There's a Lockdown in Cellblock 'Magiker'...

...because Arne shiv'ed someone with a Solig. Punish him with the comfyPoäng chair!

OK, that's enough flippancy. Today I want to post about something serious. Swedish prisons. Matt Yglesias, commenting on the seemingly flippant attitude of the Swedish men being sent to prison for running the Pirate Bay file-trading service, registers surprise at how indulgent Swedish prisons seem to be (h/t Ed Philp):

But the long and short of it is that, as I understand it, the Swedish system basically understands criminal activity as overwhelmingly stemming from substance abuse problems, mental illness, and ... labor market problems. Consequently, though the prisoners are certainly closely supervised, the conditions in prison are extremely humane and not especially “punitive.” The emphasis is on trying to help people with their problems and trying to ensure that dangerous people aren’t out and about on the streets.

This seems like an opportune occasion for a long, wonky post. From a link within Yglesias's story, we are led to a Ynet article about three Israelis in Swedish prisons who turned down an opportunity to be sent back to Israel to finish serving their sentences:

In Sweden, however, it appears that the imprisonment conditions are so good that three Israelis jail there are not even considering leaving. Every prisoner has his own cell with a television airing the World Cup games for free; every six months, the prisoner gets to tour the streets of Stockholm accompanied by a police car; and the highlight – every prisoner has a the right to a three-day conjugal right in a three-room luxury apartment in the prison.

The official explanation of the purpose of prison in Sweden comes from Sweden's central prison agency, the Kriminalvarden:

Being in prison is punishment. However, it is also a chance to acquire knowledge and experience that reduces the risk of new crime after release. The Prison and Probation Service has extensive programs to give prisoners the prerequisites for life in freedom, free of crime.

Prisoners are offered job training, substance-abuse treatment, and regular contact with the outside world, so that they don't become 'institutionalized.' 

I'm always interested in differences in criminal-justice policy between countries, and how they emerge. Part of Sweden's luxury prisons are down to Swedes' less punitive attitudes. Ordinary Swedes are significantly less punitive than Britons or Americans in their attitudes -- nevertheless, they're still pretty punitive (and increasingly punitive) in their attitudes toward crime (pdf -- pp. 15 & 16). As recently as mid-2001, 49% of Swedes endorsed the return of the death penalty for murder. Thus, the fact that generous prison conditions exist in Sweden doesn't mean that all Swedes endorse that state of affairs.

When writers compare criminal-justice policies, they often begin talking about history and 'values' and 'national character', but frequently ignore a critical factor: who actually makes those policies. As in most other European countries, Swedish criminal-justice policies are created by teams of elite experts. Generally, the government will set up a commission consisting of criminal-law professors, criminologists, psychologists, high-ranking civil servants, judges, and perhaps a few representatives from the bar, as well as police and prison-guard unions. Together, they will work out an entire criminal code in a series of sittings which may last years.

This criminal code will then generally passed by Parliament with few or no revisions. This, at least, was the pattern in Germany, and according to this article, the Swedish process was similar. In fact, major criminal-law reforms came in the mid-1960s in Sweden, as opposed to 1969 in Germany. Prison policies are created in a similar fashion -- top-down, by a select committee drawn from a group of policy experts such as criminologists, psychologists and judges. Prison personnel are almost always well-trained and well-paid civil servants with high unionization rates, excellent job security, and a relatively strong sense of obedience to the mission of the agency they work for.

In countries such as Sweden, thus, we have a situation in which the general public has no direct influence on criminal-justice policy or prison conditions. Even if there is a large shift in public opinion toward one of the more conservative parties, this won't change things much, for several reasons. First, piecemeal changes to criminal laws are generally avoided, since they might disrupt the "balance" of the overall legislative framework created by the expert commission. Anything more than minor reforms to the criminal laws will generally be put off until the next commission can be assembled to articulate a basic reform -- and that often takes decades.

Further, the conservative and left parties generally agree on their basic attitudes toward criminal-justice policy. On criminal-justice issues, the key divide in European societies is between the 15-20% of the educated elite and the rest of society. Virtually all high-ranking politicians and professors belong to this elite, and they all share basic attitudes toward crime and prisons, such as opposition to the death penalty, suspicion of penal populism, and commitment to human-rights principles. This policy-making elite intentionally designs systems -- such as blue-ribbon panels and steering committees -- that insulate criminal-justice policy from the vagaries of public opinion.

To European elites, this insulation of criminal-justice policy from public opinion is a feature, not a bug. Creating a just and workable criminal-justice system, they believe, takes extensive training in psychology, criminology, law, and a few other disciplines as well. The 'common man' could no more design a proper penal system than he could a nuclear reactor. This is a fundamental difference in world-view and political structure between Europe and the United States, but it's not often well-understood by commentators -- despite my frequent long, boring posts!

Comments

[jaylor]

very well put on the euro/us difference. I've been puzzling over how "populism" seems to only have negative connotations in a european context, and this kind of attitude certainly helps to explain that. One question then is how the "common man" feels about this insulation of expertise, and I guess the answer is that rarely outrage sufficient to bring about effective mobilization.

[Frederik]

In this week "SZ-Magazin" is a article by Heribert Prantl about his week in a german "Reformknast". Mabey it is of interest for you.
http://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/29094
and here he writes about the same topic:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/420/466998/text/

There was also a huge article in the "Zeit Magazin" (dont know when it was out, i think 2-3 weeks ago) about easy going in an skandinavian prison. Mostly positive i guess (I only saw the pictures).

[sarasara]

I wish there was an English version of the Japanese film "Keimusho no naka", but there doesn't even seem to be a clip on youtube, so you'd get to see how Japanese inmates spend there days here... this is the only pic I could find.
mostly 6 people live in one room on tatami mats.
Interestingly those sentenced to life are trained to carve portable shrines or Buddha statues (as training takes about 10 years, before you get anywhere and it's not really a popular job among young people).