How they do it in Scandinavia...

The Scandinavian social democracies are always making the rest of us look bad with their humane, effective, egalitarian social policies and disproportionate prowess at hockey, and prison policy is no exception. The New York Times ran a piece on the Finnish prison system in 2003, and around the same time the BBC examined prison practice in Denmark. Perhaps the broadest introduction to Scandinavian penal practice actually comes out of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, where the protagonist faces a prison sentence for defamation, and spends the time getting in shape and learning some practical skills from his fellow inmates. But conditions are not cushy enough to satisfy everyone - apparently believing that jail should be less like the gulag and more like a vegan co-op, plans for a new prison in Denmark include programs for animal husbandry and gardening.

The sheep double as guard animals

In terms of practice, what the different prison systems have in common is a respect for the inmate, an emphasis on rehabilitation and an aversion to real or symbolic coercion. Relationships between inmates and jailers are cordial, with the Finns especially egalitarian - in "open" prisons, staff don't wear uniforms and are addressed by convicts by their first names. The whole approach is intended to make the transition to life outside as easy as possible and to develop attitudes among prisoners which will discourage them from reoffending.

Assessing the success of the Scandinavian model is a little tricky - different countries collect and code crime-related data differently, and the most pertinent statistic - recidivism, or re-offending, rate - is extremely difficult to compare given the diverse definitions used. One indisputable achievement is the low incarceration rates that come with the model - Scandinavian countries, by and large, imprison their citizens at one tenth the rate of the US, and about 30% lower rate than Canada. As for re-offending versus rehabilitation, there the results are less clean cut. The most often cited and thorough report on the topic, a report released by the American Bureau of Justice Statistics, using a three-year time frame, concluded that 67.5% of released inmates are re-arrested for a new crime and that 51.8% return to prison, either for a new offense or for violating terms of their parole. The Finnish Criminal Sanctions Agency released a similar report, and using a five-year horizon found that 59% of released inmates returned to custody. The comparison then falls on the favor of Finns, but only because of the extra two years in their time scale, with the results otherwise being a statistical wash. However, this is not to say that the two systems are comparable - remember, the proportion of those incarcerated in Finland is much lower, and conditions much more humane. Rather than finding an equivalence between the two, it would be fairer to say that to achieve the same results as the Scandinavians, US authorities need to imprison ten times as many offenders at great expense, and then subject them to much harsher, more arbitrary and more demeaning conditions. And when you put it that way, it's not much of a contest.