criminologists design policy based on the evidence, and the public have largely been happy to let them do so. Along with Holland and Japan, Norway is a guiding light in the prison sector but there are campaigns in many countries to make prisons more humane.
One of the most effective strategies to stop criminals reoffending has been to provide inmates with the opportunity to study and earn formal qualifications. Where punishment has failed, education is succeeding. A meta-study by the RAND Corporation (sponsored by the US Bureau of Justice Assistance) found that, on average, inmates who participated in correctional education programmes were 43 per cent less likely to reoffend.34 The former warden of Louisiana’s biggest prison has cited figures showing that education is ‘one of the few things that work’ to keep prisoners from reoffending. At the notorious Folsom State Prison in California, reoffending rates were 55 per cent in the general population but zero for prisoners who had studied for a degree.35 A 2004 study by the University of California, Los Angeles, found that ‘Correctional education is almost twice as cost effective as incarceration’ at reducing crime.36
Another forward-thinking approach to crime and rehabilitation is ‘restorative justice’. It can take various forms, but ideally it brings together victim and perpetrator to engage in a face-to-face, mediated discussion about the crime that took place. Although it can be difficult, many victims of crime have ultimately reported feeling empowered by the process, which is entered into voluntarily. Victims are given the opportunity to explain how the crime has affected their lives, to express their feelings, and ask the questions that haunt them. Offenders have the opportunity to describe the circumstances of the crime and how they have been affected by it. They also have the opportunity to apologise for what they have done and compensate the victim in some way, ranging from community service to financial reparation. Restorative justice has produced astounding results. Numerous studies demonstrate its financial, psychological and crime-reducing value. A seven-year government-funded UK study found that, with serious offences, it reduced reoffending rates by 27 per cent, ‘leading to £9 savings for every £1 spent’.37 It also found that the majority of victims chose to participate in face-to-face meetings when given the opportunity by a trained facilitator, and that 85 per cent reported they were satisfied with the process. In 2007, a meta-study of restorative justice research projects (spanning nineteen years and covering all studies written in English) compiled by criminologists Lawrence W. Sherman and Heather Strang also found clear, positive results.38 These include reduced reoffending rates, a reduction of victims’ post-traumatic stress symptoms, more satisfaction for both victims and offenders than with court justice, a reduced desire for victims to exact violent revenge against their offenders, and significantly reduced costs.
One of the most successful prison projects in the US is the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) introduced in 1997 by the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department. The programme began in a sixty-two-bed jail unit and involved all prisoners. Within the unit itself there were no locked doors. A large central activity area was surrounded by smaller classrooms and meeting rooms. For twelve hours a day, six days a week, it delivered an intensive schedule of activity including art, creative writing, group discussion, academic classes, theatre, role-playing, counselling, and meetings and talks with survivors of violence. Prisoners took part for as long as their sentences permitted, ranging from a few days to more than a year. The results of this experiment were stunning.39 In-house violence dropped from twenty-four serious incidents a year to zero for the twelve months following the first month of the programme, and reoffending rates for those who spent at least sixteen weeks in the programme were 83 per cent lower than for a comparable group of prisoners outside the programme. And it saved taxpayers about $4 for every $1 spent.
The first form of institutional punishment we encounter is at school. We can be shouted at, detained, suspended and expelled. According to the United States Department of Education, the 2011 to 2012 school year saw 130,000 students expelled from school and 7 million suspensions (one for every seven students).40 The traditional paradigm of punishment tells us that students who exhibit disruptive, challenging or violent behaviour must be controlled through reward and punishment. Contemporary research tells a different story: traditional approaches to disruptive behaviour often make things worse. Too often, punishments escalate from verbal warnings to expulsion without any behavioural improvement. The logic of deterrence fails and, once expelled, the likelihood of a child ending up in juvenile detention greatly increases.
American clinical child psychologist Dr Ross Greene has pioneered an approach now known as Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS). It starts with the assumption that kids want to do well. If they’re not doing well, it’s because they lack the necessary skills. Disruptive children are not simply attention-seeking, manipulative or poorly motivated, they are struggling to meet the demands being made of them. CPS takes seriously the fact that the rules and expectations of the classroom and schoolyard do not bear equally on all. For instance, children with learning disabilities and diagnosed behaviour problems are twice as likely to be suspended and three times more likely to be imprisoned than their peers.41
Instead of blaming young people for their disruptive behaviour, Greene urges teachers to try to understand the source of it and work with them to get beyond it. When a student acts in a disruptive or destructive way, he advises taking the following simple steps: find the time to gather information from the child to understand as clearly as possible his or her perspective, share with them your own concerns, then brainstorm with the child in order to arrive at a workable solution to avoid similar behaviour in future. It’s a strategy that aims to equip students with the tools to solve their own problems. Key to its success are staff willing to develop new skills themselves and to cultivate strong relationships with students, particularly those with challenging behaviour.
Central School in Maine has implemented a number of Greene’s ideas. Before CPS, says Principal Nina D’Aran, ‘we spent a lot of time trying to diagnose children by talking to each other . . . Now we’re talking to the child and really believing the child when they say what the problems are.’42 To some, this will sound unrealistic given the demands of modern schooling, but at Central School D’Aran has observed a dramatic change. Disciplinary referrals to her office have dropped by over two-thirds and suspensions have dropped from two a year to zero. She puts it down to ‘meeting the child’s needs and solving problems instead of controlling behavior’.43 It’s hard work, demanding for both kids and adults, but so far the results suggest it is well worth the effort. Since CPS has been applied in a number of other schools, disciplinary referrals and suspensions have dropped by