PUNISHMENT & WELFARE REVISITED: A CRITICAL LOOK AT NORDIC PENAL REGIMES REGIMES

Chairs: Thomas Ugelvik & Vanessa Barker

0063 - THE NORDIC MODEL – FROM NORMALIZATION AND OPEN PRISONS TO PRE-TRIAL PRACTICES

Peter Scharff Smith (Denmark)¹

1 - The Danish Institute for Human Rights

Nordic penal practices are often highlighted as particularly humane and understood as a product of egalitarian social democratic welfare state models. Low rates of imprisonment and examples of humane prison conditions are typically used to illustrate such theories. But to what degree has this been empirically documented and do we fully understand the interaction between welfare policies and prison practice? This talk will discuss the use of imprisonment in the Nordic countries and look at not only the size of Nordic prison populations, but also the flow of prisoners going through these institutions. Furthermore, the discussion on Nordic prison conditions will be nuanced by looking at regimes for remand prisoners. While conditions for sentenced prisoners in the Nordic countries and especially the use of open prisons have often been praised, the treatment of remand prisoners is often completely forgotten when the Nordic penal and criminal justice systems are assessed by outsiders. This despite the fact that remand prison populations account for somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the entire prison populations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and despite the fact that the situation, conditions and rights for this group of inmates is vastly different from that of sentenced prisoners. An obvious example is the extensive use of pre-trial solitary confinement which has troubled these prison systems, led to severe international human rights criticism, and even been termed as a “peculiar Scandinavian phenomenon”. Finally it will be discussed how – and if – we can understand Nordic remand prison practice in relation to the Nordic welfare states and their rationales, cultures and objectives.

0064 - WELFARE NATIONALISM/PENAL NATIONALISM: A PROBLEM FOR PUNISHMENT?

Vanessa Barker (Sweden)¹ 1 - Stockholm University

This paper examines the complex relationship between welfare states and penal order in a way that reorients taken-for-granted assumptions about generous welfare states and mild penal sanctioning. It examines how certain structures the welfare state, namely the lack of individual rights and ethnocultural concepts of citizenship, lay the foundation for the dualistic system which is at once inclusionary and exclusionary. By paying close attention to state structures, the paper also challenges the neoliberal paradigm in punishment, which has linked the punitive turn to the retraction of the welfare state, and instead, argues that the rise of welfare nationalism underpins increased punitiveness. It goes on to show the resilience of the nation state form and its indebtedness to penal order in the face of major social changes, including globalization.

65 0065 - THE CRIMMIGRATION PRISON: NORMALISATION AND FOREIGN NATIONALS IN THE NORWEGIAN WELFARE STATE PRISON

Thomas Ugelvik (Norway)¹ 1 - University of Tromsø

The principle of normalisation is an important part of the foundation of the Norwegian correctional system. The prisons are seen as a fully integrated parts of the wider national welfare state system. Prisoners retain all rights vis-à-vis this system, such as the right to free public healthcare and a free secondary education. In practice, the various welfare state sub agencies are “imported” into the prison, meaning that the prison education department is a part of the national public school system, the prison library is part of the national system of public libraries, and so on. To a large extent, the Norwegian welfare state runs on a logic of individual legal rights to welfare provisions. What happens when welfare state oriented prisons are filled with foreign national prisoners who lack formal rights to welfare? And what happens to such a prison when immigration control is added to the set of institutional goals next to deterrence and rehabilitation? My paper will explore these questions based on fieldwork in Kongsvinger prison, Norway’s only prison specifically designed to hold a foreign national population only.

0066 - COMMUNITY SANCTIONS AS PART OF THE PENAL SYSTEM Kerstin Svensson (Sweden)¹

1 - Lund university

Throughout its history in Sweden, community punishment has been regarded as punishment, but as a punishment with an aim to integrate. Nowadays, it is still regarded as punishment, but it is not so evident that the aim is still to integrate. The philanthropic ideas were integrated in the legislative measures during the early 20^th century. In the strong welfare state it was explicitly stated that punishment should be implemented primarily in the community. That meant that alternative sanctions and measures should be used in first hand and also that and a prison sentence should be served in close contact with the resources in the community. In the 1970's, parallel to the peak of the welfare state era, strong critiques were aimed at the sanctions not being effective etc. In the 1990's there was a shift in policy. Still, community sanctions are to be used in first hand, but these sanctions are shaped in a different form. Now they have a more structured and managerial form, where the offender should be fitted in. The focus in criminal policy has changed from the offender towards the offence. Thereafter, the help provided is based on managerial ideas of documentation and measurability. Today, the individual is held responsible for his or her actions, and the help provided is pre-packed in fixed programmes where the individuals have to adjust to the given schemes rather than the received help and support. Even if there has been change, the legitimacy of punishment in the community has rarely been questioned, although it is also true that it is rarely explicitly endorsed; rather, it is taken for granted as part of the criminal justice landscape in Sweden.

1.18 ELECTRONIC MONITORING AND ALTERNATIVE SANCTIONS