This photo tour of Norway’s Bastoy Prison reveals why this facility is called “the world’s nicest prison” and why its methods work so well.
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It has been called"the Norwegian prison house that works"as well as"the world ’s nicest prison,“and it ’s not backbreaking to see why .
At Bastoy Prison , inmates live communally in comfortable home . Each man has his own way and shares the kitchen and other facilities with the other con . A meal a day is provide for them ; any other solid food must be buy from the local supermarket and prepared by the captive themselves , who receive an allowance of $ 90 a calendar month .
Bjorn, sentenced to five-and-a-half years for attempted murder, watches television in the living room of the wooden cottage where he lives.
The yard bird also earn roughly eight dollars a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. on a multifariousness of jobs that include develop solid food , look after horses , repairing bicycles , doing woodwork , and maintaining Bastoy Island ’s deftness . Every inmate is offered high - quality breeding and training programme to increase their skills .
The prison house is on an island one square mile in sizing and host 115 inmates with a stave of 69 prison employee . Only five employees stay on the island overnight .
In their free prison term , inpatient have the chance to chaffer the Christian church , school day , or program library , and betroth in leisure activity such as horse riding , fishing , and lawn tennis . All the guards have received three age ' training ( compared to perhaps six months in the US ) , and resemble social workers more than prison officers .
" It is not just because Bastoy is a nice spot , a pretty island to serve prison time , that people convert , " Arne Kvernvik Nilsen , who was in charge of Bastoy Prison for the five years extend up to 2013 , toldthe Guardian . " The faculty here are very authoritative . They are like social workers as well as prison house guards . They think in their work and know the difference of opinion they are making . "
Nilsen has revolutionary thoughts about how prisons should be run . He also acknowledges the difficulties that the public faces in rethinking how prisoner should be treated :
" If someone did very serious harm to one of my girl or my family … I would plausibly want to kill them . That ’s my response . But as a prison governor or politician , we have to approach this in a different way . We have to prize people ’s need for retaliation , but not employ that as a foundation for how we consort our prisons … Should I be in charge of bestow more problem to the captive on behalf of the body politic , making you an even bad threat to magnanimous society because I have treated you badly while you are in my concern ? We have sex that prison house harms people . I look at this stead as a place of healing , not just of your societal wounds but of the wound inflicted on you by the country in your four or five years in eight square meters of eminent security department . "
Bastoy Prison house culprit of serious crimes including execution and ravishment , yet it has the last reoffending pace in Europe : 16 per centum , compare with a European average of about 70 percent . And it ’s one of the cheapest prisons to run in Norway .
Ironically , before the current prison , the island was occupied by a brutal adolescent detention midpoint . In 1915 , it was the site of an rising by the boys , which was suppress by the Norwegian armed services . The insurrection began when between 30 and 40 boys rallied around four youths who had escaped and been recaptured . The group refused to work , armed themselves with agriculture tools and stone , make out the telephone lines and then burned down a b with steal friction match and cigars .
The Norwegian government took over the puerile facility in 1953 and shut it down in 1970 . In 1982 , the prison house was re - opened as the experimental project that has evolve into the Bastoy Prison of today .
Not all Norwegian correctional facilities are as progressive as Bastoy Prison , but they all follow a like philosophy based on the belief that the only penalisation that the Department of State should impose is the loss of liberty . The hurt of captive is intentionally understate . There is no death penalty and no life condemn .
" fall behind liberty is sufficient punishment , " Nilsen say . " Once in hands , we should focalize on reducing the danger that offender perplex to society after they leave prison house . "
Across Norway as a whole , reoffending rates sit at just 30 percent , the modest in Europe . Perhaps this is because Scandinavia penal insurance is mostly left to the expert , as opposed to politicians and the populace . Criminologists design policy base on the evidence and the public have largely been content to let them do so .
" For victims , there will never be a prison that is tough , or hard , enough , " said Nilsen . " But they need another type of assistance – keep to deal out with the experience , rather than the government simply punishing the offender in a way that the victim rarely sympathize and that does very little to help heal their wounds . pol should be substantial enough to be fair about this issue . "
Next , footstep inside the fiveworst prison in the world . Then , take whichsurprising food itemrecently became the most valuable currency in American prison .
