The pains of freedom: Assessing the ambiguity of Scandinavian penal exceptionalism on Norway’s Prison Island

Abstract

Where is the pain in exceptional prisons? A new generation of prisons produces unusual 'pains of imprisonment' which scholars of punishment are only beginning to catalog. This article brings the reader inside the social milieu of Norway's 'Prison Island', a large, minimum security ('open') prison. Here inmates live in self-organized cottages and enjoy relatively unrestricted freedom of movement. But even under exceptional conditions of Scandinavian incarceration, new vectors and modes of punishment arise that produce 'pains of freedom', a notion drawing on Crewe's historicizing examination of Sykes' concept. Serving as an addition to conventional sociological conceptualizations of prison pains, the 'pains of freedom' can be classified into five sub-categories: (1) confusion; (2) anxiety and boundlessness; (3) ambiguity; (4) relative deprivation; and (5) individual responsibility. Based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with 15 inmates, it is shown that freedom is occasionally experienced as ambiguous, bittersweet or tainted. These new pains may be indicative of what is in stock for clients of future penal regimes in other societies.

Inside the Belly of the Penal Beast: Understanding the Experience of Imprisonment

“…Some, such as the length of prison officer training and the availability of education courses and structured programmes, are 'inputs' or 'outputs'. Whether they lead to a better quality of experience for prisoners remains an empirical question: prisoners do not always welcome offending behaviour courses, for example, if their content is considered infantilising, or if attendance is in effect mandatory (see Crewe 2009;Shammas 2014). Others, like the length of prison visits or the cost and availability of prison phone calls, are good starting points for cross-jurisdictional comparison, but may occlude as much as they expose, unless they are supplemented with greater detail.…”

Mass supervision, misrecognition and the ‘Malopticon’

“…Many of these studies, like Crewe's, have begun to examine (directly and indirectly) the pains of rehabilitation in its current risk-focused guise (see Shammas 2014, for a related analysis from a quite different jurisdiction). The late-modern penal subject is, it seems, compelled not just to internalize the 'shell as hard as steel' but to display how it has re-fashioned his or her riskiness; thus performing the internalised containment of risk.…”

Sustaining the Development Goals in Drug Approaches in Europe, Norway and Singapore

“…There is a freedom of movement within the penal institute. All of the above serves to act as a "socialization mechanism", acclimatizing the inmate to the outside world by enabling and empowering smooth transition from the penal institute to the outside world upon release (Shammas, 2014). 27 Perhaps that may be the reason for having one of the lowest recidivism and incarceration rates in the world (Sterbenz, 2014;Jilani, 2011).…”

“…First, there is a rise in punitive laws premised on increasing political rhetoric on crime, punishment and law and order. 30 Second, there has been a downsizing of fiscal expenditure for rehabilitative policies due to reducing homogenous population and increasing ethnonational class lines (Shammas, 2014). About 30.9% of the prison population are foreigners (World Prison Brief, n.d.) and this has resulted in a dual prison system, one catering to citizens and another for foreigners (Ugelvik, 2013).…”