Treat People Like Animals Long Enough and They Become Them

Treat People Like Animals Long Enough and They Become Them

Story highlights

• Bastoy prison is on an isle in southern Norway
• At that place are no fences or armed guards; inmates concord the keys to locks
• Inmates have admission to beaches, horses and a sauna
• Kingdom of norway's unique justice organization has been in the spotlight since a terror assault last summertime

Jan Petter Vala, who is serving a prison judgement for murder, has hands the size of dinner plates and shoulders like those of an ox. In an alcoholic rage, he used his brutish strength to strangle his girlfriend to expiry a few years ago.

On a recent Thursday, however, at this summer-camp-like island prison in southern Norway, where convicts agree keys to their rooms and at that place are no armed guards or fences, Vala used those same enormous hands to help bring life into the world.

The 42-year-erstwhile murderer stood picket while an oversize cow gave birth to a wobbly, long-legged, chocolate-brown-and-white calf. He cried as the baby was born, he said, and wiped slime off of the newborn's face up and so she could gulp her outset breath.

Afterward, Vala chosen his own mother to share the adept news.

"I told my family unit that I'm going to be a dad," he said, beaming with pride.

This is exactly the type of dramatic turnabout -- enraged killer to gentle-giant midwife -- that corrections officials in Kingdom of norway promise to create with this controversial, one-of-a-kind prison, arguably the cushiest the world has to offering.

Founded in 1982, Bastoy Prison house is located on a lush, 1-square-mile isle of pine trees and rocky coasts, with views of the ocean that are postcard-worthy. It feels more like a resort than jail, and prisoners here enjoy freedoms that would be unthinkable elsewhere.

It'due south the vacation version of Alcatraz.

There's a beach where prisoners sunbathe in the summertime, plenty of skillful angling spots, a sauna and tennis courts. Horses roam gravel roads. Some of the 115 prisoners here -- all men and serving time for murder, rape and trafficking heroin, among other crimes -- stay in wooden cottages, painted cheery carmine. They come up and get equally they please. Others live in "The Big Firm," a white mansion on a hill that, on the inside, looks like a college dorm. A chicken lives in the basement, a guard said, and provides eggs for the inmates.

When yous ask the cook what's for dinner, he offers up carte du jour choices similar "fish balls with white sauce, with shrimps" and "everything from craven con carne to salmon."

Enough of people would pay to vacation in a place like this.

On beginning read, all of that probably sounds infuriating. Shouldn't these men be punished? Why do they get access to all these comforts while others live in poverty?

But if the goal of prison is to change people, Bastoy seems to work.

"If nosotros have created a holiday camp for criminals here, and then what?" asked Arne Kvernvik Nilsen, the prison'due south governor and a old minister and psychologist. He added, "We should reduce the risk of reoffending, considering if we don't, what's the point of punishment, except for leaning toward the primitive side of humanity?"

Take a quick look at the numbers: But 20% of prisoners who come through Norway'south prisons reoffend within two years of beingness released, according to a 2010 study deputed past the governments of several Nordic countries.

At Bastoy, that figure is even lower, officials say: well-nigh sixteen%.

Compare that with the three-yr re-criminal offense rate for state prisons in the U.S.: 43%, according to a 2011 report from the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research group. Older authorities reports put that number even higher, at more than five in 10.

Ryan King, a research managing director at Pew and an author of the group'southward recent report, said it'southward difficult to compare recidivism rates from country to state, much less from land to country. Instead of focusing on the numbers, he said, 1 should focus on what a land is or isn't doing to tackle re-offense rates.

All the same, Bastoy remains controversial even in academia. Irvin Waller, president of the International Organisation for Victim Aid and a professor at the University of Ottawa, said in an eastward-mail that the relative niceness of a prison has no event on whether people commit crimes when they're released. "The key is not that much what happens in prison house but what happens when the men are released," he said.

Merely officials here maintain that their methods do make a deviation, and they follow information technology up with mail-release programs. The aim of Bastoy is not to punish or seek revenge, Nilsen said. The only punishment is to take abroad the prisoner's right to be a gratis member of club.

Even at a time when Anders Behring Breivik is on trial in Norway for killing 77 people in a terror assail last year -- and the remote possibility he could end up at Bastoy or a similar prison house some day -- Nilsen and others stand up for this brand of justice.

Life at Bastoy

To understand Norway's pleasant-prison house philosophy, first you have to get a sense of how life at a cushy, low-security prison like Bastoy actually plays out.

At that place are few rules here. Prisoners can have TVs in their rooms, provided they bring them from "outside" when they're sentenced. They clothing any clothes they want: jeans, T-shirts. One man had a sweater with pink-and-grey horizontal stripes, only that's as close as it got to the jailbird look. Even guards aren't dressed in compatible, which makes conducting interviews tricky. It'south impossible to tell an officer from a drug trafficker.

A common opening question: "And then, do you alive hither?"

Everyone at Bastoy has a job, and prisoners must report to work from 8:30 a.grand. to three:xxx p.thou. weekdays. Some people garden; others farm. Some chop down copse and piece them into firewood (It's hard not to think nigh the forest chipper scene in "Fargo" when you encounter inmates filleting tree trunks with an enormous circular saw). Others tend to a team of horses, which are used to cart wood and supplies from ane function of the island to some other. Anybody moves most freely during these tasks. Guards are sometimes present, sometimes not. No one wears shackles or electronic monitoring bracelets.

The idea is for prison to function like a pocket-size, cocky-sustaining village.

For their work, inmates are paid. They get a stipend of 59 Norwegian kroner per solar day, about $10. They can relieve that money or spend information technology on odds and ends in a local shop. Additionally, they get a monthly stipend of nigh $125 for their food. Kitchen workers -- that'southward another inmate task -- serve Bastoy residents dinner each 24-hour interval. For breakfast and dejeuner, inmates use their stipend to make purchases in the local shop and so cook for themselves at abode. Many live in small-scale houses that take total kitchens. Others have access to shared cooking infinite.

The goal, Nilsen said, is to create an environs where people can build self-esteem and reform their lives. "They expect at themselves in the mirror, and they think, 'I am s***. I don't care. I am nil,' " he said. This prison house, he says, gives them a chance to encounter they take worth, "to discover, 'I'k non such a bad guy.' "

In locked-down prisons, inmates are treated "similar animals or robots," he said, moving from 1 planned station to the next, with no choice in the thing. Hither, inmates are forced to brand choices -- to acquire how to be amend people.

Prisoners, of grade, appreciate this approach.

Kjell Amundsen, a seventy-yr-old who said he is in jail for a white-collar financial law-breaking, was terrified when he rode the fifteen-minute ferry from the mainland out to Bastoy.

On a recent afternoon, he was sweeping up in a plant plant nursery while John Lennon's "Imagine" played on the radio. "I think it'due south marvelous to be in a prison this way," he said.

He plans to proceed upward the task after his sentence ends. "I'yard living in a flat (when I get out), merely I am convinced I should have a little garden," he said.

Some prisoners get schooling in a yellow Bavarian-fashion building near the eye of the island. On a recent afternoon, three immature men were learning to use computer programs to create 3-D models of cars. All expressed interest in doing this sort of work after their prison house terms end.

Tom Remi Berg, a 22-year-erstwhile who said he is in prison for the third time after getting into a bar fight and beating a man virtually to death, said he is finally learning his lesson at Bastoy.

He works in the kitchen and is seeking training to become a chef when he's released. He besides plays in the prison blues band -- Guilty every bit Hell -- and lives with his bandmates.

"Information technology's skillful to have a prison house similar this," he said. "You tin can acquire to get-go a new folio again."

If escaped, please call

The prisoners are required to check in several times a solar day so guards can make sure they're nevertheless on the isle. Nothing but one½ miles of seawater stops them from leaving; they'd only have to steal i of the prison's boats to cross it, several inmates said.

An escape would be relatively easy.

Prisoners have tried to escape in the by. One swam halfway across the channel and became stranded on a buoy and screamed for rescuers to help, prison house officials said. Another fabricated information technology across the channel by stealing a boat but was caught on the other side.

Many, however, don't want to leave. If they tried and failed, they would be forced to go to a higher-security prison and could accept their sentences extended.

When inmates come to his island jail, Nilsen, the governor, gives them a footling talk.

Amidst the wisdom he imparts is this: If y'all should escape and make information technology across the water to the free shore, discover a phone and call so I know you're OK and "so we don't have to ship the coast guard looking for you lot."

This kind of trust may seem shocking or naïve from the exterior, but it's the entire footing for Bastoy's existence. Overnight, only three or four guards (the prison employs 71 administrative staff, including the guards) stay on the island with this grouping of people who have been convicted of serious crimes. If guards carried weapons (which they don't) it might encourage inmates to take upward arms, too, he said.

Further complicating the security situation, some inmates, toward the end of their terms, are allowed to go out the island on a daily ferry to work or nourish classes on the mainland.

They're expected to come dorsum on their own complimentary will.

Inmates are screened to make certain they're mentally stable and unlikely to plot an escape earlier they come up to Bastoy. The vast bulk -- 97%, according to Nilsen -- have served part of their sentences at college-security jails in Norway. In the four years Nilsen has been heading upwards the prison, at that place have been no "serious" incidents of violence, he said.

By the fourth dimension they become to Bastoy, inmates view the isle as a relief.

'It'southward nevertheless prison'

There's a question inmates hither get asked frequently: When your judgement is up, will y'all want to leave?

The answer, despite the nice atmospheric condition, is always an emphatic yes.

"It's nonetheless prison," said Luke, 23. He didn't want his full name used for fright futurity employers would see it. "In your mind, y'all are locked (upwardly)."

The uncomplicated fact of being taken away from family members is enough to terminate Benny, 40, from wanting to offend again. The refugee from Kosovo said he was convicted on drug charges after he was institute with 13 pounds of heroin. He didn't want his full name used considering he doesn't want to embarrass his family or jeopardize his chance of finding a job afterward he's released.

Before coming to Bastoy, he saturday in a college-security prison while 1 of his children was born.

"It doesn't matter how long the sentences get. The sentence doesn't matter," Benny said. "When you have freedom from people, that's what's scary."

At that place are only iii,600 people in prison house in this country, compared with 2.3 million in the U.s., co-ordinate to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Relative to population, the U.S. has about ten times as many inmates as Norway.

More than 89% of Norway's jail sentences are less than a year, officials said. In U.S. federal prisons, longer sentences are much more common, with fewer than 2% serving a yr or less, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Some researchers support Norway's efforts to lighten sentences.

Think of prison house like parenting and it starts to make sense, said Marker A.R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA and author of "When Brute Forcefulness Fails."

"Every parent knows this. What if y'all tried to subject area your child by saying, 'If you don't clean your room, in that location's a 10% hazard I'll kick you out of the house and never see you once again'?" he said, referencing the fact that many crimes in America get unpunished, merely the justice system issues harsh sentences when offenders are caught. Grounding the child immediately, a softer sentence, would piece of work better, even though the punishment is less astringent, he said.

"We have a criminal justice arrangement (in the United states of america) that, if it were a parent, we would say it's calumniating and neglectful."

Kleiman said victims do have a correct to see offenders punished. But in Kingdom of norway, a country with ane of the highest standards of living in the world, staying on a resort-like island with horses might feel similar penalisation to many people, he said.

Research also suggests that programs like Bastoy that train inmates for their transition back into the free world -- with pedagogy, counseling and such -- do aid prisoners suit.

"There is overwhelming evidence that rehabilitation works much better than deterrence as a ways of reducing re-offending," said Gerhard Ploeg, a senior adviser at the Ministry of Justice, which oversees Norway's corrections system.

"It'due south all in the name of reintegration," he added. "Y'all won't be suddenly one mean solar day standing on the street with a plastic handbag of things you lot had when you came in."

Mass shooting challenges arrangement

Norway's unusual prison policies take been pushed into the international spotlight subsequently a bombing and shooting spree last year in which 77 people were killed, including children.

In that location's a chance -- although minimal -- that Anders Behring Breivik, who confessed to those crimes, could stop upward in Bastoy, one of Norway's "open up prisons," Nilsen said.

It'southward more probable Breivik volition be sent to 1 of Norway's many high-security "closed" prisons, which look much more like their U.S. counterparts.

He also could exist set gratuitous some day. Norway has a maximum jail sentence of 21 years, which can exist extended only when an inmate is deemed to be a real and imminent threat to society. The land expects near every prisoner to exist returned to society, which influences its efforts to create jail environments that reduce re-offense rates.

"The question we must ask is, 'What kind of person do I want as my neighbor?' " Ploeg said. "How practice we want people to come out of prison? If your neighbour were to come up out of prison house, what would you lot want him to be like?"

Still, it's likely Breivik's sentence volition be extended to the bespeak that he will spend his life in a loftier-security prison, he said. Or he could get into life-long psychiatric intendance.

Breivik'southward case challenges a system that hopes to fix everyone.

The example has unearthed levels of anger that are uncharacteristic of Norway, which prides itself as a home for conflict mediation and human rights, a place that hosts the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and has one of the best standards of living in the globe.

"(Breivik) doesn't deserve to go to prison," said Camilla Bjerke, 27, who tends bar in Horten, the town on the other side of the water from Bastoy. "He deserves to exist hanged exterior the courthouse. ... He's just going to go into prison and watch Tv and download movies."

Then there's this sentiment: If Breivik were e'er released into the public, someone would kill him, several Norwegians said. Inmates at Bastoy echoed those sentiments, proverb he would have to be quarantined or he wouldn't exist safe on the island.

Others are trying to fight that anger.

Bjorn Ihler, a twenty-yr-former who narrowly escaped Breivik'south shooting spree by diving into the ocean with two children while bullets flew at them, said, "it's very important that we don't let this terrorist change the way nosotros are and the way things work."

"The prison system in Norway is based around the principle of getting criminals back into order, really, and abroad from their criminal life -- and to get them normal jobs and stuff like that," he said.

He doesn't know how he would feel if Breivik were to be released, just he would like the arrangement to function as usual. "Then prisons must exist very much focused on getting people to a place where they are able to live normal, non-criminal lives. And that's the all-time mode of preserving society from crime, I retrieve."

Looking to the hereafter

All of these efforts aim to help a person similar Vala, the gentle giant who strangled his girlfriend, to get ready for release back into society at the cease of his 10-year sentence.

After he helped a toddling dogie come into the world, Vala said, he leaned on a runway next to the moo-cow's pen and thought about his life and the murder that landed him hither. The symbolism that he had used his hands to terminate one life and help brainstorm another was not lost on him. "I stayed for 6 hours," he said. "It was very beautiful."

The dark he killed his girlfriend, Vala says, he blacked out and then came to with his hands around her neck, afterward she was dead.

"We never fight," he said. "We never do. So I don't know what happened."

He felt helpless and out of command when he came to.

But now he'due south trying to pull it together. He decided to quit drinking for proficient. And when he's working with animals, he said, feels a new at-home wash over him.

It's a modify the prison house guards have noted, too. Sigurd Vedvik said he met Vala while he was serving out the earlier office of his judgement in a high-security prison. Vedvik was screening him for entry into Bastoy. Vala barely could communicate. He seemed broken.

"When he offset came here, he was very afraid of many people," said Vedvik, who sees himself every bit more than of a teacher or social worker than a person who enforces security.

At present, Vala is making friends. Talking more. Taking responsibility for the cattle he's tasked with caring for. He strokes the cows' necks so gently, it seems as if he's worried they will shatter.

When Vala leaves Bastoy, he plans to go into the construction business and hopes to observe some way to spend time on a subcontract.

"I'm trying to think to my future."

That's something he couldn't do after the murder.

And information technology took a posh prison house -- one with cattle and horses -- to get him into that country of heed.

Treat People Like Animals Long Enough and They Become Them

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/24/world/europe/norway-prison-bastoy-nicest/index.html