In any discussion of prison and policy, Norway holds a special place for its apparent low incarceration rates and rehabilitative ethos (Pratt 2008a; Pratt 2008b; Ugelvik 2015). Here a prison sentence is only supposed to take away one’s liberty, leaving in place the same rights as any Norwegian citizen, such as access to education, healthcare, and leisure activities including listening to – and making – music. Norwegian penal institutions like Halden Prison are described in the media as “luxurious,” and “radically humane,” as journalists and filmmakers visit the prison’s state-of-the-art recording studio, hear bands of inmates and prison staff sing pop songs, and listen to albums released by Halden’s in-house record label, Criminal Records.
In this talk I will detail the multifaceted presence of music in Norwegian prisons today. While music’s use in Norwegian prisons can seem remarkable, I consider it in terms of the wider Nordic penal exceptionalism discourse, and especially in light of prison music initiatives in other parts of the world (Harbert 2010; Cohen and Henley 2018; Mangaoang 2019). I posit that much of what we see in Norway’s prison music cultures today can be understood as a form of music social work or institutionalized community music-making (Schippers and Grant 2016), contingent on the fluctuating fortunes of governing bodies and political powers. As such, I question the ability for such institutionalized projects to offer creative freedom, and caution against the growing tendency to overstate music’s positive potential in places of detention.