Looking towards Europe: The Challenges of Transforming Correctional Culture in the US

• In Event: PWG - International approaches to punishment, governance, and reform

Abstract

In the last two decades, mass incarceration in the US has lost the political legitimacy it once enjoyed. Important scholarship has called attention to how mass incarceration signaled a shift from the rehabilitation towards punishment and incapacitation. Activists have highlighted the enduring role of violence inside US jails and prisons and the collateral consequences of the prison built up, especially on communities of color. In response to growing calls to end mass incarceration, leading correctional leaders and criminal justice advocates have looked to Northern European and Scandinavian countries for models that can transform the culture in US prisons. Following the example of their Scandinavian counterparts, corrections leaders in at least a dozen U.S. states have implemented prison programs that have incorporated some aspects of Norway’s and Sweden’s correctional policies. This presentation engages with the challenges and limits of importing these European concepts and models of prison reform in US prisons, including the enduring role of race, power, and state policy in shaping the culture of the American punishment system.

Author

• Zhandarka Kurti, Loyola University Chicago