B2-34 · Crime and Punishment: Do Prisons Work?

Crime and Punishment: Do Prisons Work?

Imagine two prisons. In the first, inmates spend up to 23 hours a day in a small concrete cell, eat in silence and are watched by armed guards. In the second, they live in rooms with a desk and a window onto the forest, cook their own meals, study for exams and call the guards by their first names. The first is typical of a high-security prison in the United States. The second is Halden, a maximum-security prison in Norway. Both hold people convicted of serious crimes. So which one works better?

Four goals of punishment

Experts usually say that prisons have four aims. They punish people for what they did (retribution). They warn others not to commit crimes (deterrence). They keep dangerous people away from the public (protection). And, ideally, they help offenders change so that they do not commit crimes again (rehabilitation). Countries differ a lot in which goal they consider most important.

The American approach

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Around two million people are behind bars – more than in any other country. The prison population grew dramatically from the 1970s, when politicians promised to be "tough on crime", and laws introduced long mandatory sentences, especially for drug offenses. Supporters of this approach argue that it removes criminals from the streets and shows that society takes crime seriously.

Critics point to the results. Studies by the U.S. Department of Justice have found that a large majority of people released from state prisons are arrested again within a few years. Prisons are also expensive: keeping one person locked up costs taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars a year. And because African Americans are imprisoned at much higher rates than white Americans, many people see the system as deeply unfair.

The Norwegian model

Norway takes a very different view. Its prisons are built on the "principle of normality": life inside should be as similar as possible to life outside, because almost every prisoner will one day return to society. The maximum sentence for most crimes is 21 years, and inmates are expected to work, study and take part in programs that prepare them for release. Guards are trained for two to three years and see themselves partly as social workers.

The results look impressive. Norway's reoffending rate is among the lowest in the world – around 20 percent of prisoners return to prison within two years. Supporters say that this makes society safer and, in the long run, saves money.

Can it be copied?

Not everyone is convinced. Norway is a small, wealthy country with strong social services, and its crime rate was low even before its prison reforms. Critics argue that a system like Halden would be too expensive or politically impossible in larger, more unequal countries. Victims and their families sometimes ask why people who have done terrible things should live in comfortable conditions. Even in Norway, the case of Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, raised difficult questions about the limits of the model.

Still, some American states, including North Dakota, have sent officials to Norway and started to introduce more education and work programs. The Czech Republic, too, has been debating how to reduce reoffending, for example by using electronic tags and community service instead of short prison sentences.

A question of values

In the end, the debate about prisons is not only about statistics. It is also about what kind of society we want to be. Fyodor Dostoevsky, who spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, is often quoted as saying that "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Whether you agree with him or not, it is a question worth asking.