On the origins of Nordic penal exceptionalism
Lunch seminar with Professor Peter Scharff Smith.
Nordic penal practices are hailed internationally and exported across continents. In Norway we are often approached by scholars and practitioners who want to study the prison system that they claim have the lowest rate of recidivism in the world. But where do these Nordic prison practices come from? When and how were they created? And do they have anything to do with prison rehabilitation, welfare state ideology and low rates of recidivism? These questions and many others will be the topic of my talk.
The 1960s-70s were a time of intensive penal reform. The belief in rehabilitation dwindled and utilitarian aims of punishment were gradually replaced by punitive ideologies. The Nordic countries have served as counterexamples to this development exhibiting penal exceptionalism by maintaining milder policies. However, despite attempts to explain penal exceptionalism as being grounded in the Nordic welfare state no one has documented this empirically by looking at how Nordic prison practices evolved historically. Based on hitherto unused archival material this talk will empirically examine how practices and principles associated with penal exceptionalism evolved in Denmark in the 60s-70s. It demonstrates that a rights-based revolution rather than welfare state ambitions to rehabilitate prisoners is key to understanding the formation of penal exceptionalism.