Sort of like the prisons in TV Batman

As a child, I wasn't the biggest fan of TV's Batman, and I still don't care for anything related to the character.   [I've thought of a new way to explain why he does nothing for me - it's the equivalent of the uncanny valley in animation.  By being a purportedly more realistic superhero who just relies on strength and technology, yet still dressing stupidly and with villains that are also costumed up, it perversely feels less realistic to me than the semi mythical or silly physics superheroes like Thor, Aquaman or Superman, where I find suspension of disbelief comes easier.]

Anyway, one thing I do recall from TV Batman was the occasional dig they had at allegedly super liberal rehabilitation prisons:  you know, a super villain being allowed to live with his entourage almost exactly the same as if he were free.  It was a fairly sophisticated joke for a show with a large children's following, really.

So it's remarkable to read of the genuinely super-liberal sounding approach to prisons in Norway that seems to work:

It could be a yoga class at any holistic health retreat anywhere in the world but the participants here at Norway's maximum security Halden Prison are rather far removed from the usual yummy mummy spa clientele. Barefoot murderers, rapists and drug smugglers practise downward-facing dog and the lotus position alongside their prison officers, each participant fully concentrating on the clear instructions from the teacher.

"It calms them," says prison governor Are Hoidal approvingly, as we watch from the sidelines. "We don't want anger and violence in this place. We want calm and peaceful inmates."

Tranquillity does not come cheaply. A place at Halden Prison costs about £98,000 per year. The average annual cost of a prison place in England in Wales is now about £40,000, or £59,000 in a Category A prison.

A uniformed prison officer on a silver micro-scooter greets us cheerily as he wheels past. Two
prisoners jogging dutifully by his side, keep pace.

Hoidal laughs at my nonplussed face.

"It's called dynamic security!" he grins. "Guards and prisoners are together in activities all the time. They eat together, play volleyball together, do leisure activities together and that allows us to really interact with prisoners, to talk to them and to motivate them."

Having had a prison guard once living in the rental house next to mine, who was loud, often drunk, and offered to have his daughter's ex boyfriend's legs broken, I think we might have to scrap all of ours and start afresh if we wanted to follow this approach.

Anyway, back to the big Norwegian turn around:

When Are Hoidal first began his career in the Norwegian Correctional service in the early 1980s, the prison experience here was altogether different.

"It was completely hard," he remembers. "It was a masculine, macho culture with a focus on guarding and security. And the recidivism rate was around 60-70%, like in the US."

But in the early 1990s, the ethos of the Norwegian Correctional Service underwent a rigorous series of reforms to focus less on what Hoidal terms "revenge" and much more on rehabilitation. Prisoners, who had previously spent most of their day locked up, were offered daily training and educational programmes and the role of the prison guards was completely overhauled.

"Not 'guards'," admonishes Hoidal gently, when I use the term. "We are prison 'officers' and of course we make sure an inmate serves his sentence but we also help that person become a better person. We are role models, coaches and mentors. And since our big reforms, recidivism in Norway has fallen to only 20% after two years and about 25% after five years. So this works!"

In the UK, the recidivism rate is almost 50% after just one year.

Even the architecture is chic:

The architecture of Halden Prison has been designed to minimise residents' sense of incarceration, to ease psychological stress and to put them in harmony with the surrounding nature - in fact the prison, which cost £138m to build, has won several design awards for its minimalist chic. Set in beautiful blueberry woods and peppered with majestic silver birch and pine trees, the two-storey accommodation blocks and wooden chalet-style buildings give the place an air of a trendy university campus rather than a jail.

Here's a cell:

 There is a lot more of great interest in the article at the BBC.