Bredtveit Prison Case Study

Bredtveit Prison has a lot of visitors—including national and international boards and groups—as the largest prison for women in Norway. Bredtveit Prison houses both women in pretrial custody and women serving sentences of all lengths. It is also the only prison housing women sentenced to “security detention,” an indeterminate sentence for serious crimes applied to people considered to represent a more or less permanent threat to society. Even with this large diversity of inhabitants, the population of this prison is just 64 prisoners. (This must be seen in the context of Norway’s entire inmate population of only about 4,000.) Back to the visitors, however, the foreign visitors often ask: “Where are the gunmen posted? Where are the dogs?” And the outburst that often comes when we

The correctional students will go through a process of theoretical education, that covers law studies, psychology, sociology, ethics, and other relevant subjects, and, of course, practical training on prison premises. This training is supervised by experienced officers, and students have their own coach. The best guarantee against ill treatment and torture in prison is the presence of professional staff with relevant education and highly developed social skills.

To sum up, I will present our best “medicine”: communication. Bredtveit Prison is a “talking prison”—we talk and talk with each other, vertically and horizontally, staff and inmates. My main message to our staff is: “Let’s talk about it. Don’t write reports.” An English woman, having started her sentence in a London women’s prison, said that our prison was like “a British country club.” I have to say, however, that this is not every inmate’s opinion. However, that characterization gives a hint of the atmosphere of Bredtveit Prison. Re-socialization is the best way to reduce recidivism, and to re-socialize we have to connect and build relations. Norway seems to have the lowest rate of recidivism in the Nordic