Welcome guys to episode 73 of Behind the Shield podcast. My name is James Gearing and this week I bring to you a very different guest than many that we've had before, but another area that I've really wanted to explore and an area that I am not well versed in myself. I did not come from this background. I am not immersed in it at all, but it's an area that I want to deconstruct because it seems to be an area that we are not doing very well here at the moment.
And when I say here also the same model is being used in England and I'm sure many places over the world, but the area is prisons. Now a statistics that I found startling was back in 1970 the US had about 350,000 prisoners incarcerated. Today's stats are over 2.2 million prisoners. So as a very low level mathematician to me that seems like we're trending in the wrong direction. So I wanted to reach out to a country that seems to have a very different way of doing things.
I'm not saying that it's going to be perfectly replicated if we put it in a different country, but I wanted to bring some new ideas and sow some seeds again in this area too. And if nothing else for me, I wanted to talk to a man who was in that system. So my guest is Tom Eberhardt and he is the governor of Bastogne prison just outside Oslo.
I saw his prison featured in a couple of documentaries and we're going to talk about this, but long story short, they use the model where they remove the prisoners freedom, they're stuck on this island in the middle of a body of water, but they live as a community. Now these are people that have committed murders and high level crimes. These are not shoplifters and people found with weed on their person.
And they have had a huge success by preparing these men and women to go back into society, which is something that is going to happen to 95% of prisoners. So the theory of rehabilitating these prisoners and trying to teach them a skill, try and teach them a sense of community and then set them up for success when they leave prison. So when they move next door to us, they're a functioning member of society. I think is a great concept and it makes perfect sense to me.
So Tom is a man who is running a system that does exactly that. So we talk about the contrast between the US and Norway and he can actually talk about that because they had exchange trips with American prisons. So they have seen American prisons and then we had American governors go over to Norway and study their system as well. So a fascinating topic, two very polarizing models. This isn't again a blame game.
It's just deconstructing, taking a step back and looking to see if somewhere else on this beautiful planet that we inhabit is possibly doing something a little bit better. So I'm going to stop rambling now. It was a great conversation with Tom.
As I always say, please go to the show on iTunes, rate us, share the hell out of this, get the men and women of this beautiful earth that we live in thinking, share these ideas, share these concepts, share the mind of these incredible guests and let's try and make the world a better place one little baby step at a time. So without further ado, I introduce to you Tom Erbahard. Enjoy. Well, welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast, Tom. Firstly, where are we finding you geographically?
I'm in Norway, just beside the Oslo fjord, about 50 kilometers south of Oslo. Okay, brilliant. Now, were you actually born in Oslo yourself? Yes, more or less on the west side of Oslo, but I moved here where I live now like 41 years ago. Okay, and how long have you been in the prison service? I think next year, I've been there for like 25 years. 25, okay.
All right, well, my first question is going to be, obviously, we're going to talk about Bastogh and how it polarizes many of the prisons that we have here in America, but when you first entered the prison system 25 years ago, what was your first prison like and was it similar to Bastogh? No, not at all. The first prison I worked in was a prison called Illa Prison and Detention Center, just outside Oslo. That's a high security prison for no prisoners, but also prisoners with psychiatric problems.
So the security issues there was something completely else on what you find on Bastogh. Okay, so because of that issue, was it more like the American and English model where prisoners were behind bars as it were? Yeah, more or less. From Illa Prison, I moved to Oslo Prison and worked there for 15 years and that is also a high security prison, which is built after the Philadelphia principle, which you will find both in the UK and the United States.
And more or less, the prisoners are behind bars there like you will find in any European and in the United States. Okay, now before we talk about Bastogh, what are the crime rates in Norway per capita compared to say England or America? I'm not sure of the exact figures, but I know it's quite low and much lower than you will find in the United States and in the UK. And to my knowledge, I also think that the crime rate in Norway is decreasing and has been doing so for quite some years now.
Okay, because that's what I want to talk about as well. Another thing as well, just to educate the people listening, there is gun ownership in Norway, isn't there? Do a lot of people own guns? Yes, a lot of people own guns. I think actually we are quite high on the statistics where they show guns per inhabitants on the world list actually. That is because of hunting rifles, shotguns, and also the fact that we used to have a conscript army.
And when you were finished going to the army, a lot of people kept having their armoured guns at home for what you call it, security reasons. So they could deploy quickly. Brilliant. But what is your gun crime statistics like? Is it high like we have here in the US because of the gun ownership? No, I think it's quite low. I think we had some issues back in the 80s where we saw that a lot of these army weapons that people kept at home were used for robberies, killings and so on.
But after that the army took some actions and they prohibited that the ex-soldiers were allowed to keep their reserve weapons at home. That made the statistics drop quite rapidly. Interesting. Because obviously coming from England myself, I had a gun. I had guns because I grew up on a farm. So we had shotguns. So there's that misconception in Europe that we don't have any guns, therefore there's no gun crime.
But the reality is that there are guns that are just not, like you said, military style weapons. So I like to just hear it from other Europeans and see if that gun crime is still bad despite the guns being out there. Yeah, I think that's a fact also for Norway. We see very little crime committed here with automatic weapons, army style weapons and so on. Okay, brilliant. Now, so my next question is going to be, so you have all these prisons that are the same model as the US, as England.
So the Norwegian prisons that have come across my radar, at least, are the ones that have a very, very different, and Bastog is obviously is one of them where you are. So can you tell me how Bastog was created? Bastog was created and established as a prisoner a little more than 30 years ago. In Norway, we have had this prison queue. That means that we have convicted people who have been convicted in the court, but they are awaiting a free prison space.
So they might have been going out into society for one or two years, and then they are called to a prison to do their sentence. And about 30 years ago, that queue was quite high. So the government, they needed new prison spaces. And they had this island in the middle of the Oslo Fjord, which had been used for 70 years as a reformatory for young boys. So they decided to convert that island into a prison, a low-security prison. And they did so.
And since then, the prison has developed slowly into what it is today. We're still a low-security prison, but now we have a kind of special philosophy, and we're considered to be quite liberal when you measure us up on most of the prisons in Europe and also, I think, in the United States. Okay. So I know the traditional philosophy is obviously confinement and punishment, really. Obviously, they don't want the experience to be pleasurable for the prisoners.
And I understand that philosophy completely, but yours is very different. So can you explain the philosophy behind Bastogh and what you are hoping the prisoners, how they are going to be when they leave the prison? Yeah, I can do so. I think, first of all, I have to start with the principles behind the prison service in Norway, because in Norway and the Norwegian legislation, we say that the only punishing element within the sentence is, the prison sentence is actually the loss of freedom.
And after we have taken the freedom away from the prisoners, we are supposed to do everything we can together with the prisoners to make them ready for a life after prison. So Bastogh, we have taken the liberty away. They are in prison. They are on an island. So you can say that their freedom of movement is quite limited because it's limited more or less to the boundaries of the island. And most of the prisoners at Bastogh, they apply to go to Bastogh on the last part of the sentence.
That could be like from six months until maybe five years. And they spend those six months to five years on the island. And what we try to do there is give them as much responsibilities as it's possible within the boundaries of being a prison. Because what we see is that in most prisons all over the world, and we have to be honest that we have been locking people up since the Middle Ages in prison-like environments. And we have been doing so for several hundred years.
And no one has really stopped and asked themselves what we're doing and also does it work? And in our minds, we see that we need to give the prisoners so much training as possible on how to be a good neighbour, a good inhabitant in a society, and also give them responsibilities so that they are ready to take responsibility both for themselves, their family, friends, their neighbourhood, when they come out in the normal Norwegian society.
And by giving them these responsibilities, we think that in the end will make the relapse rates drop also in Norway. So whenever there comes new prisoners to Bastogh, they come with our ferry and the ferry boat we have is operated both by inmates and staff. All the crew are inmates and the captain is the staff. And they are put to shore on Bastogh and they stand there. And on the quay we have a big sign, a poster saying, Bastogh prison, arena for developing responsibility.
So it actually hits them in the face when they go ashore on the island. And soon they will experience what we mean by an arena for developing responsibility. Because we tell them from day one that the rehabilitation is their responsibility. It's not ours. We can help them, we can provide the tools and so on, but in the end, we can give them advice, but in the end they have to take the decisions because it's concerning their lives.
And what we see in a lot of especially close prisons all over the world is that the first thing we do to prisoners is actually taking their responsibilities away. In some prisons, the prisoners are not allowed to take much decisions on a daily basis. They are told when to eat, they are told what to eat, they are almost fed with a spoon. They are told when they can have an hour of fresh air. They are told when they can go to the library and so on.
But on Bostø we give all that responsibility back to the inmates. So we have to ensure and we have to supervise them on how to take that responsibility because in our minds, if you release people from prison with no training on taking your responsibilities, how can you expect that they actually stay away from crime? Because they don't. And we have like five, six hundred years of experience telling us so.
Yeah, what was interesting, I saw on statistics in one of the documentaries I watched and it was that 95% of prisoners go back, you know, they get released. It's only about 5% that never leave the prison system. And so as I point out in the documentary, these men and women are now going back to your street. They're going to be your neighbors again. And what kind of person do you want?
Do you want someone who's been locked up in the Philadelphia model, as you said, or someone who's been taught how to be a better member of the community? Yeah. I think that's quite important because as human beings, I mean, I've never met one human being that really wants to be soft on crime. I think it's within any person that, you know, if wrongdoing has been done, you know, the need for revenge is there. I accept that.
But if you start a discussion with people also in Norway, they can say that, no, you know, in the region prisons, there are like hotels and probably they would say that in London, in Miami, New York and Paris also. Because it's like a common misconception that, you know, prisons, because they have television sets and receive free food, that is like a hotel. And I think that misconception is due to the fact that most people have never, ever experienced the loss of freedom.
And in order to say anything about what loss of freedom means, I think you need to have experienced it. I think it's so important. So you can give the general public a lot of examples, you know, to make they start think of what a prison sentence really feel like and what the loss of freedom really means. For instance, if you say to a person that's, okay, we can do an experiment, I can lock you up on the best hotel in London. It's a suite.
You will have a big fancy, flat screen television, nice furniture, even an ensuite bathroom, you know, with tiles. But the backside of the project is that I am the one with the key to the suite. I am the one deciding the one hour of fresh air, when that is being done. I'm the one who decides when you can call your family, your loved ones, your kids, your wife.
And I'm pretty sure that most human beings will go to the calling that suite after maybe just a couple of days and say, okay, I've had enough. I want to go out. Because I think in the end, a flat screen television, nice surroundings isn't that important. It's just keeping you from getting mad, actually. I think as human beings, we are pre-programmed to appreciate freedom. I think freedom is maybe one of the most important issues for any human being.
And the minute you start feeling that that freedom has been taken away, your mind will start working, thinking bad things, thinking, develop hate, bitterness towards the ones that are actually taking that freedom away. Yeah. Now, what about speaking of that? So do you have a high occurrence of violence between prisoners in Bastog? No, we don't. Actually, we have had no examples for 30 years of inmates attacking staff members. Wow. See that? Because that's obviously something that we see a lot.
And I like the fact that, let me see, the gentleman James Conway from Attica came out to Norway and worked with you guys and saw your prison. So it painted a very fair picture between these two prison styles because one was the superintendent of an American prison. But we here in the US and in England, the violence is obviously a huge thing and they're forging weapons and all kinds of ways of either harming or killing each other.
So again, I personally, this is just my opinion, that seems to be a reflection that maybe that system is not working well. Yeah, I agree with you. And I also think it's quite easy to understand why it doesn't work or that prisoners are attacking each other and also the staff. I mean, imagine yourself if you're put to prison and you know that you have to stay there for like 10, 15 years or maybe even longer.
And the environment you're going to spend the 10, 15 years in, to you seems very hostile, very unfriendly, very violent. I think as human beings, we adapt to that kind of culture. I remember when I was 18 years old, I was going into the Norwegian army. And I remember my girlfriend was driving me by her car to the army camp and we were sitting in your car outside the army camp and I was looking into the army camp and I started thinking that, okay, I'm going to spend a year in this army camp.
I was, you know, fresh out of high school and my mind started thinking and I was thinking, you know, what is it like in there? What kind of culture is within that army camp? How is my, you know, fellow soldiers, the officers, the NCO and so on. And I was kind of ready to adapt to the culture I would find in there because that is all about survival. You know, there's a saying that which goes like this, if you want to survive in the wolf pack, you have to behave like a wolf in order to survive.
And I think it's exactly the same which is going on when I was going to the army. And it's for sure the same fact that prisoners are facing whenever they're going into a new prison. You know, they want to know what kind of culture there is in the place they're going and they are slowly adapting to that culture in order to survive. So if the culture in the institution is violent, hostile, they will adapt and also become violent and hostile because they need to survive.
I think it's quite easy to come to that conclusion. So the point is, I think in order to have good institutions, good prisons where we actually educate the prisoners to become good neighbours, we need to create good environments. We need to create, you know, kind of friendly environments because the loss of freedom, it's there. But we don't need to punish them further by treating them disrespectfully or badly or even violent because that would only make them even dangerous.
And I think for me as a civil servant, you know, my pay is taxpayer money. And if I was supposed to, you know, treat people badly in prison, disrespectful, you know, giving them even more punishment by being an asshole, so to speak. You know, I would only do the taxpayers not a favour. On the contrary, I will, you know, really misuse the taxpayers money because I will only serve them even more bad people when they're released. And I think that's not in the public interest.
Yeah, no, I agree 100%. Now you touched on something about national service. Is that still a mandatory requirement in Norway? No, not that much. It's more or less voluntary. Every young girl or boy has to answer an internet survey. And if they say yes, they would like to go into the army, they are called in and tested. So everybody who wants more or less can go to the army. But if you don't want to, you're not likely to go. Okay. But are there a lot of people that do in Germany? Yes, it is.
I think among especially young boys, I think it's considered to be a good thing to have been doing a year in the army. And I think also the Norwegian army has a quite good reputation when it comes to, you know, education and so on. And I think also a lot of employers, if they see on your CV that they have been to the army, that's a plus. Yeah. Well, I think as well, obviously, we're talking about the prison system and I'd love to expand on that even more.
But the other side obviously is society and then, you know, why are we maybe creating more crime in the way we are? And I know that there's one man I've had a couple of times on the show now, Sebastian Junger, who's written about war and tribal mentality. And one of his things as an observation is that national service, whether it's in the army or some other way of serving your country for a year, would be a great thing for us to have.
And I think it seems like some of the countries that do have that, Israel is another one, do seem to have a lot less crime as well. And I'm sure there's some sort of correlation between those two. Yeah, I think so too. I think, you know, the feeling the young men and women have when they go into the army, you know, it's like they feel that they're actually serving their country.
And I think that's a very good thing, whether it's the army or some kind of civil service, it still is the feeling of contributing to something that is actually bigger than yourself. And while being in the army, you will learn a lot of useful things, really. And I think, you know, you will learn, you know, what you call it, you know, how to treat wounds, you know, learn how to respect weapons, handle weapons. You will learn some kind of survival.
I think that will always be useful to some extent. Yeah, absolutely. Now, speaking of probably one of the worst individuals that has become infamous out of Norway is Anders Breivik, is that how you say it? Yes, Anders Breivik. So would you mind just saying very briefly about who he is, what he did, but then also which prison he's in now? Which prison he's in, I can't tell. Yeah, he is the guy who was convicted of both blowing up the governmental building in Oslo in 2011.
And he also is convicted of killing, I think it was like 70 something kids on a political camp on an island in Norway. And he did that because of some ideological reasons. He was what we consider to be a very neo-Nazi like sympathizer. And he has some really weird theories about, you know, humans and political systems. So he's now serving a kind of 20 years, 21 year sentence in a high security prison. Right. Now, was he ever in Holden Prison or have I got that wrong? No, that's wrong.
So, what it must be referring to then is the 21 years. So another interesting thing that you guys have is this is your worst or one of your worst criminals and certainly made the news all over the globe, took all those lives. But your maximum sentence is 21 years versus obviously England, America, where you can attach life sentences to each other and have almost like a bizarre thousand year sentence. So what was the thinking behind the maximum of 21 years?
I think when he went to court some years ago, I think that was maybe the biggest test to our law system, our courts, the prison service, the police and so on. But I think really we stood that test brilliantly. I'm quite proud of it actually. And he received a 20 years sentence, but that's not a normal prison sentence. We go out more or less after two thirds. It's a special detention he got that actually can be prolonged maybe for the rest of his life.
And I think maybe that's what is going to happen. So he won't be released after 21 years. He will stay in prison probably for the rest of his life. I think that is quite a good guess. I really can't see that he is being released for maybe when he's a really, really old man. So I think within our laws and our judicial system, we have also systems that can keep, you know, our sentences that can keep really, really dangerous people out to the streets for the future.
Right. So I think the point I was going to make with Holden, and I obviously got that particular gentleman wrong, but just to paint the picture, the people that are in Bastog and Holden, we're not talking about shoplifters are we? There are people who have done some pretty serious crimes. Is that correct? Oh yes. Oh yes. I think I can take Bastog. We have 115 inmates there.
And last week when I was looking on the prison population, I saw that about 20 of those are convicted killers that are serving sentences for murders. And I think the longest sentence we have is a 21 year sentence for murder. And I also think that's quite a common misconception among a lot of people that killers are the most dangerous people we have in prison. And I think that's quite wrong, especially when I look at my country, the statistics, we see that in Norway.
I think on an average year you will find like we have maybe 30 to 35 killings a year, which obviously is, you know, 35 too much. But the statistics say that's the, you know, more or less accurate number per year. And if you look upon all those killings, you will find that statistically most of them are being done while people are drunk, influenced by drugs, in a high state of anger or psychiatry. And I think that very few killings every year is actually pre-planned and carried out as planned.
And that is a very rare thing to happen in Norway. So I think for those killers, I have at least a bust. I think they never, you know, planned the murder they committed. It happened. So the threat of a prison sentence was never in their mind while doing actually the killing. So whenever, when they were about to kill someone, they never thought, okay, will I receive five years of prison for this or will I actually receive 150 years of prison?
They never thought about that because they were either drunk, drugged or in a very high state of rage. So I think that whenever they come to prison, yes, they have been a really lethal danger for some persons at a certain point. And I think, you know, for the 25 years where I've been working in prisons, I can't really think of a lot of examples where people, especially convicted killers, have actually composed a threat to the general public, more or less.
I think they were obviously a lethal threat to some person at a particular time. But I don't consider those a really threat to the general society. I think then you have to look up on other inmates that I can really see that really pose a danger to the general community. Right. Now you touched, I'm sorry, go on. And those are not convicted killers. Okay. So is there any common denominator as to which ones are the more violent ones then, if it's not the killers or is it just random?
I think that is random. I think in our prison population at Basse-Dø, I think the most common sentence is drugs and violence, also in combination. And I think from time to time we have prisoners that really impose a danger to other people. But those are not killers. Those are just really violent people who maybe have some psychiatric issues or have shown on several occasions that they have been a danger to other people committing rape, violence and so on. Right.
Okay. Well, you touched on one thing I want to ask as well, because I know that this particular issue fills our prisons over here. And I want to touch on the actual sheer magnitude of our numbers in a moment. You said about drugs. So what is Norway's view on drugs? If you are a user and you just found with, let's say some methamphetamine, for example, but just a user's amount, you're not dealing it or smuggling it, would that result in a prison fine or prison sentence? Excuse me.
Well, I think that has developed over some years now. And I think actually there was in the papers now just a couple of weeks ago that no, you actually have the majority of our parliaments. They now feel that drug possession and drug use no longer is supposed to be a criminal act, but it's more like it's going to be a health issue. Sorry. That has not yet been debated in the parliament, but I think it will, you know, we will move in that direction.
But I think for several years now in practice that if you're a drug user, you're caught with a small, I guess someone is coming in now, a small possession of cannabis, for instance. You won't, from that possession, you won't be given a prison sentence. You will be probably given some kind of community service and so on. But I think the big problem is that a lot of the people who are populating prisons now, they're not there only for drug use.
They also are there for, you know, theft, violence and so on, because that's more or less other things that they also, some of them also do. It's not about the possession. Okay. Yeah, because I don't know if you are aware of this, but Portugal decriminalized their drugs in, I think it was 2000, obviously just personal use, not smuggling and dealing.
And they had an incredible success because as just, I mean, you said the exact thing, they viewed their drug addicts as a disease now instead of a crime, they were able to come out of the shadows and get help and they completely reversed their drug use in Portugal. Yeah, in my personal opinion, I think that's probably a good thing. And I think by saying so, I don't say that drug use is a good thing because drugs is obviously quite bad for you and people really shouldn't use drugs.
But I think giving people prison sentence for it, it's not a good thing for society. I think we need other options, you know, like the healthcare systems and so on. That's my personal opinion. A shocking thing that we had here in the US and I'm not trying to just blast the US, I just being an Englishman myself, I love it when we find some other country on the planet that appears to be doing something maybe a little bit better than us than we could learn from.
And I'm sure that's why Mr. Conway came out from Attica to look at your system as well. But in 1970, we had 350,000 prisoners and today we're close to two and a half million prisoners. So obviously, you know, I'm not a mathematician, but that seems like our system is not working, but also that they're feeding some sort of growing need. I know we have a lot of private systems here as well. Have you seen an increase in the demand for the number of prisons in Norway?
Well, I think because we have this prison queue for a lot of decades now, and that prison queue now is more or less down to zero. So I think the demand for prisons in Norway isn't that high now. And also the recent government and past governments, they have passed the legal act saying that, for instance, electronic monitoring and other types of punishment should be used also in more numbers than just a clean prison sentence.
But of course, if I was an American, which I'm not, but I would ask why. The use of obviously billions of dollars in the prison system, is that a good way to spend money? Do the Americans and taxpayers receive the good results from that kind of use of money? Obviously, when you have numbers of prisoners rising, I think the answer to that should be a really clear no. Because putting people behind bars is quite expensive.
And by spending tax dollars on something that probably isn't that useful as people might think, they should really stop and maybe try other things. Yeah. And that's exactly why I wanted to interview you for that very reason, just to sow a seed in people's heads as well. So speaking of the budget, compared to the Norwegian impression of how much it costs for incarceration, are you guys able to do the Bastogne model fiscally, soundly?
Yeah, I think when you look upon all the prisons in Norway, you will find that Bastogne is one of the cheapest prisons in Norway to run, because it's low security. And I think what's actually making a prison more or less expensive is the number of staff. Because salaries, that costs a lot of money. And I think that in Norway, the number of staff is actually quite low per inmate. That makes it quite cheap. And also we produce a lot of our own food. And I think it's not so much about the money.
It's the way we think. Because we obviously also save a lot of money by giving responsibility to inmates. Because whenever we have a meeting with new inmates, we say to the inmates that, okay, the number of staff is 72. The number of inmates is 115. And the number of staff, the staff members, we can't maintain this island and run this prison village ourselves. We need help from the inmates. So if the inmate doesn't help us, they can't receive any visits. And there will be a shortage of food.
And the prison island won't be such a good place to be if they don't want to work. So obviously, I could have only staff members working on the ferry. But that would make it a lot more expensive than using inmates. So I think both giving the inmates important tasks, giving them responsibility, is also making the prison much less expensive to run.
Right. And I know that I've seen this happen at Bastogne, but it actually happens at a prison here in central Florida, where I live, where they have a prison garden. And that makes perfect sense. If you're teaching these prisoners how to farm, how to grow their own food, and then that food obviously feeds everyone in the prison, not only are you not having to buy food, but also when these men and women leave the prison, now they have a skill, they can go out and get a job as well. Exactly.
Exactly. And we know for a fact, for instance, if I take the ferryboat, that a lot of prisoners that have worked on that ferryboat actually now are working on other ships in Norway as a quite normal job. And that is giving me more, being more convinced that such way of running the prison system is very, very useful because you save tax dollars and you also are giving people important knowledge. Absolutely.
Now, the other thing that I've noticed that we do here in the US, and I just found this out, I didn't realize is some of our prison systems provide very, very, very inexpensive labor for outside corporations. So when the guys are working in Bastog or Holden, are they doing the same thing? Are they working for outside companies or are they just working to run the prison itself?
No, I think more or less they are working within the prison with prison production, which are not used more or less by private companies. You will find that in some prisons, the prisons have agreements and are cooperating with private companies in production. And the prisoners are also working in that production. But the number of that is quite low, actually.
And I think most prisons in Norway are trying to find ways to educate the inmates, give them work training, vocational training on matters that are important for the society. For instance, we know that there's a lack in Norway of a lot of skills. The rate of unemployment in Norway is quite low. I think it's something like 2.2 percent. So actually, the society, they need a bigger workforce. They need more people to work in Norway in a lot of trades.
And so we also find that it's quite easy to help the inmates to a job after release. And I think the best thing we can do in prison is give them proper job training, which is not about production, to have bigger income to the prison. That would probably be good for the prison there and then. But we are working for the society and not ourselves.
And I think it's in the society and the general public interest that we are actually educating car mechanics, ship crew, shopkeepers, rather than have been giving people training on how to assemble a piece of plastic, for instance, for a private company. Yeah, I agree 100 percent. If you're able to be employed the moment you walk out, then that's just going to set you up for success. Now, what about housing? I would say some of these men or women have been incarcerated for, let's say, 20 years.
Is there any assistance in getting them into a place so they're not going from the prison straight to homelessness? Yes. Whenever a release is getting near, we have both the prison officers, the social staff and so on. We try to see to that every prisoners that are released are either going to the job or school and they have some kind of housing. That's kind of mandatory before release.
Because we know for a fact that if they have nothing to do and a very bad place to live or no place to live at all, the way back to criminality is quite short. Yeah. Now, what about the health care? What kind of health care system do you guys have over there? Does it come out of your taxes or is it private? No, it's out of the taxes. So whenever you go to a hospital or a doctor, you only pay a small amount of money to do so. Everything is free. All right. So that sets them up as well.
You don't have to worry about health insurance or anything like that. No, just to keep travel insurance. Okay. All right. So I'm going to ask you one question and then we'll just wrap it up with a couple of very short ones. But just so that we can paint a picture so we all here know of our traditional system. They're behind bars for a majority of their time. They'll get one hour exercise. As you said, they get told when they eat, when they can phone their family.
So would you mind just kind of painting a picture of what a day in Bastogne would look like from sun up to sun down? Yeah. They will have to wake themselves about seven o'clock. They have to prepare and eat their own breakfast in the houses where they live. They have to go to work and be present there at 8.15 and they are also counted. And they have to either work or go to school until 12 o'clock. Then they go back to the houses and they prepare and eat their own lunch.
All the meals they have to buy in the prison shop. The prison shop is run by staff and inmates. They work until three o'clock. Then they're going to the mess hall and they're eating dinner. The dinner is prepared by the prison for them. Then is there a spare time until half past ten o'clock in the evening. Then after 22.30 there's a general curfew on the island. So they're not allowed to leave the houses after that and before seven o'clock in the morning. But no houses are locked.
So in theory they can go out but they're not allowed to. So in the spare time they are either doing things for themselves, playing football, jogging, fishing and so on. So we try to encourage the inmates to use their surroundings on the island wisely. Pick up new hobbies for instance and so on. When I say that all the meals except dinner has to be bought in the prison shop, we give back the surplus from the prison shop to the inmates.
We're not only trying to create good neighbours for the general public at Bastet but we also try to give the inmates some sense of democracy. So we have established what we call an island council. An island council at Bastet is like some members elected by me as the governor and their staff and also inmates they elect their own members to the island council.
That island council they meet up once a month and they are taking decisions on some matters that are concerning all the inmates like visiting facilities, visiting hours and so on. And they also every year have to decide on how to spend the surplus from the prison shop. And giving the inmates the ownership of the prison shop also means that that is a shop with no shoplifting because if they steal from the prison shop they're stealing from themselves.
So that's an example of both giving responsibility but also trying to develop some kind of democracy on the prison island. That's more than a normal day. Okay, so there's obviously a lot of pride in the prison then because it's their home. Exactly. And we see that it's mandatory to work from 8 o'clock until 3 o'clock. A lot of inmates they work like 10-15 hours a day because they want to. Doing different things.
Yeah. Now another thing, I've seen this on film and I urge anyone out there listening to go see some of the documentaries that are done on the prisons out there. But an area when I ask people on the show, what do you do to decompress? One of my final questions, being out in nature is nearly always one of those things.
And by creating this open environment that you guys have with normal houses and no bars anywhere, these men and women are out in the fresh air a lot, which I'm sure has a huge positive effect on their overall mental health as well. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that's very good. You can imagine yourself being in a high security prison somewhere that when you look out the window, if you even have a window, you will see barbed wire, big concrete walls.
And if already you have a lot of anger, a lot of regrets, a lot of trouble in your life, looking at that kind of surroundings probably will just even create more problems. You will be more angry. You will feel the problem is even bigger. But on Bostøy and that kind of prisons, you can go out, you can experience nature and you can really feel the tranquility sitting on the stone and just watch the waves on the ocean.
That will probably make your mind work better than just looking into barbed wire and concrete fence. Yeah. Okay. And then just to finish painting that picture as well, your guards aren't armed, you don't have like holds of riot police on the standby. These guards are interacting with the prisoners every day. Yes. Yes. I think the best weapon we have on the island because we have no shotguns, no armed weapons at all. The best weapon our staff have is interacting with the inmates.
In our philosophy, if the relationship between the staff and inmates are good, there will be less violence. On Bostøy, as I said, we have no violence. Yeah, that's amazing. All right. Well, I'm going to wrap up Tom, because I know you've been very, very generous with your time already. Just a couple of very short questions that I ask everyone that comes on this show. So firstly, is there a book that you recommend to people? It can be about what we've talked about.
It can be about something completely different. Just a favourite book of yours. A good question. I think I will have to go for a book written by a Norwegian professor called Niels Kristi. He wrote a book about crime and punishment and the idea of society, which I find quite good. And as I get older, I find it even better than I used to when I was introduced to that book on the Prison Academy.
I don't remember the name of the book, but I think among criminologists and so on, it's quite famous, often in the United States. Okay, brilliant. Now, what about a movie or film and or a documentary? Well, I should say now that The Devil Island, which is a film about Bostøy and the reformatory days, but I think probably my favourite film is Shawshank Redemption, I think it's called. Yes. I think that's a good film about prison and what that is all about. Fantastic. All right.
If you could recommend a guest, so another person to come on this show and talk to the police, firefighters, paramedics of the entire world, who would you recommend? I would recommend a friend of mine called Fredri Bolle. He's a man my age. He has been a soldier for a lot of years, both in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon and so on. He also started what you call a childcare unit for kids aged from 7 to 18, which is quite well known in Norway also.
He's doing a lot of lectures on his experiences, both as a soldier, a special ops soldier and also running this child welfare facility. Wow, that would be fantastic. I'd love to get him on. Thank you. And then the last question I have, what do you do to decompress? So after you're done, you know, your day in the prison, what do you do to relax? I'm more or less doing the same as the prisoners. I try to, you know, take as much time as possible also together with inmates.
I find that having a prison with like 150 more or less very satisfied inmates, spending time with the inmates, discussing with the inmates is probably what's giving me a lot of energy. And if I can do that, you know, by taking a walk around the island, sit down on some part of the island, look out on the ocean, having a good discussion, that is also giving me a lot of energy. But in general, just using nature. Okay, yeah, same question. Exactly.
It's funny because the same as for the warden is for the prisoners. So I love that. All right. So the last thing then, if someone wants to reach out to you for, you know, for more information or connect, where can they find you out in the wide world of the internet? Well, they can find me either on LinkedIn or they can also go to the bus day website called busboyfengshun.no where they will find both information also contact information about bus day and myself. Brilliant.
Okay, well, thank you so, so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us today. I was inspired by, you know, your system and I think you guys have pioneered something that's really making people out in America and England really rethink about what we've always done. And maybe, you know, hopefully we'll adopt your model and start to reverse this growing trend of incarceration that we have at the moment. So thank you very, very much. Good bye.