The transnational prisoner: exploring themes and trends involving a prison deal between

the Netherlands and Norway

In September 2014 the Dutch State Secretary for Security and Justice Fred Teeven announced that discussions had taken place with officials from Norway to have those convicted to a prison sentence in Norway serve part of their sentence in the Netherlands. Shortly after, the Dutch government announced that a Norwegian official delegation had visited several Dutch prisons and were impressed with the facilities. The deal, as envisaged, will involve a Dutch penal establishment and staff, but will be run by a Norwegian governor under Norwegian rules and regulations. The deal is beneficial for Norway, official Dutch rhetoric goes, as it would alleviate serious capacity issues in the Norwegian secure estate. Correspondingly, it is good for the Netherlands as the deal brings income, saves jobs, and prevents prisons standing empty. The news was announced in Norway on September 8th by the Norway Ministry of Justice and Public Safety, spearheaded by the Minister of Justice Anders Anundsen. The proposal was quoted as due to capacity issues and the lag of maintenance-needs in existing prisons, necessitating the closing of wings and/or entire prisons for periods of time (Ministry of Justice and Public Safety (2014). In December 2014, Dutch media reported that the Northern establishment of Norgerhaven in the Northern village of Veenhuizen had been agreed upon as the venue. More recently, in Norway at the end of January 2015, a Ministry of Justice and Public Safety press-release informed that a proposal of a change to the Norwegian Execution of Sentences Act (Straffegjennomføringsloven) facilitating the abovementioned arrangement, had been sent to hearing (Ministry of Justice and Public Safety, 2015). Although the deal was briefly challenged by current prisoners of Norgerhaven Prison who sought legal action to block the move, a Dutch Civil Court has ruled that the removal of these inmates would not be unlawful and that the arrangements can go ahead.

Three aspects with regard to this agreement in the making are noteworthy. The first is that Norway, which up to the early part of this century, came to be seen internationally as an exemplar par excellence of penal restraint (Pratt 2008a) even though the foundations on which this had been based were beginning to crumble, should take the radical step of seeking prison capacity abroad. Secondly, the Netherlands, having experienced a much discussed punitive turn from about 1980 onwards (Downes and van Swaaningen, 2007, Pakes, 2004), apparently now has empty prison space on offer. From what grounds arose this break in the trend? The third, and perhaps most significant, aspect, is the very phenomenon of national governments buying or leasing prison capacity abroad. There is already established precedent for this in the Netherlands. A prison in the Southern city of Tilburg plays host to a few hundred inmates convicted in neighbouring Belgium under an agreement akin to the one now being established with Norway (Boone and Beyens, 2013). These events beg the question: are we witnessing a novel development in which prisoners are ‘farmed out’ to serve their sentence in foreign countries, not because of prisoners’ individual circumstances but due to national governmental policy making?

This article will chart the recent developments in Norway and the Netherlands that paved the way for this agreement, concluding with an attempt to unpack the deeper meaning and possible consequences of what appears to be a new and quite possibly disturbing trend. In doing so this

article intends to contribute to comparative penology, a field with notable contributions (e.g. Sparks, 2001; Brodeur, 2007, Cavadino and Dignan, 2006) but that perhaps still could be considered underdeveloped. Comparisons involving Norway have been high profile mainly due to the work of Pratt and Pratt and Eriksson (e.g, 2013), whereas a comparison of penality between the UK and Norway has been undertaken by Green (e.g. 2007), with specific reference to child murder. However, this is the first piece of comparative penology that considers cross-connections between two countries that at different times were seen to carry the flag for positive penology, the Netherlands in the 1970s and Norway more recently. A careful consideration of their current opposing trajectories should therefore deliver a valuable contribution to the field.

Dutch decarceration: A turn off the road to dystopia?

In their influential paper ‘The Road to Dystopia? Changes in the Penal Climate of the Netherlands’, Downes and Van Swaaningen (2007) summarised broad trends in Dutch penal policy since World War II. It started with a period of sustained reduction in the scale of imprisonment from 1947 to 1974. It was famously identified and discussed by Downes (1982, 1988), who described the root cause of this process as a long established ‘culture of tolerance’ towards dissenters and deviants. This period of decarceration was followed by a sustained phase of repenalisation from 1975 onwards. Subsequently, Downes and Van Swaaningen (2007) mention ‘the onset of disillusion’ with that culture of tolerance as a driver for increased prison rates. From 1985 onwards, they argue that a ‘dystopian vision’ came to inform penal policy making. This is akin to Pakes’s (2004) assessment of a cultural security complex emerging in the early 2000s with rapid change and increased volatility in public moods in relation to crime, immigration and integration – in particular further to the murder of anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and the assassination of controversial broadcaster and cineaste Theo van Gogh in 2004.

Downes and Van Swaaningen (2007) highlighted that about half of all inmates in Dutch prisons were born abroad. Indeed, the Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen – the Central Governmental Organisation that looks after the secure estate – lists the proportion of prisoners not born in the Netherlands as 53.1% in 2009, 54.6% in 2011, and 56.3% in 2013. Albeit slowly, this figure does seem to be creeping upwards. Downes and Van Swaaningen remarked that prison populations in the Netherlands are predominantly non-white, something also noted by Cavadino and Dignan (2006), who called the over-representation of ethnic minorities in Dutch prisons ‘wildly disproportionate’ (p. 127). There is little doubt that much social discourse on crime and disorder has become very much racialised with particularly ‘Moroccan youngsters’ identified as a persistent ‘problem population’. They tend to be descendants of ‘gastarbeiders’, guest workers who came to the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, Van Swaaningen went as far as to say that, at that time in the Netherlands ‘virtually all social problems are judged along ethnic lines’ (Van Swaaningen, 2005, p. 292, italics in original). That may go quite some way to explain the over-representation of black and minority ethnic populations in Dutch prisons.

At the same time, prison conditions were changing too. Dutch prisons were historically well equipped for rehabilitation, with a strong tradition of solitary confinement and much emphasis on education, as well as on cordial and informal staff/prisoner relations (Franke, 1992). However, the Penitentiary Principles Act 1999 was a significant break from tradition. The buzzwords of the 1999 Act were sobriety, security and efficiency, whereas its 1982 predecessor emphasised a most humane execution of prison sentences. A 1994 government paper called

Effective Detention had already signalled a move away from welfare and rehabilitation as the dominant approach to imprisonment. A ‘no frills’ regime labelled the ‘standard regime’ was introduced. This would apply to half or more of all detainees, limiting possibilities for education and social activities. In addition, Supermax (Shalev, 2009) found its way into the Netherlands through a so-called Extra Secure Establishment, or EBI, in Vught prison (in effect a prison inside a prison) (see Boin, 2001, Resodihardjo, 2013). Although to be fair, the unit is small and not consistently filled up.

An important architectural break with the past occurred in 2006. A paradigm called The New Institution was introduced. It refers to a newly built prison near the town of Lelystad. It houses no less than 6 prisoners per cell with a reliance on technology for surveillance and control. Aerial shots show a large, almost US-style establishment in a Dutch polder (reclaimed land). Inside a cell we see bunk beds and prisoners wearing electronic tags. It represents a cheaper and safer way of warehousing prisoners, in particular short term prisoners who pose no major security risk (see Kenis, Kruyven, Baaijens and Barneveld, 2010 for an evaluation) but with little in the way of rehabilitation. This shows that the structural limitations to imprisonment that were listed by Downes (1988) – such as solitary confinement and a reticence in building new prisons – is, if not abandoned, then certainly very much eroded. The prison in the Southern town of Tilburg that houses inmates convicted in Belgium even has communal cells for eight prisoners in four bunk beds. In 2007 Downes and Van Swaaningen concluded by saying that the situation in the Netherlands is ‘grimly pessimistic’. That makes it all the more remarkable that another reversal was only just around the corner.

TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

Table 1 shows developments in prison population in the Netherlands 2000-2012. It is important to emphasise that, unlike Downes and Van Swaaningen (2007) we utilise the newly calibrated figures as published by the Council of Europe under the SPACE I programme (see Aebi and Delgrande, 2009). Until 2008 the Dutch figures on the total prison population included those in juvenile detention centres and those in secure forensic mental health settings. The additional inclusion of considerable numbers of illegal immigrants held in administrative detention further distorted the figures as far as international comparisons were concerned (Van Dijk, 2011). In comparison, the figures for Norway (listed in Table 2) never included those categories. Thus, comparisons between both countries from before 2010 would not be like for like and would make the Netherlands artificially seem more incarcerative than was actually the case, at least as compared to Norway. The prison rates of the Netherlands and Norway have only become properly comparable since 2010 through Council of Europe data (although re-calculations of previous data are on occasion possible and provided in brackets in the ‘prison population per 100,000’ column in Table 1). Once we control for these figures, Van Dijk argued, the Dutch phase of re-penalisation from the 1970s onwards is actually, although still substantial, far less dramatic. When these calibrations are taken into account, the Dutch prison rates hardly ever went over the European mean and for the most part remained well below it (Van Dijk, 2011).

This puts the seemingly dramatic and much discussed rise of punitiveness in the Netherlands (Van Swaaningen, 2005, Downes and van Swaaningen, 2007; Pakes, 2000, 2004) into a new perspective. On the one hand, prison rates more narrowly defined may not have risen quite as

steeply as previously thought. On the other hand, in a broader sense, there certainly has been increased incarceration. Boone and Moerings (2007) have found that detention rates for a wide group of individuals (including illegal immigrants, youngsters, offenders with psychiatric problems and ‘regular’ offenders as well as those on remand) have all gone up substantially since 1990 (Boone and Moerings, 2007). This prompts the conclusion that, whilst there has been increased punitiveness, it was perhaps not quite as severe as often thought. That said, there is increased detention across the board and detention for a variety of ‘risky populations’ (such as irregular migrants, ethnic minority youngsters and also ‘habitual’ offenders (Van Swaaningen, 2013) has indeed increased and become more salient. In addition, many prisons are more austere than before. This is evident in prison design as the one-per-cell principle has been abandoned as a rule for newly built establishments, a reduction in the staff-prisoner ratio, and less investment in rehabilitation programmes – in particular for those on short sentences and the many prisoners on the ‘standard regime’.

However, there is little doubt that prison rates have in fact decreased since 2006. According to Van Dijk (2011) the most accurate prison rate was first established in 2006 with 78 prisoners per 100,000 population. In 2013 this figure was 68.1, which represents a decrease of 13%. Whilst perhaps not all that dramatic, it is in sharp contrast to the bleak picture painted by Downes and Van Swaaningen (2007) and also in contrast to feasibly comparable Nordic nations where prison rates recently have been on the rise. The decrease in Dutch prison rates was first noticed by Pakes in 2007, but no analysis was offered. More recently, Van Dijk (2011) did offer an analysis of the drop in prisoner numbers, concluding that it followed a drop in serious crime. He also listed increased use of community penalties as opposed to short prison sentences as a reason for the decrease, but argued that this had comparably little effect on the rates.

Two broader factors are worth observing at this point. Firstly, Van Dijk (2011) mentions the independence of the judiciary and the effect of a period of relative inactivity on behalf of central government in the realm of penal policy. On the same note, Vollaard and Molenaar (2009) concluded that sentencing tariffs for separate categories of crime had not changed very much since 2000, and that sentencing practices have remained largely unchanged. Secondly, and perhaps most remarkably, there has been a government-driven process of decarceration. The Dutch government refers to it as its Masterplan (left untranslated from English apart from its conjunction into a single word) (Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen, 2009). It is a rare current example of evidence-based penal policy to secure a sustained reduction in prison capacity.

This ‘Masterplan’ expression was first coined in May 2009 when former State Secretary for Justice Albayrak submitted her 5-year Masterplan for the prison service for 2009-2014 to Parliament (Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen, 2009). It presents a ‘new’ approach to personnel and capacity management. Perhaps most eye-catching was the way in which the required prison capacity in the future was established. It is resolutely evidence-based and further to a predictive model of required capacity in the criminal justice system called the prognosemodel, the ‘predictive model’. An early publication from 2004 (Ministry of Justice, 2004) explained that three clusters of variables are considered: criminal justice variables (detection rates and length of imposed prison sentences); criminal justice policy variables (changes in criminalisations or sentencing guidelines); and external variables with possible impact on offending rates. It is a long list that includes the size and density of the population, the dimensions of different age groups, the number of non-western immigrants in various age categories, the number of

youngsters (in the four main Dutch cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht), the number of single households, and the number of migrant men in various age groups.

The economic determinants include the unemployed and employed labour force (both in total and in the age group of 15-24 years); average yearly income, purchasing power, the extent of social benefits, tax burden, and finally the number of motor vehicles and mopeds. Social determinants include the number of social rent houses, the number of applications for political asylum, the number of underage refugees, the number of drugs addicts, and the yearly number of divorces.

The report argues that criminological theories are used to predict the impact of such external variables. The model for prediction of developments in the adult criminal justice system counts no less than 316 equations that formulate the impact of variables and relations between variables. The juvenile version consists of 156 of such formulas. It is not our intention to evaluate or even scrutinise too closely the number crunching or the assumptions underlying the modelling. However, as it purports to be ‘policy neutral’, one could reasonably question whether such an exercise ever can be.

That said the model has predicted that in the future, less penal capacity is required than is currently available. Successive governments have remained resolutely committed to this programme of decarceration. This led to the earmarking of several prisons for closure and much attention paid to the fate of prison personnel whose jobs would be at risk. This is the point at which the deal done with Belgium to house prisoners convicted in Belgium in the Penitentiary Institution of Tilburg was particularly attractive; it kept local prison workers employed. Nevertheless a number of establishments, such as The Grittenborgh in the provincial town of Hoogeveen, no longer serve as prisons. It does, however, sum up the situation in the Netherlands that this establishment has now come to ‘house’ asylum seekers. According to the revised Masterplan for 2013 to 2018, the required capacity will remain close to 13,000 spaces. Interestingly, the Masterplan also predicts a reduced need for detention capacity for illegal immigrants and argues for a scaling back of the capacity from 2,081 places in 2013 to no more than 933 places in 2018. It must be noted that the Netherlands is obviously not unique in seeking to forecast the need for prison capacity. Still, what does go against the grain is that when the projected figures point downwards, policy is simply adjusted accordingly.

We might speculate that fiscal austerity further to the global financial crisis created a political opportunity for central government to actually drive prison rates down. Government did apply a strictly technocratic, one might say scientific, narrative in order to achieve this, and it by and large avoided any populist uproar. At the same time, is it clear that prison rates had started to come down prior to 2008. The momentum therefore, was already there. At any rate it does serve as an example of traditional Dutch governance; social democratic (the Labour party being highly instrumental in this process), evidence based and confident, but possibly not without a certain (possibly a healthy) dédain towards public opinion.

The Masterplan did receive criticism in Parliament, in particular from Right wing anti-immigration politicians Geert Wilders and MP Lilian Helder – the latter argued that prisons are for filling up, not for closing – however, there has been no substantial political backlash. Much debate has instead focused on employment issues for prison workers. It therefore seems as if the debate on prison capacity to a degree has become de-politicised. At the same time it appears

the government caught the public mood by re-inventing prison regimes to be more austere and by withdrawing rehabilitative aspirations, at least for a majority of prisoners.

Lacey (2010) reminds us that states with greater capacity for co-ordination retain an ability to implement decarceration strategies even amid a heightened politics of law and order. This applies very much to the current situation in the Netherlands. Prison capacity is firmly in the hands of central government and requires little liaison at local levels or other administrative levels, although stakeholders such as trade union Abvakabo/FNV have a degree of clout. It campaigned heavily against prison closures in 2013 which included strikes and demonstrations. With employment a sore point, the deal with the Belgian government was most welcome. A similar contract with Norway would be equally welcome to diffuse any negative outcomes of the decarceration programme. On the one hand, precious jobs will be saved and, on the other, the prisons involved remain operational as prisons and can therefore more easily be used for their original purpose whenever these deals come to an end. In a TV interview in August 2015, Fred Teeven let slip that talks with the Swiss government may take place in order to explore yet another prison deal with a foreign government to house its prisoners in the Netherlands. This is further evidence that such arrangements may become a trend.

Norway: Repenalisation or bifurcation?

In recent years, much has been made of Norwegian exceptionalism (Pratt, 2008a, b, Pratt and Eriksson, 2011, 2012, 2013). This account is by now well known. Pratt discussed a penal philosophy prevalent in the Nordic countries of Finland, Norway and Sweden, with a profound emphasis on normalisation. The crux of the practice is that prisoners remain part of society, and, consequently, there is no essential difference between prisons and other establishments that serve a public function. The sentence is the punishment but the aim should be rehabilitation and preparing the prisoner for their return to society. From that perspective it makes sense that prisoners during their sentence are never truly removed from society, but live as ‘normal’ as possible within the circumstances. This carries with it an emphasis on positive staff-prisoner relationships, prisoner agency and a prison climate in which security is not always the overriding concern to trump all others (Pratt and Eriksson, 2011). In addition, prison rates are notoriously low in the Nordic countries. This adds further fuel to the idea that prisons are conceived of differently, and that punishment serves a different function than in most other Western societies. In terms of deeper causes, Pratt and Eriksson listed long standing cultures of homogeneity, egalitarianism and communitarianism that allowed this inclusive approach to flourish and become orthodoxy (Pratt and Eriksson, 2012, 2013).

Pratt’s second paper from 2008 (Pratt, 2008b), considers the future of Nordic exceptionalism, and started on a relatively sober note. It did not escape Pratt’s notice that prison rates in Finland, Norway and Sweden had begun to rise, albeit from a low base. Life tariffs had increased and average sentences had also gone up. Pratt mentioned that the foundations of Nordic penal exceptionalism, egalitarianism, solidarity and homogeneity, were eroding. He also identified specific societal pressures on the Norwegian penal system. Whilst there is a strong history of both egalitarianism and frugality, global marketing and local wealth have brought about a more spend-happy culture, leading to more obvious differences between the very rich, and the rest. Pratt also pointed to a degree of racial tension and increased concern about immigration, in particular in the capital of Oslo. Finally, Pratt argues that strict attitudes towards drug misuse (which are linked to nationalised ideals of healthy living and purity) are pushing up prisoner

numbers. In summary, despite pressures of varying natures, Pratt argues that Nordic exceptionalism faces its strongest challenge in Norway from issues linked to immigration. Although there is a clear determination in Norway for it not to affect penal policy, the terrorist attacks on 22 July 2011 in Oslo and on the island of Utøya would in many countries result in a spur towards punitive and vengeance-oriented penal policies. Although no such response is discernible that can be specifically attributed to this, there is no doubt the memory of these attacks will continue to test Norway’s commitment to rehabilitation and reintegration in the years ahead.

To be fair, responses to the attacks have been remarkably restrained. Government talk continued to emphasise tolerance, trust and inclusion. Then-Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg emphasised the need for a ‘new Norwegian we’ to emerge to honour these traditions and called for avoiding discourses of 'us' and 'them'. Trust in government and in official agencies such as the police remained high in the immediate aftermath ((Waggoner, 2014). There was no surge in support for strong counter-terror measures either (Fimreite, Lango, Laegreid and Rykka, 2013). Perhaps most tellingly, attitudes towards foreigners even became more positive after the attacks (Jakobsson and Blom, 2014). This was explained in light of the Black Sheep effect; as the perpetrator was a native Norwegian (and hence possibly construable as an 'in-group' member) there was a stronger drive for citizens to dissociate themselves from him and his ideas. Wollebæk, Enjolras, Steen Johnsen and Odegard (2012) found levels of trust in society to have increased; a finding they say supports a re-mobilisation of trust-hypothesis. All that said, among considered and restrained reporting in the media, the Norwegian blogosphere has become more volatile (Figenschou and Beyer, 2014).

The September 9 2013 general elections were the first significant poll after the attacks. It did not produce a landslide result, despite losses for the ruling Social Democratic Party and gains for the conservatives. But it did change the balance of power. On 16 October a new government was installed consisting of the Conservative Party with the populist and anti-immigration Progress Party as the junior partner in the coalition, further supported by a smaller Christian Democratic and a Liberal Party to form a Centre-Right coalition. The Progress Party got 16.3% of the vote, down from 22.3% in 2009, which in fact made it the biggest loser in terms of percentage of votes lost. The Conservatives delivered the Prime Minister, Erna Solberg and 10 other ministers, whereas the Progress Party, despite the losses it suffered, delivered seven ministers, amongst them Anders Anundsen, the Minister of Justice (Allern and Karlsen, 2014). 

Pratt’s perspective on the Nordic approach to penality has been influential and inevitably attracted a good deal of criticism. Mathiesen (2012) highlighted the struggle of penal reformers to be heard by the authorities. That argues against Pratt’s view of penal policy in Norway at least, set by a conglomerate of consensus-focused stakeholders. Barker (2012) called the Nordic state Janus-faced: far reaching and in many aspects benign, but at the same time capable of highly intrusive measures with little protection against its heavy influence. Barry and Leonardsen (2012) argued that commentators have underplayed the extent to which neoliberalism is changing Norwegian society. Although it would be going much too far to argue that the welfare state is being disbanded, monetary philosophies are stricter. It has led to a reorientation of who is deserving of the once generous provision of the welfare state. In various publications, Ugelvik (2012, 2014, 2015) has highlighted the pressure of globalisation and the

increased presence of non-Norwegian nationals in the prison system as a definite pressure point.

A close look at Norway’s prison statistics helps place into context these concerns (Table 2). It is indeed the case that prison rates are creeping up, a trend that has continued since Pratt’s articles were published in 2008. In interpreting that development we must remark, as did Pratt, that the increase is from a very low base in terms of prison ratio. In real terms the rise in imprisonment remains in the order of hundreds of prisoners. It is clear that the increase in prison capacity is, although steady, not of a rate that would necessarily be termed alarming. However the trend is clearly developing in the direction of an increased use of imprisonment.

TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

It is also clear that, where Pratt argues that immigration issues are most likely to test the state of exceptionalism, the data suggest that he was probably right. The proportion of foreign nationals in prison has clearly risen, and much more steeply than the prison capacity overall. The Council of Europe data show the proportion of foreign nationals in prisons in Norway at 12.9% in 2000, as 24.8% in 2008, and risen to no less than 32.0% in 2012. That represents a rise of 248%, whereas prisoner numbers from 2000 to 2012 have risen by 34%. Thus, the change in proportion of foreign prisoners can be argued to be more transformational than the rise of the prison population overall. It means that Norway’s prison rate remains comfortably under the European average but its proportion of foreign inmates comfortably above it (see Ugelvik, 2014). Coinciding with the rising number of foreign inmates in the Norwegian prison system is Norway’s signing of the Schengen Agreement in 2001 and the incorporation of several Eastern European countries to the same Agreement in 2007 (Meld. St.12 (2014-2015).

The rise of foreign nationals in the prison system has led to the establishment of a ‘specialist’ prison to house foreign inmates, Kongsvinger prison near Oslo International Airport, which houses approximately 100 prisoners. Although of a much smaller scale, this is reminiscent of the ‘hubs and spokes’ approach that is in operation in the UK. This approach consists of two prisons that are specifically nominated to exclusively house foreign nationals, whereas several others are designated to hold predominantly foreign nationals (Kaufman, 2012, 2013). Apart from having more foreign nationals in prison, Norway has one dedicated immigration detention centre, Trandum (Ugelvik and Ugelvik, 2013). The country’s levels of deportation of foreign nationals have also substantially increased.

Minister for Justice Anundsen has been the driving force behind the upscaling of deportation of persons without legal residence in Norway. Though this group consist mostly of people convicted of crime, it also includes asylum seekers whose application for asylum has been rejected. Despite achieving higher deportation numbers than any previous year, 2014 ended on less than a celebratory note for Anundsen. Following a debacle concerning deportation of asylum seeker minors, Anundsen was called to a hearing in the Storting (the supreme legislature of Norway). The hearing, however, seems to have generated more questions than answers, and comments verging on declarations of mistrust, as well as statements from local Progress Party leaders around the country calling for a new Minister of Justice, are popping up in the media (Glomnes, Tjernshaugen, and Ruud, 2015, Gillesvik, and Røssum,2015).

The number of prisoners that are transferred so that they can serve their sentence in their homeland is also on the increase. Ugelvik (2013) mentioned that transferring 52 prisoners to serve in their home country was said to save 34,498 days of prison time for Norway. Consequently, we discern that perhaps the prison system, through formal and informal ways, is going through a process of realigning itself in order to deal with this demographic change. However, some obstacles for this realignment are already arising; in early 2015 Afghan refugee minister Seyed Alem Hoseini Balkhi stated in an interview with a Norwegian newspaper that there are plans to stop families forced to return to Afghanistan at the border. The basis for this warning appears to be that the country cannot provide security for them in dangerous areas (Brandvold, and Ekeberg, 2015)

Ugelvik (2012) vividly described the extent to which treatment of 'insider prisoners', i.e. black sheep, that remain part of the herd (i.e., society) and ‘outsider prisoners’ (wolves, who are not part of society but arguably predators on society) increasingly differs. It highlights in part the official commitment to the normalisation thesis, but perhaps not for all. Halden prison, opened in 2010 does indeed, as commentators have said, feels rather like IKEA, nowhere more so than in the chalet on the premises where prisoners can spend time meeting their families. It rather looks like the holiday chalets that can be booked in holiday parks including a view dominated by fir trees. Halden, however, is intended for Norwegian prisoners. More no-nonsense Oslo prison is filled to a much larger extent with foreign national prisoners (Ugelvik, 2012), many of whom are liable to face deportation. Despite Ugelvik’s compelling comment, data from Kriminalomsorgen (Norwegian Correctional Services) show that the proportion of foreign national prisoners at Halden has remained around the national average in Norwegian prisons. Thus, the best of Norway’s prisons remains not exclusive to Norwegian passport holders. However, this whole constellation of developments point (tentatively perhaps) to an emerging infrastructure of bifurcation where the dividing line seems to be the onward destination, or ‘deportability’ (see e.g. De Genova, 2002).

If there is such a process of bifurcation underway, the move to house prisoners sentenced in Norway to serve part of their sentence in the Netherlands, certainly is by far its most eye-catching manifestation. This will require a re-appraisal of several of the stated aims and orientations regarding the Norwegian prison sentence. The ‘normalisation’ thesis remains in place, and the 2010 Ministry of Justice plan speaks of the intention to further the establishment of ‘village prisons’ that are very much an exemplar of this thesis. Although the ‘pains of imprisonment’ are there and not to be forgotten (Shammas, 2014), there seems to be a continued and resolute commitment to having imprisonment be as little disruptive and damaging as possible. At the same time, we see the glimpses of a process of segregation. Through Trandum and Kongsvinger – facilitated by a range of bilateral agreements with several European countries to have foreign nationals sentenced in Norway serve their sentence in their home country – we may discern a trend to first segregate and then deport foreign national prisoners.

Naturally, the rhetoric emanating from the Ministry of Justice does not commit to this level of segregation, let alone admit to the existence of any insidious aims. It remains committed to a ‘reintegration guarantee’ for all prisoners, but the Directorate of Norwegian Correctional Service acknowledges – perhaps a bit more realistically – that such a guarantee is difficult,

perhaps impossible, to realise for those who are supposed to be ‘reintegrated’ in a foreign country. Thus, one interpretation of this statement is that, whereas the ambition to provide a ‘reintegration guarantee’ for all prisoners is not abandoned in principle, there is an acknowledgement of the practical difficulties in securing this for foreign national prisoners who will not re-enter Norwegian society.

A transnational prisoner trade?

On closer inspection, this is not just a story of one country’s prison rate going down, another’s going up, and hence the effective use of resources by borrowing capacity. From a Norwegian perspective it could be argued that the move is less to do with an expanding prison population, and more to do with an exponential rise of foreign prisoners. Ugelvik (2013) has argued that welfare States in which the state is committed to providing universal welfare so that the whole of the population is protected and entitled, face a particular challenge from globalisation, in particular from the arrival of ‘new’ people that subsequently make demands on that welfare state. The challenge is to the universal aspirations of the welfare state; similarly there is a challenge to the universal nature of Norway’s normalisation thesis in prisons. We have seen that prisons in Norway are part of society as opposed to outside it, and that the same philosophy is applied to prisoners. It makes the deal with the Netherlands a stark break from tradition, as prisoners would be airlifted to a prison 500 miles south. That should, and will, stretch the normalisation thesis to breaking point.

As Lacey (2010) argued, we need to differentiate between penal states. If the discussed developments play out, it no longer makes sense to speak of the Nordic, or even the Norwegian, approach to punishment, as these would no longer be monolithic entities. Instead, different groups may be treated in different ways, with the dividing line being whether an individual will return to Norwegian society or not. That dividing line is drawn by onward destination but of course given enhanced salience through culture, language, religion, nationality and race. There is an argument to be made that the ejection of unwanted prisoners may serve to ‘protect’ the ‘deserving’ part of the population from a similar erosion of their quality of life and the commitment to rehabilitation. With the government seemingly steadfast in the intention to preserve the exceptional status of the nature of imprisonment, it is perhaps that which is going to give.

Pratt and McLean (in press) consider pressures underlying Swedish exceptionalism. They argue that exceptionalism is far from dead in Sweden, and we would argue that the same is true for Norway. However, they further state that exceptionalism can be retained ‘only by constructing a range of barriers around them that now separate ‘legitimate’ Swedes from those whose immigration status leads to them being denied any such legitimacy in Swedish society.’

Pratt and McLean explain that while conditions in open prisons in Sweden remain highly benign, in closed prisons where, they maintain, foreign national prisoners are more likely to be held, approaches have become much more no-nonsense. It is interesting to note that the increase in Sweden of foreign national prisoners is of a similar scale to that in Norway. Their conclusion is stark: “In Sweden, the reconfiguration of its previous exceptionalism has brought about a more bifurcated society: social inclusion on one side of the barrier, penal exclusion on the other.” Perhaps Sweden is one step ahead in the bifurcation processes of which we discern the contours in Norway. Vanessa Barker makes this point in particular in relation to Romani

people in Sweden (Barker, 2013) and argues, as does Ugelvik (2013) that in particular in welfare states the centrality of membership is heightened.

Our final comments need to concern the bigger implications. What if such prison-capacity deals would come to form a part of something bigger? As apparently there is interest from Switzerland, this may well happen. It is a truism to say that prisoners move around a lot from one prison to the next. Many, perhaps most, prisoners spend time in a number of prisons, such as remand prisons, local prisons, and perhaps move from high to medium to low secure establishments and back again. Bosworth (2014) found the same for those held in immigration detention. Although those perceived as troublesome are possibly moved around most, detainees comparing notes about the various centres is commonplace and the same is true for many prisoners: much prisoner talk revolves around experiences in other prisons.

Moran, Piacentini and Pallot (2012) consider such mobility as an expression of power. They argue that imprisonment is frequently characterised by immobility interplayed with forced mobility. Perhaps this is nowhere more so the case as in Russia where the gulag has cultural and historical significance which seems to continue to provide inspiration for the post-Soviet prison system (Pallot, 2005). Prisoners still serve sentences extremely far from home, further to a gruesome journey, whilst left in the dark about their destination (Piacentini and Pallot, 2014). Thus, there is a disturbing history of prisoner mobility in which, obviously, deportation to colonies or other areas deemed terra nulla play a significant part.

Of course, what we are witnessing between The Netherlands and Norway is fundamentally different. The deal which is the crux of this paper is between democratic governments, bringing with it a much greater focus on the rights and needs of the prisoners involved. But the arrangement between the Netherlands and Norway could set a new precedent for solving issues of prison capacity in the future. Whether this is a progressive or an outright destructive precedence is another matter altogether.

Such a shift could bring about a telling change in what prisoners represent. Whereas, arguably, prisoners already have economic value for local communities, the transnational nature of this deal could herald a further commodification of prisoners. There is a sad irony to the situation that prisoners, immobilised and excluded as a population, would suddenly become mobile again as a commodity. This will require us to further rethink prisoner mobility. In addition, we must be alert to an expansion of prisoner mobility for profit. The ideas exist: why not build prisons in destination countries so that removal can be more easily achieved, and detention achieved more cheaply and perhaps not under the gaze of the public eye? The increased commodification of prisoners could spell a dystopian future of prisoners moved about for profit and warehoused as cheaply as possible. Yet again it must be clarified that the Netherlands-Norway prison deal is not of this nature. If anything, it is a race to the top, not to the bottom, when it comes to prison conditions. However, who knows what will follow, and a continuing transformation from human prisoner to commodity moved about for profit certainly is a vision we should resist.

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Year Total number of prisoners

(incl. detainees)

Prison population

per 100,000(adjusted

for comparison)

Capacity of

penal instituti

ons

Prisondensity per 100 spaces

Average length of sentence (months)

% femal

e

% foreig

n

Suicides per

10,000

Escapes per

10,000

2000 13847 90.1 15372 90 4,5 4.7 7.4 10 102001 15246 95.4 15700 97 4.4 7.7 122002 16239 100,8 16686 97,3 5.5 29.1 9.2 12.52003 18242 112.7 19205 95.0 4.7 6.2 12.32004 20075 123.5 21684 92.6 4.6 5.3 27.2 7.1 8.22005 21826 133.9 22146 98.6 5.0 6.3 32.9 10.5 3.52006 20463 124.9 (78.0) 22000 93.0 5.9 6.4 32.7 9.2 6.92007 18746 113.1 (72.2) 23209 80.8 5.4 6.7 29.1 9.8 1.52008 17113 102.8 (63.4) 21418 79.9 4.0 7.1 27.8 10.3 2.72009 16284 98.8 9(70.6) 13822 79.2 4.9 6.2 21.7 7.0 2.32010 11737 70.8 12371 94.9 3.5 6.1 21.4 8.6 6.02011 11579 69.5 (68.1) 12338 93.8 3.6 6.0 20.8 17.0 5.12012 11324 67.7 13192 85.8 3.5 5.4 19.5 13.0 0.9

Table 1. Developments in prison population in the Netherlands 2000-2012

Table 2. Developments in prison population in the Norway 2000-2012

Year Total number

of prisoners

(incl. detainees

)

Prison populatio

n per 100,000

Capacity of penal

institutions

Prison density per 100

spaces

Average length of sentence (months

)

% femal

e

% foreig

n

Suicides per

100,000

Escapes per

10,000

2000

2643 59.0 2923 90 2.6 5.6 12.9 4.2 200

2001

2666 59.2 2903 92 2.7 0.0 12

2002

2662 58.8 2928 90,9 2.6 5.3 15.0 15.2 102.8

2003

2914 64.0 2965 98.3 2.8 7.5 71.4

2004

2975 65.0 3118 95.4 3.2 5.2 19.2 24.0 48.0

2005

3097 67.2 3178 97.5 3.2 5.0 17.8 16.8 33.6

2006

3164 67.8 3330 95.0 3.1 5.4 18.2 16.1 32.3

2007

3280 70.9 3497 93.8 3.1 6.0 20.7 6.3 25.3

2008

3278 70.6 3585 91.4 3.1 6.8 24.8 6.1 48.8

2009

3285 68.4 3582 91.7 3.2 6.3 27.8 21.4 24.4

2010

3636 74.8 3825 95.1 3.3 6.2 31.1 3.0 24.4

2011

3535 71.8 3835 92.2 3.8 6.3 30.5 5.5 38.5

2012

3551 71.2 3803 93.4 4.0 5.3 32.0 11.3 28.3