Searching for Rehabilitation in All the Wrong Places: Understanding (Allegedly) Exceptional Penal Systems

• In Event: The interconnections between prisons, risk, rehabilitation and welfare

Abstract

Much has been written about the Nordic model of punishment and about how the penal systems of these countries are exceptional (as in exceptionally good and humane) from an international perspective. The concept of rehabilitation, and the more significant role it is supposed to play in Nordic penalty, is often used to support claims about ‘Nordic exceptionalism’. However, the very concept of rehabilitation, and what it means in practice, remains vague in much of this scholarship. Drawing on recent attempts to clarify and unpack the concept of rehabilitation, this paper interrogates what rehabilitation looks like in Norway, and what that might tell us about Nordic exceptionalism. We argue, drawing on the terminology offered by Raynor and Robinson (2009) and McNeill (2012), and in contrast to what is implied in some of the literature on Nordic penalty, that the type of rehabilitation that characterizes Norwegian penal practice is less correctional, personal and psychological, and more concerned with social and legal dimensions: The rehabilitation approach in Norwegian prisons works more through principles than programmes. The paper concludes that the most significant feature of the Norwegian approach to rehabilitation is that offenders are treated as citizens, and retain their rights to welfare during and after their imprisonment.

Authors

• Thomas Ugelvik, University of Oslo

• Kristian Mjåland, University of Agder