About the project
The 1950s throughout the 1980s were a time of intensive penal reform. Worldwide the dominant trend was that the belief in rehabilitation dwindled, and utilitarian aims of punishment were gradually replaced by more punitive ideologies.
The Nordic countries have in international research served as a counterexample to this international development. Despite many attempts to explain what is called 'Nordic penal exceptionalism' as being grounded in the welfare state model there has been a lack of interest in examining empirically how and why Nordic prison practices actually evolved.
The project "Shaping Nordic Punishment – mapping and understanding the development of Nordic penal practice" (PenalNordic) examines the specific history of these practices, including the use of open prisons and the introduction of rights-based practices such as self-catering and conjugal visits.
PenalNordic pose the research question: How and why did the penal practices associated with 'Nordic penal exceptionalism' evolve?
Method
The project draws on three sources of empirical data:
- Archival material concerning penal policy and practice from 1950-1990
- Published reports from reform commissions
- Interviews with former practitioners and experts involved in the Nordic penal reform movement
Objectives
PenalNordic will empirically document and examine the history of central Nordic penal practices and discourses that are normally associated with the phenomenon of penal exceptionalism: the extensive use of open prisons after World War II along with relatively humane prison conditions and numerous concrete prison practices which developed in connection with the introduction of the principle of normalization especially from the 1970s and onwards. These practices to a significant extent had a rights-based approach to imprisonment as a point of departure and included, for example: self-catering; prison grocery stores; and conjugal visits; as well as a significant reliance on dynamic security and amiable prisoner- staff contact.
Project periode
The project will be active for five years from April 1st 2021 to September 30th 2026.
Financing
The project is founded by the Nordic Research Council for Criminology.