The Pains of Freedom Prison Island and the Making of Scandinavian Penal Exceptionalism Victor Lund Shammas Master’s thesis, Sociology Department of Sociology and Human Geography UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2012 © Victor Lund Shammas 2012 The Pains of Freedom: Prison Island and the Making of Scandinavian Penal Exceptionalism Victor Lund Shammas http://www.duo.uio.no/ Printed: Reprosentralen Summary Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, this study of a minimum security, “open” prison in Norway attempts to flesh out empirically criminologist John Pratt’s argument that Scandinavian societies employ “exceptional” penal practices. In the course of three months of fieldwork, semi-structured interviews with fifteen inmates were conducted, in addition to observation of daily prison life and dozens of conversations with inmates and staff. On Prison Island, the 115-man prison under study, most inmates live in small wooden houses in self- organized collectives, engaging in ecological farming, forestry and educational programs. Great emphasis is placed on inmate rehabilitation for the purposes of successful community re-entry. Building on Gresham Sykes’ (1958) original “pains of freedom” and Ben Crewe’s (2011) notion of ‘new’ pains in the era of “soft power” in prisons, it is argued that there are salient “pains of freedom” that arise out of apparently relaxed conditions of confinement like those found on Prison Island. The freedom experienced therein can be frustrating and painful as inmates balance between liberty and confinement. Essentially, in the absence of those features commonly associated with traditional prisons, inmates must internalize the prison with all its rules and expectations for self-improvement. In this way, the penal populist vision of open prison confinement as “luxurious” or “cushy” is moderated through empirical engagement. It is shown that prison officers have developed “techniques of micro-constraint” – including prisoner population counts, drug tests, standards of domestic discipline and visitor regulations – to maintain order and “docile bodies.” A “macro-constraint” – the threat of return to higher- security confinement – is an overarching control technique that seeks to create discipline and self-regulation in the prisoner body. The dilemmas and tribulations of life in the open prison are illustrated with a case study of a music band organized by inmates, as well as an analysis of the use of ethnic and national characteristics as a “principle of vision and division” in the society of captives. For the band, the opportunity to play music affords certain privileges not available to other inmates, like the opportunity to leave the prison and play concerts. But new risks and challenges also arise as they strive to balance the dynamic of an outside-world organization with the expectations of inmates and officers. In terms of ethnonational group dynamics, it is shown that Norwegians and “foreigners” occasionally mobilize into stratified clusters, but by and large manage to produce a working arrangement under a regime of “forced multiculturalism.” In summarizing, it is argued that, on the international penal scene, Prison Island is an exceptional institution, but as an exemplar of late-modern “soft power” in imprisonment, it still remains committed to the basic facts of security, control and punitiveness, even as these take on new and unfamiliar guises. Acknowledgments All research is to some degree a collective enterprise. I owe a debt of gratitude to many individuals. Loïc Wacquant was the first person to set me on the course of prison ethnography through his riveting analyses of the penal state. The members of Teach in Prison at the University of California, Berkeley facilitated an attempt to understand U.S. prisons from the inside. The prisoners at San Quentin’s educational building taught me much about life in the “animal house.” With a combination of scholarly precision and great personal warmth, Willy Pedersen masterfully guided the project from inception to completion. Maren Toft’s personal and intellectual companionship was essential during the fieldwork phase. Morten Bostrøm was an indispensable sparring partner as we entered the field of prison studies together. Johan Brox, Rune Busch, Nils Christie, Ida Kjeøy, Eva Lund, Sveinung Sandberg, Trygve Solli, Thomas Ugelvik and Beate Sletvold Øistad all provided insightful input at various stages of the research process. My fellow students from the writing seminars on social marginalization at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography and on criminological research at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo gave invaluable comments on early drafts, as did participants at a seminar on drug addiction and incarceration at the Stein Rokkan Centre in Bergen. Norwegian Correctional Services and the officers, staff and warden of the place I have called Prison Island graciously assisted in gaining access to the field and keeping it. Finally, it is the inmates of Prison Island and their willingness to take in an outsider that made this study possible. It is to them I owe the greatest debt of gratitude. Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Life and Death in the “Animal Factory” ................................................................................ 5 Sails Set for Prison Island ...................................................................................................... 8 2. Voices of Confinement: The Method of Open Prison Immersion ............................... 13 Participant Observation and the Ethnographic Interview .................................................... 14 Vulnerability and Ethical Considerations ............................................................................. 15 Telling “One Side of the Story” ........................................................................................... 16 Participant Observation and its Discontents......................................................................... 18 3. “Soft Power” and Scandinavian Exceptionalism: Toward a Theoretical Outline of Open Prison Penality ............................................................................................................. 20 Historical Trends in Prison Ethnography ............................................................................. 20 International Penal Regime Trajectories .............................................................................. 22 The Trope of “Scandinavian Exceptionalism” ..................................................................... 23 Norway’s “Field of Penality” ............................................................................................... 24 Cognitive Categories: “Open” vs. “Closed” Prison ............................................................. 27 A Theoretical Outline of Self-Government and “Soft Power” in the Open Prison .............. 29 4. Life and Times in the Half-Prison: Constraint, Control and the Fear of Hard Time 32 Fresh off the Boat: The Shock of Prison Freedom ............................................................... 32 Techniques of Micro-Constraint ........................................................................................... 36 Self-Disciplining Subjects and the Fear of Return as Macro-Constraint ............................. 53 Trust, Violence and Deceit ................................................................................................... 55 5. Blues Behind Bars ............................................................................................................. 58 Traps and Pitfalls: Confronting the Hidden Walls of the Open Prison ................................ 60 Appeasing the Society of Captives ....................................................................................... 63 6. Across the Great Divide: Making a Society of Captives in the Era of Ethnonational Tension .................................................................................................................................... 65 The Gaze of the Native ......................................................................................................... 67 The View from Afar ............................................................................................................. 70 Combined Realities: Life under Forced Multiculturalism ................................................... 73 An Aside on Social Class ..................................................................................................... 75 7. The Bittersweet Taste of Liberty: Self-Government and the Pains of Freedom ....... 78 Prison-Internal Pains of Freedom ......................................................................................... 78 Prison-External Pains of Freedom ........................................................................................ 81 Civil Death Meets “Civil Resurrection” ............................................................................... 84 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................ 88 8. References .......................................................................................................................... 90 Appendix A: Invitation to Participate in Study ...............................................................