Penal Exceptionalism?

Nordic Prison Policy and Practice

Thomas Ugelvik, Jane Dullum, Thomas Ugelvik, Jane Dullum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780415668699
• eBook ISBN: 9781136698880
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the growing field of comparative criminal justice, the Nordic countries are regularly used as exceptions to the global move towards growing rates of imprisonment and tougher, less welfare-oriented crime-control policies.

Why are the Nordic penal institutions viewed as so 'different' from a non-Nordic vantage point? Are Nordic prisons and penal policies in fact positive exceptions to the general rule? If they are, what exactly are the exceptional qualities, and why are the Nordic societies lucky enough to have them? Are there important overlooked examples of Nordic 'bad practice' in the penal area? Could there be a specifically Nordic way of doing prison research, contributing to the gap between internal and external perspectives?

In considering – among others – the above questions, this book explores and discusses the Nordic jurisdictions as contexts for the specific penal policies and practices that may or may not be described as exceptional.

Written by leading prison scholars from the Nordic countries as well as selected researchers from the English-speaking world 'looking in', this book will be particularly useful for students of criminology and practitioners across the Nordic countries, but also of relevance in a wider geographical context.

1 Introduction

Exceptional prisons, exceptional societies?

Jane Dullum and Thomas Ugelvik

In the growing field of comparative criminal justice, the Nordic countries are regularly used as exceptions. As the story goes, Nordic societies somehow seem to resist the global move towards growing rates of imprisonment and tougher, less welfare-oriented crime-control policies (e.g. Cavadino and Dignan 2006; Lacey 2008; cf. Garland 2001). In an award-winning two-part article in the British Journal of Criminology, New Zealand-based criminologist John Pratt (2008a, b) describes the Nordic countries as exhibiting a specifically Nordic ‘culture of control’, resulting in what he calls ‘Scandinavian exceptionalism’ in the penal area; consistently low rates of imprisonment and comparatively humane prison conditions. The Scandinavian or Nordic¹ countries have taken over as the preferred ‘beacon of tolerance’ in a world moving steadfastly towards the dusk of ever-increasing levels of punitiveness (Nelken 2009).

Compared to such outsider accounts, Nordic prison researchers have traditionally been far less positive in their descriptions of prison conditions and penal policies, focusing more on the pains of imprisonment and the complex processes of social marginalization the penal system is part of. From within the Nordic societies, Nordic prisons are often seen as part of a governmental system of legitimized pain delivery, as described by Nils Christie (2007), or, as Thomas Mathiesen (2006) would have it, a control effort with very serious (technical, theoretical, moral) shortcomings.

The high material standard of Nordic prison facilities is certainly controversial even in Nordic societies themselves. A complaint commonly voiced in Nordic public debates is that (at least the newer) prisons are far too good for the prisoners. Echoing the traditional call for ‘less eligibility’ as a prison design principle, such critical voices claim that Nordic prisons look more like spa hotels or cruise ships, making the punishment element of the prison experience almost non-existent. In contrast, Nordic prison researchers have consistently produced critical accounts of the pains of imprisonment, often focusing on issues such as isolation, violence or suicide. Compared to prisons in other parts of the world, Nordic prisons, especially the new ones, may seem luxurious. Then again, in other jurisdictions, even indoor plumbing in a prison is an unthinkable luxury. So what do we do when we compare prisons? What is the point of comparisons, and what are the results?

What are researchers in the Nordic countries to make of the considerable gap between the Nordic prison research, and the story told in Pratt’s articles? This book is the result of the problem of what to do with this tension. It obviously has something to do with the nature of comparisons in general; what the world looks like is at least partly dependent on where you stand. But is Pratt’s exceptionalism based on something more substantial than this truism? Why are the Nordic penal institutions viewed as so ‘different’ from a non-Nordic vantage point? And why have several Nordic researchers reacted quite badly to his use of Nordic prisons as positive examples? Are Nordic prisons and penal policies in fact positive exceptions to the general rule, and if they are, what exactly are the exceptional qualities, and why are Nordic societies lucky enough to have them? Or should the external perspectives be nuanced? Are there important examples of Nordic ‘bad practice’ in the penal area that are overlooked? Are the Nordic countries even similar enough to warrant such comparisons? Or, on yet another level, is it even possible to still talk of a specifically Nordic penal model, bearing in mind the way prison service bureaucrats have eagerly imported policies, practices and programmes from the various Anglo-American jurisdictions over the last decades? And, finally, could it be that a specifically Nordic way of doing prison research makes the gap between internal and external perspectives widen?

These were the questions raised in the invitation to the third biannual conference of the Scandinavian Studies of Confinement (SSC) research network. Using Pratt’s award-winning articles as a starting block, we explored and discussed the tension between insider and outsider perspectives on our Nordic societies and their prisons. Prison scholars from the Nordic countries, as well as selected researchers from the English-speaking world ‘looking in’ (John was himself one of them), came together for two days to discuss what a specifically Nordic culture of control might look like, if it is best described as exceptional, and if it is indeed a reality at all. Are the exceptional qualities observed about empirical differences, different analytical views, different theoretical perspective or different political objectives? All of the above? None? This book is the result of the dialogue that followed.

Comparative criminology

One way of understanding different incarceration rates and penal forms has been to see them as a reflection of different crime levels in different societies. However, the sociology of punishment has challenged this view. Inspired by canonical texts such as those of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, the social sciences have shown how punishment is a complex social institution, deeply embedded in a society’s cultural and historical forms and no simple expression of the crime rate.

In recent years, we have seen a renewed interest in the question of the disparate incarceration rates worldwide. Influential contributions to the tradition of comparative criminology are well known; influential titles are Nils Christie’s Crime Control as Industry (2000), Michael Cavadino and James Dignan’s Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach (2006) and Nicola Lacey’s The Prisoners’ Dilemma (2008). It is important, however, to remember that comparative criminology has deep roots in the social science tradition. Cavadino and Dignan’s book is a case in point; they seek to synthesize aspects of the Marxist, Durkhemian and Weberian traditions. In their outline, there is a significant difference between different types of state, and different levels of incarceration. They go on to give an overview of some of the major differences in ‘punitiveness’ between four different types of state formation: neoliberal states, conservative corporatist welfare states, social democratic corporatist welfare states and oriental corporatist states.

When it comes to incarceration rates, Nordic social democratic welfare states certainly stand out as exceptional when compared to Anglo-American countries. Sweden is leading the Nordic pack with a prison rate of 78 per 100,000 of the total population, with Denmark and Norway following at 71. Measured this way, Finland and Iceland are among the least punitive societies in Europe, at 60 and 55 respectively. In comparison, England and Wales combined are at a rate of 154, almost double that of Sweden. We are all dwarfed by the world leaders, however: Russia takes the European prize at 588, while the US is the imprisonment world leader at 748 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.²

However influential, the growing comparative penology often confine its analyses to the macro level of prison rates and political and economic systems. Enter John Pratt: one of the great strengths of Pratt’s project is that he wants to connect the macro levels of prison rates with the experiential level of humane prison conditions. As a project, we acknowledge that this is both ambitious and bold, and very, very difficult.

What is so exceptional? By the term ‘exceptionalism’ Pratt both refers to the low prison rates in the Nordic countries and their relatively humane prison conditions, compared to the poor and degrading living conditions often characteristic of prisons in the Anglo world. The roots of both the exceptionally low prison rates and the exceptionally humane prison conditions are, according to Pratt, to be found in the ‘highly egalitarian cultural values and social structures in these countries’ (2008a: 120). The still quite well-functioning welfare state safety net provided in these countries are also seen as an important part of the foundation for exceptionalism.

In the second article, Pratt’s focus is on recent trends. He acknowledges the fact that levels of imprisonment are increasing even in Nordic countries, and he maintains that what lies behind this increase is a development towards new values attached to crime, crime control, and penality. The Nordic societies may be at a crossroads. The same forces that have contributed to penal excess elsewhere can also be seen in here: a reduced belief in experts, decline in trust in government, tabloidization of the media, and sensational media reporting. These forces ‘produce new forms of knowledge and understandings about crime and punishment, new power relations that determine policy’ (2008b: 277). The Scandinavian welfare model is also restructured, resulting in reduced levels of security and increased differences along class and ethnic lines. Furthermore, this development may be seen as connected to a growth in intolerance and more pronounced feelings of punitiveness directed towards outsider groups.

Pratt’s article gives important contributions to comparative criminology. It also reminds us that the penal excesses we see in other parts of the world are not a universal phenomenon. However, the articles have evoked reactions among Scandinavian scholars. Several of the authors in this book question whether Nordic prisons and penal policies are indeed positive exceptions to the general rule, or if Pratt has in fact painted too rosy a picture of Scandinavian penal practices. Regardless of the answer, it begs the question: how has this picture been produced?

Making sense of the difference

The question of the production of a certain picture of Nordic societies and penal systems as exceptional relates to issues of how to analyse and compare different cultures and societies. There are several methodological and theoretical challenges involved in comparative research.

Most basically: what is a comparison? In a certain perspective, comparisons are what the production of meaning is all about; to turn it on its head, meaning has, at least since Ferdinand de Saussure (1983 [1906–11]), been seen as itself fundamentally a product of difference. Introducing new differences will inevitably produce new meanings. Better meanings, perhaps, but any comparison must be understood as part of the context in which it is made. We can, like David Nelken, argue that ‘there is no “view from nowhere”, and no “global” or “world view”, even if there can be less, or more, parochial perspectives’ (2010: 10).

Studies of the rising punitiveness and ‘culture of control’ have been criticized for being ethnocentric, for making sweeping generalizations based on a narrow and specific material. Often the focus is on Anglo-American practices. But, as questioned by Lucia Zedner: is the Anglo-American response to the problem of crime ‘the only or indeed the dominant response of late modernity’ (2002: 353)? Well, it is obviously not the only response, although its dominance may be up for discussion. In his oft-cited paper on the eclipse of prison ethnography, Loïc Wacquant (2002) charges the prison research community with being far too Anglo-centric. This seems strange, writes Wacquant, given the fact that the US in particular should best be described as an extreme or exceptional case when it comes to penal policies and practices. Relatively too much effort has been spent on describing what he calls ‘the glaring carceral exceptionalism of the United States’, leaving almost nothing for research on the far more typical cases of almost everywhere else. Many have made this point, that prison research has been a field where everything not American or British tends to fall under the radar (Sparks et al. 1996; Nelken 2009).

If we instead of looking for convergence towards a more or less uniform worldwide punitive culture of control argue a view with multiple cultures, what would the Nordic one look like? And what would be, if anything, specifically ‘Nordic’ about it? Or is ‘the Nordic’ too wide a category – are the differences (cultural and other) between the Nordic countries so great as to make ‘the Nordic’ an untenable generalization? Comparisons between phenomena on a higher level will often contribute to erasing differences on lower ones. ‘Scandinavian prisons’ are obviously not all the same. Talking about differences between two distinct models, a Scandinavian model and an Anglo-American one, will for instance play down the differences between the Scandinavian countries, as well as differences between, let’s say, Cardiff and Los Angeles. Lindberg, Bruhn and Nylander’s chapter (Chapter 12) shows some of the diversity between regimes and practices within just one of the Nordic countries – in this case, Sweden.

Another question deals with the assumed comparability of prison rates, and the way prison rates are used to say something about the level of punitiveness in general. For instance, will comparably low prison rates necessarily be connected to humane prison conditions? The Democratic Republic of Congo (or Congo-Kinshasa) has prison conditions well known to Norwegian media consumers, at least through an ongoing case in which two Norwegian nationals were tried and convicted of murdering their local driver, which seems to illustrate the point: bad conditions, at least materially speaking, and lower prison rate than most Nordic countries at 57 per 100,000 of the total population.³ Only Iceland has a slightly lower rate. What this says about similarities between DRC and Iceland is, however, unclear. But what can be stated is that low imprisonment rates do not equal humane conditions.

Yet another point: what about other forms of social control, sometimes working together with the formal system of punishment? Should we include these other forms of social control in an overall account of a society’s punitiveness? We think it may be fruitful to try. Low levels of official, public, state control do not necessarily equal low levels of control. More individualist and more collective societies can each have their own sort of pathologies, for example dealing with the difference by excluding it or by enforced assimilation (Young 1999). Different societies may be excluding different populations in different ways, and it may be that the Nordic societies just specialize in different forms of control – Ugelvik’s and Andersson’s chapters in this book (Chapters 7 and 9, as well as Dullum 2009) both point in this direction. As does Nelken:

By contrast, some other countries, such as the allegedly more ‘inclusive’ and tolerant Scandinavian countries, are currently idealised because of their relatively low incarceration rates. But such places are much more complicated when taken in their own terms and not only treated as exemplars of leniency.

(2010: 29)

Nordic societies may be more inclusive on the level of official policy, but what about practice? One researcher can at the programmatic level get one picture, another looking into prison practices, a totally different one.

Comparisons across cultures and societies are inevitably reductions. This does not mean that they may not be incredibly useful for different purposes. One of the risks is that of ethnocentrism – that people may automatically assume that their own local arrangements, the system they are in a sense part of, is the ‘natural’ or best way to do things, superior to foreign alternatives. An opposite danger is, however, xenocentrism, where a foreign way of reasoning or doing is taken a priori to be superior to one’s ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Penal Exceptionalism?
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on the contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: exceptional prisons, exceptional societies?
• PART I Exceptions or not?
• PART II Commodification of exceptional penal systems
• PART III Closing in on the Nordic I: cultures of equality?
• PART IV Closing in on the Nordic II: prison management and prison cultures
• PART V Scandinavian exceptionalism revisited
• Index