Halden Prison in Norway is one of Norway’s highest-security jails, holding rapists, murderers and paedophiles. Since it opened in April 2010, at a cost of 1.3bn Norwegian kroner (£138m), it has acquired a reputation as the world’s most humane prison, and also the nicest prison on earth. It is the flagship of the Norwegian justice system, where the focus is on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
The prison is built like large landscape with layer after layer of control zones. At the far end, a large outlying area of scattered cultural landscape, then a piece of uninhabited cultural landscape. Then follows a fence, a monitored intermediate zone, then a six-meter-high concrete wall, nearly four times as tall as a man. Inside a new monitored zone, another fence, then a new zone, and then another fence.
From the outside, there are no coils of razor wire in sight, no lethal electric fences, no towers manned by snipers — nothing violent, threatening or dangerous. And yet no prisoner has ever tried to escape.
A quiet prison
Another remarkable thing is how quiet the prison is. There isn’t any of the enraged, persistent banging of doors you hear in American prisons, not least because the prisoners are not locked up much during the day.
Today, however, life has changed, also in Halden Prison.
“Prolonged and sustained budget cuts in correctional services now mean that Halden prison also has to discontinue many good, rehabilitative measures and activities for inmates. The content of sentencing conditions is weakening, and I am sorry to say that the poster we have been for Norwegian correctional services abroad is now fading,” says governor, Are Høidal.
The core of the actual prison acts as a kind of machinery that simulates a small piece of Norway. That is to say, unlike most prisons where the stay is only a waiting post between sentence and physical punishment, Halden prison is the punishment in itself: deprivation of liberty over time. But at the same time, the institution must ensure that the inmates improve their lives after and outside the control zone, in the real Norway.
Might seem like an alien
Halden prison might seem like an alien compared to other prisons. Its modern, cheerful and well-appointed facilities, the relative freedom of movement it offers, its quiet and peaceful atmosphere — these qualities are so out of sync with the forms of imprisonment found in most other countries that you could be forgiven for doubting whether this is a prison at all. It is, of course, but it is also something more: the physical expression of an entire national philosophy about the relative merits of punishment and forgiveness.
Halden prison smells of freshly brewed coffee. It hits you in the workshop areas, lingers in the games-rooms and in the communal apartment-style areas where prisoners live together in groups of eight. This much coffee makes you hungry, so a couple of hours after lunch the guards on Unit A (a quiet, separated wing where sex offenders are held for their own protection) bring inmates a tall stack of steaming, heart-shaped waffles and pots of jam, which they set down on a checked tablecloth and eat together, whiling away the afternoon.
Despite the fact that the inmates are confined and controlled, and that every detail of the person’s life is recorded and analyzed, the prisoner must also go to “school”, “work” and have “leisure time”.
Crime in Norway
The treatment of inmates at Halden is wholly focused on helping to prepare them for a life after they get out. Not only is there no death penalty in Norway; there are no life sentences. The maximum sentence for most crimes is 21 years — even for Anders Behring Breivik, who is responsible for probably the deadliest recorded rampage in the world, in which he killed 77 people and injured hundreds more in 2011 by detonating a bomb at a government building in Oslo and then opening fire at a nearby summer camp.
Andres Behring Breivik remains, however, currently in isolation in the Ila prison, a former Nazi concentration camp with a less utopian vision. However, the underlying ethos of Halden prison gives an insight into Norwegian attitudes towards justice, one that is under scrutiny as the country assesses how to deal with Breivik.
Norway banned capital punishment for civilians in 1902, and life sentences were abolished in 1981. But Norwegian prisons operated much like their American counterparts until 1998. That was the year Norway’s Ministry of Justice reassessed the Correctional Service’s goals and methods, putting the explicit focus on rehabilitating prisoners through education, job training and therapy. A second wave of change in 2007 made a priority of reintegration, with a special emphasis on helping inmates find housing and work with a steady income before they are even released. Halden was the first prison built after this overhaul, and so rehabilitation became the underpinning of its design process. Every aspect of the facility was designed to ease psychological pressures, mitigate conflict and minimize interpersonal friction.
The complicated duality of Halden prison is reflected in the architecture. Life within the control layers is aimed to stimulate a complete and normal life in what is shaped almost like a small Norwegian town. That is why you find yourself here in a small piece of hilly, domestic nature, including rocky cliffs, pine trees, plants and hares. The building mass, which is almost 30,000 square meters, is neither awe-inspiring nor massive. In line with the urban illusion, it is rather broken up into various institutional buildings, secluded housing units, and even a detached house. These are spread out along a ring road around the local sports ground and a small forest in the middle of the facility.
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Related article: Prison Life in Scandinavia
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Comparing prison costs
With one of the highest per capita gross domestic products of any country in the world, thanks to the profits from oil production in the North Sea, Norway is in a good position to provide all of this, and spending on the Halden prison runs to more than $99,000 per inmate per year, compared with just $43,836 for prisoners in the United States, according to Federal Register Bureau or non-Bureau facility in FY 2021.
When Halden opened, it attracted attention globally for its design and its relative splendor. Set in a forest, the prison blocks are a model of minimalist chic. It was awarded for best interior design, a prize given in recognition of the stylishness of the white laminated tables, tangerine leather sofas and elegant, skinny chairs dotted all over the place. At times, the environment feels more Scandinavian boutique hotel than class A prison.
Registration, custody cells, administration and the staff’s facilities are located in a building closest to the main entrance that looks like a typical Norwegian school building with dark brick, broken volumes and wings. If you follow the ring road north, you will then reach the Activity Centre, which contains work and school functions. Here is everything from large workshops for furniture and mechanics to a NAV branch (NAV is the Norwegian abbreviation for the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration), smaller classrooms and a sound studio.
Every Halden cell has a flatscreen television, its own toilet (which, unlike standard UK prison cells, also has a door) and a shower, which comes with large, soft, white towels. Prisoners have their own fridges, cupboards and desks in bright new pine, white magnetic pinboards and huge, unbarred windows overlooking mossy forest scenery.
The last post along the ring road is a small detached house intended for family visits for inmates without a leave permit. It includes a children’s room, a full kitchen and a large double sliding door from the living room to a garden with children’s toys.
Dynamic Security
The Correctional Service emphasizes what it calls “dynamic security,” a philosophy that sees interpersonal relationships between the staff and the inmates as the primary factor in maintaining safety within the prison. Dynamic security focuses on preventing bad intentions from developing in the first place. Halden’s officers are put in close quarters with the inmates as often as possible; the architects were instructed to make the guard stations tiny and cramped, to encourage officers to spend time in common rooms with the inmates instead.
Given the constraints of needing to keep 245 high-risk people incarcerated, creating an environment that was as unprisonlike as possible was a priority for the prison’s architects, HLM Arkitektur and Plan/Erik Møllers Arkitekter AS.
“The life behind the walls should be as much like life outside the walls as possible,” said architect Erik Møller.
The Nicest Prison on Earth, written by Tor Kjolberg
Feature image (on top): © Tyrili