Title: ‘Healthy’ prisons in unhealthy times. How disruptions and austerity influence weight and tightness.

• In Event: Illness, incarceration and professional identity: healthy prisons, unhealthy practices and staff-prisoner relations

Abstract

This study examines the dynamics at two low-security prisons in Norway amidst a backdrop of various disruptions. Both prisons are open institutions with an emphasis on trust and dynamic security and have been highlighted as examples of Scandinavian or Nordic penal exceptionalism. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative in-depth interviews with both prisoners and prison staff, this study navigates through the tumultuous landscape shaped by the global COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide austerity measures. In addition to these over-arching disruptions, one of the prisons experienced additional local disruptions stemming from organizational restructuring and internal workplace conflicts. These situations affected prisoners and prison staff alike and thus became a fundamental part of the study, which originally aimed to explore health-promoting aspects of low-security prisons.
These major disturbances affected both prisons, but not equally and not in the same way. Employing Ben Crewe’s theoretical framework of weight, depth, and tightness, this study unveils variations in staff presence and institutional control. One prison became increasingly staff-absent; in the other, staff remained present. Both, however, experienced increased bureaucratic pressures and resource constraints imposed by the Norwegian Correctional Service, although with varying degrees of tightness. By examining the interplay between disruptions and institutional responses, this study increases our understanding of penal institutions struggling with multifaceted challenges.

Author

• Pernille Nyvoll, University of Oslo