Going to Danish Prison

Well, you may have read about my run-in with the Danish police for not have lights on my bike at night, so it was really only a matter of time before I ended up at a prison. Kidding. Kind of. I did go to a prison, it just wasn't because of any laws I broke, rather it was just for my Criminal Justice in Scandinavia class.
The Scandinavians take a very very different approach to criminal punishment than the Americans and this prison was proof of that. While Americans basically just seem to shove as many people into prison for as long as they can, without really caring about giving them any sort of humane living conditions, the Danes are much more lenient with their prison sentences. A murderer may receive a ten year sentence. In fact, few people receive more than five years. And for most prisoners, the default place to serve out a term is an open prison, meaning there is an open gate, and the prisoners are not in any locked facilities during the day. At night they are locked into rooms, but that is all. The only thing that stops the prisoners from walking out is there willpower. And somehow it seems to work. After all the conditions in the prison are extremely humane. The prison is neat, clean, and comfortable. There is green grass all around. The prisoners have access to TVs, when their children come and visit, there are toys and playgrounds. There is a gym, a kitchen where prisoners cook for themselves, with full access to very large cooking knives. Basically, the guard who showed us around, an unarmed female in an all-men's prison, said that the philosophy is that if it doesn't make them more criminal, there is no reason they should not have access to it. Indeed, perhaps the most mind-blowing thing to me was the tanning bed. Prisoners had access to a tanning bed! It's not free for them to use, they pay for it out of their wages, but still! Wow!
And the thing about all this is that it seems to have the desired effects. The prisoners, as a result of being treated like human beings, act like human beings. They were friendly, polite, even joking with the guards. And the recidivism rate in Denmark is significantly lower than the US, which I think says a lot.
A lot of Americans would have a problem with this, I think. I heard one fellow student say, they're criminals! They shouldn't be treated nicely. But I really do think people will act how you treat them, in a lot of cases, and the results of Danish prisons speak for themselves.
All in all, this was one of the most eye-opening experiences I have had since being in Denmark. It is certainly my favorite field-trip I have ever been on and I had moments of genuine shock (seeing the knives and the tanning bed in the prison, to name a few!)