He says record general direction. So he's filled all the time. So it's my great pleasure to welcome Anna Erickson here. Anna is senior lecturer in. Monash. So I am virtual colleague and Anna is also visiting us here at the centre for this term and most of us will be familiar with that. His work with John Pratt on. Exceptionalism.
And today we are going to be hearing from Anna's current research project, which has just finished the fieldwork, where she's going back to look at some of the concepts and issues that they found and believed in the first study from a slightly different angle. So I'll hand over to Anna. And I just wanna say we have the room for 90 minutes in a typical Mary Bosworth's fashion. I actually have to leave by about ten possible to get the children.
So I think Anna is trying to fix only about an hour with half an hour talking and half got questions. But if everyone's. Yeah. Happily chatting, I'll just. Quietly the. Thanks. Thanks. I aim for half an hour. I always say it's going to be longer, but you know that's how it works. Hopefully it's interesting enough. So we'll see. So thank you all for coming. Hopefully you have something to to discuss afterwards that will be hugely useful for me, if nothing else.
So the study I'll talk about today, it's people everywhere and it's in many way an extension of the work I did with John Pratt's exceptionalism and Anglophone excess in relation to pay and policy and practice and history. But it's also go substantially beyond that by narrowing the lens from this macro view that we used around the sociology of prisons to focus in much more detail on what happens behind the prison walls.
And it also places at its focus the interaction between prisons and society in which they exist. So events how events outside the walls impact on practice inside them and vice versa. Much of the ethnography and qualitative research that take place inside prisons tends to include either staff or prisoners. I have an outline. Sorry, I'll share that.
Now, this is what I'm doing, but I'm interested not only in how the groups construct themselves individually, but also how they construct each other and the interaction that takes place between these two groups in total institution. So both staff and prisoners were interviewed in all the prisons that I visited.
But then I also widen the lens to try to discern what role the outside the walls dynamic have on the practice, on the inside, those outside the walls variables, if you can call them that, includes current political context, media reporting, legal and policy context, as well as the role of the elusive public opinion. So the focus is both in variables inside and outside the prison walls and how they interact in different environments.
And just to complicated a bit further environments in this context includes both different prison designs on security level, so high through to open prisons, as well as different cultural, political, historical and social context in which these prisons exist. To simplify the aims of this rather large three year project as much as possible, I was basically interested in what makes prisons better or worse. That's that's the easy explanation. If you frame it around three questions.
I'm interested firstly in what creates a specific prison culture. Secondly, how can that culture be? How is that culture maintained? And thirdly, how can that culture be changed? And for this purpose, a comparative study was deemed most appropriate.
So my previous work, which on Crux included six countries and a penal history spanning about 200 plus years for this study, which I'm doing on my own and it involves semi-structured interviews with staff from prisoners, six countries would be completely impossible to do, so I chose to. That kind of represents the opposite of the exceptionalism access spectrum, as we used to do in that particular book.
So the first countries Australia proper pronunciation for the simple reason that I live and work there. Yeah. So it helps with access obviously and knowledge about current events and you know, self-explanatory really. The second country was Sweden, not only because that's where I'm originally from.
So the accent is all over the place, but but because Sweden finds itself very much at the crossroads when it comes to pain, a policy in practice moving away from a very strong focus on the the social democratic welfare state approach to more neoliberal one.
And I find that that shift is really quite interesting. However, as these things work, after much negotiation with the Swedish prison authorities, I was denied access on the grounds that my methodology of qualitative interviewing was not deemed scientific enough and not of of of value. For for there no evidence based practice was very much quantitative. And, you know, they said if you have a questionnaire, our labelling, you will come back.
And I said, I'll talk to you later. And the things that happens in fieldwork, you know, so luckily my Norwegian colleagues, some who work at the Prison Officer Academy there, also some very great research units. They were very enthusiastic about the projects and the methodology and the questions that I was trying to, to, to ask and answer. So they helped me negotiate access across the prisons that I needed and the paperwork and so on and so forth.
They were absolutely fantastic. So without them, this would probably this would not have been a comparative project so much as an Australian study. In Australia, I chose two different states, Victoria and Queensland. This was for two reasons. Firstly, that each state and territory in Australia has their own prison system, different laws and regulations and also different cultures. And this is where the insider perspective comes in two points.
I think for an outsider, someone who's just come to Australia to visit and now I am generalising, you must like you most likely experience Australian culture as pretty broad and cohesive and maybe not pick up so much on the nuanced differences between the states and territories once you're in there and you live there. There are big differences and the people themselves are people who live in Victoria would never see themselves as a Queenslander and it's like comparing Scotland with West London.
That's, you know, it's a big difference. So and also for some of the variables in terms of the prisons are fairly similar in comparison to Norway obviously, but things do change, including legislation but also practices on the inside. And that kind of nuance helps me find some of those interesting things and more about that later. The the second reason for including two states apart from numbers but not so much, but mainly for confidentiality and access.
So the Corrective Services in Australia are highly politicised and have strong suspicion towards researcher particular when it comes to prison staff. And I negotiated with the Corrections in Victoria for about a year and how it is going back and forward. It's Department Justice and so I did Queensland and so when I publish I can talk about high security in Australia or low security in Australia without mentioning the names of prisons or even states necessarily.
And that's certainly helped both to get access and both for staff to be much more forthcoming than it would have been otherwise. And that was something they asked about. They were very concerned about confidentiality. The problem, though, I like the decision to focus on differences between the two states, which is an important analytical tool. But then you kind of have to gloss over some of that when when you write up the results for reasons of confidentiality.
And it's it raises his own particular challenges that I'm currently working through. But, you know, one challenge at a time. So all in all, I conducted 130 interviews in Australia, which included seven prisons at all security levels and another 110 interviews at seven prisons in Norway. Also all the security levels. 50% of the interviews are with staff, the majority of them custodial, but also supervises education and program staff, administration and psychologists.
The other half of prisoners, as part of the methodology and I'll talk a little bit about in this area shortly, but I never asked prisoners what they were sentenced for. They were simply not a question a lot of them told me anyway for a range of reasons. I'd never asked or Chris was for people who had spent a short time in that particular prison and people had spent a long time in that prison and in other prisons.
A lot of them are circulated through obviously, and the same request was made in relation to staff. So new staff and people have been working for some of them for say two years in the system. And to get the range of data, I was not allowed to bring in them a tape recorder in Australia. Sorry, there was a sun. This is a risk, I'm telling you. And so I took extensive notes during all interviews there, and then I, you know, topped them up as soon as possible.
Afterwards, just as the convention is in Norway, I was allowed to tape record. Initially I thought I may not do that. Just to keep the methodology similar is absolutely possible. It's like I said, the spotlights. But time constraints doing the first batch of people in particular what did five prisons in two and a half weeks? I don't recommend it. And it was up to ten interviews per day and an hour each.
Again, I don't recommend it. You know, I've been sleeping the last two weeks, but I was very happy to be able to tape record that's here. But then I shifted. This was in November last year. Then I went straight back to Australia and started interviewing in January over there without tape recording to take notes. So I'm still typing those interviews up. That's what I'm currently doing.
I did the last batch of interviews in August seven weeks ago in Norway, the last 40 interviews at two high security prisons there. So, you know, a minor disclaimer, because I'm still in the process of transcribing all the Norwegian interviews, all of the quotes today will be from Australia. But because I did all introduce myself, apart from 14 interviews in Norway where my colleague did, it helped me according to using my head. So you can just please ask anything. It's all in there.
And I'm happy to to elaborate. Okay methodology. So it's theoretical framework. It's going to be much shorter people and the framework for Iran. This study took its inspiration from Sigmund Bauman's work on modernity and the Holocaust. This work is pretty controversial in Germany, who don't agree with his interpretation and explanation of events.
But it was his writing around the social production of immorality and the concepts or the concept of responsibility towards the other that I find particularly compelling and in many ways applicable to total institutions in our modern times. To simplify this as much as possible, which is like a paragraph.
The concept, at least in the way I'm using it, argues that when we feel a social and cultural closeness to an individual or to a group of people, we tend to have a sense of responsibility towards them and act towards them in a respectful and humane manner.
Yeah, not particularly strange when that distance then becomes larger or too large when the proximity that in essence encourages more behaviour that has become eroded, then we are more likely to feel indifferent towards the plight of the other. The result can be things like school bullying or not giving money to charity. Yeah, indifference doesn't do much apart from just not caring.
Discourse is a deep expression there. But when the version of proximity is coupled with techniques that dehumanise, that puts the other in a position of being qualitatively different or indeed not seen as human at all. That's when violence can be inflicted with little more restraint, which can range from assaults and murder to two genocide in a prison as in any other total institution.
I would argue there is an automatic difference a distance between us and them and is obvious between staff and prisoners. Yeah, it's obviously much more nuanced than that, but that's the the pre-existing distance. The question is then how can we prevent that distant from becoming too large, prevent that the two groups exist in different, more universes, if you will, where the humanity of the other has become eroded to the point where abuse becomes a daily, unquestioned routine.
This approach provided a framework for thinking about the micro and macro processes that drive, perpetuate or indeed counteract the identification, exclusion and punishment of certain individuals and groups in our societies. The approach allowed me to identify practical variables within the different prison environments that can be used to argue for real change behind the walls, as well as lending a framework for normative theory production.
Moving on. So for the key variables that I'll discuss today, I'll just pick two sites, if you will, of of analysis, because the dataset is massive. And I'm just trying to give you a flavour of how I'm trying to work through this. So the two variables, the first is informal interactions and the second is training indication of prison staff.
And it's important to note that these are multifaceted so they can be indicators of pre-existing distance driven by outside the walls variables or the specific prison culture variables, as well as drivers of further erosion of proximity between individuals and groups within the prison.
And finally, the same variables can be drivers for reduced distance, for the responsive location of social relationships that can result in increased trust, decreased hostility and violence between groups of individuals. So a more humane, less harmful prison environment. So each variable is a site of several opposing and competing forces. Moreover, and just to complicate is a little bit more key variables interact.
For example, the effects of staff wearing uniform differ between prison regimes and in Australia, but also between countries, depending on all the health variables are doing. So I'll try to untangle some of these kind of interactions and their meaning. And, you know, keeping in mind that this is very much a work in progress. So I'm just scratching the surface, but hopefully not for discussion.
So informal interactions, informal interactions, which is activities such as cooking together, eating dinner, playing board games, playing sports with staff and prisoners, engaging together without being organised, at least theoretically helps increase the social glue between individuals and groups and can assist in breaking down barriers between us and them and help both groups to see the person behind the uniform,
the individual, and not just numbers. However, the frequency and willingness to engage in such activities differ sharply between Australia and Norway, indicating a significant difference in pre-existing difference between staff and prisoners, but also perhaps a missed opportunity to reduce the distance in Australian prisons.
But one can't force people to interact in such activities that defeats the purpose in Australian prisons, though it seems to be enough for most people if the formal interactions are working, they don't need to do this, you know, cosy welfare stuff as they would see it. But the ones that are around everyday routine, as long as those interactions are respectful and humane, people seem to be fairly content and in a close relationship is not necessarily wanted.
So not wanting to say asked prisoners and staff if they would engage in an informal activity is also just mentioned with the other group in Norway. The answer was yes, of course, from both groups there was it was just a given component of day to day prison life and the forms that an important part of the operational model of prisons in Norway, including dynamic security and media therapy, environmental therapy in Australia. The answer to same question was no, never.
And people were like what they couldn't believe was even asking them, particularly related to custodial or uniform staff. And some quotes illustrate this. Yes. So one medium security prison in Australia there visited it had originally been designed in the mid 1990s to allow for these informal interactions. They, the authorities with the people who designed it thought that that would be useful. But when interviewing staff in early 2014, the comments were no, no, no, it simply would not happen.
When asked that this particular staff member will play soccer with the inmates, drawing a parallel to Norway, he said he rather put out his own fingernails. The other staff said the prison was designed for staff and inmates to eat together out in the common areas, out on the wings or in the units. But as far as I know, this never happened and now this never really happened.
I just wouldn't feel comfortable around that sort of thing. And lastly, not sure why it's gone, but now I would pretty much be unthinkable. In a couple of high security prisons, staff mentioned that management prohibited such informal interactions, and one said, we can't even blame who the prisoners management thinks.
It blurs the line. Prisoners felt equally strongly about such interactions, knowing that to be seen to spend time with staff in this way so way from the very structured interactions, were quick to give them the name screw lover and place them in danger, ostracised by other prisoners and possibly punished for such transgressions. Private correctional authorities in Australia are aware that two large distances between the two groups can be harmful.
And in the 1990s they introduced the case work model where one officer acts as a personal officer 2 to 3 or four. We ask the same animals in pursuit. Yeah, they used to creep closer, more respectful, in more constructive relationships between the two groups, trying to change the very toxic culture that had existed in many prisons in the country up until this time. We have several inquests and so on into two serious rights and abuses between the two groups in Australia.
The case with officer was a we work closely with his or her prisoners throughout the sentence and assist them throughout the program's application. You know the story. Yeah, this was not necessarily a welcomed development. And as one custodial officer told me, in a medium security prison, he said the model was based on what those crazy Swedes were doing.
No offence, like that's fine. I think tensions were good, but perhaps as they said, the people in town in the head office underestimated their resistance amongst both staff and prisoners to such a move. One officer who like many others, had worked in Pentridge. I was that notice found in prison in Melbourne, which was well known for his brutality. Told me about the day when the new case with Morton was brought in.
He said in Pentridge they brought in casework, but we were not being paid any extra for doing that, so it was never going to happen. But even if we had been paid, it would not have happened. The reaction from the boss was to start in the door to the outside area with the case files in his hand, throwing them out on the lawn saying, We're not doing this [INAUDIBLE]. That was standard casework and Pentridge.
Another officer had worked in another old not closed down prison, summarised the development as such. When case management was introduced in the Old Bailey, there was a lot of resistance from older staff that had joined the job to turn the key and prisoners not to be their best mate. And that's how they saw it. But they probably also didn't have the skills to do it.
At least quite a few of them had problems reading and writing and also didn't have the people skills to do it, didn't want to do welfare type work. Since then, things have changed somewhat and there is no more acceptance of the casework model. But due to the large distance between staff and prisoners and the reluctance to change that, the effectiveness of the model has to be questioned.
The following quotes illustrate that contradictory stances one staff member mentioned was broken the ice somewhat. Here is the casework when you actually have to talk to them. Indeed, for some prison staff, this was a positive development, a change, a chance to build report or report, sorry, which they saw as increasing safety for everyone. For others, it was less positive. Caseworkers create a lot of problems by staff not knowing where the line goes.
It has decreased the respect for prison officers I find humiliating talking to prisoners that they are my equals. The line is much less clear than it was 20 years ago. This existing hegemonic cultural framework that dictates interaction across group lines becomes even more obvious in relation to new staff. New officers, many of them keen to engage in case work and to do people work instead of task work. And they want to do their bit to rehabilitate prisoners and keep the community safe.
But within six weeks to six months, they have been completely subsumed in is dominant prison culture where the distance is very large and you don't have kind of general chats with prisoners. So it's not really changing. The prisons in Australia have become less antagonistic. However there are, there's less violent. There used to be within staff groups because both of them were fighting within these groups and obviously across them.
One prisoner in high security who had been in and out of prisons for 30 years mentioned the trade structure. I even shook his hand at Christmas. In the old days, I would have punched myself for doing that. This view was perhaps more common than one would have thought, and not just in high security. So even in low security in Australia there's almost no informal interaction and the culture of high security transferred almost unchanged into low security.
So from these rules, prison to the open forms, the interactions, the way they speak about each other is almost the same. One prisoner and again ask him about the informal interaction. He said, No way, you get your head kicked in. I feel uncomfortable being in the car with a staff member when going out to work out, working the phones. I've seen people being punched and they might have shaken the hand of a senior staff member.
I told The Prisoner this Christmas about the model in Norway. So I'll tell you about shortly. And he was astonished. Say you will get done for that here. A thing you just learned from day one. Don't talk to staff. And many of these prisoners also worry that they're seen talking to staff, but also talking to mainstream prisoners might talk to prisoners who have previously been in protection, not sex offenders in the language open prisons, but people who who turn to crime witness, for example.
Yeah. If they're seen speaking to these people in open, then get back to high security. For some reason they will be in serious trouble because that vermin will spread very, very quickly. I also saw that in Norway and they were like, What are you talking about? It simply doesn't happen. Yep. So Norway them staff prisoner interaction is at the centre of all prison work dynamics.
Security is the model. Instead of the reliance on static security as it is in Australia, the way prisoners and staff interact is perhaps a stark is difference between the two countries. There's of course the usual formal interaction as in any prison, but it's the informal ones that can be much more important.
These can consist and often do staff of prisoners cooking food together, often dinner, eating dinner together, eating lunch together, out on the wings, playing board games, playing football, playing tennis, doing day excursions. And and now playing chess. Chess has become a huge thing in Norway after Magnus Carlsen, the 22 year old, won the world championship last year.
So in the high security prisons I visited now in August, every wing had a chess board and people were playing it like it wasn't just for show. Yeah. Which says something in mass about the capacity as well. And also in some of the exercises in many other high security, they have it which is very new. They have these big rocks are kind of in the ground. They top the top of an external chess in. So they can play that when they're out in their exercise village, which they which they do.
And I think that also speaks a little bit about how how more porous the prison walls are in Norway when there's outside culture fairly quickly translated inside. And part of the normalisation principle between which this doesn't happen in Australia, these activities including going on excursions, going, they go walking in the mountains, paddling, canoeing, the very outdoorsy people in Norway. That happens at all security levels.
Yeah, from high security all the way through to transition prisons, as they call them, which is nothing like justice and prisons here. But it's also, I think, important to note and this is kind of exceptional Norwegian thing, these things happen in addition to the normal formal interactions. So Norway still have the 22 hour lockdown? Yeah, they still have serious issues with remand prisoners not being let out at all, very little phone contact and so on.
So they're having having to plant them they've just been added to. So I think if you take away the informal interactions, it's going to look much more like Armstrong in person. Yeah. Yup. All good. Sorry. Maintaining informal interactions in Norway takes a lot of work, which was obviously in those interviews. It doesn't happen automatically. I think the point is that a total institution does not in any way encourage such interaction by itself.
Instead, they have to be designed that to be designed in both of the physical space, but also for from staff and prisoners, all three who make up the the culture in the prison. If you only do one, it won't happen. So this leads me to my second point, which is much sort of work is a staff training. Yeah. So staff training is one of those multifaceted variables.
It says a lot about pre-existing attitudes towards persons of institutions in any one country and how they affect both prisoners and staff inside the prisons, as well as having an impact on day to day life in prisons, having a flow on effect again on things like formal and informal interactions, attitudes to education and training of prisoners is a huge difference where university cases encourage at all levels in Norwegian prisons and in Australian prison is discouraged for prison staff.
So again, it's a lot of variables, but I used to very briefly because you might be unaware. So in Norway, the majority of staff I spoke to have some kind of university education behind them, and most people do sociology degree psychology and so on and so forth. Before starting or applying to be a prison officer. Many of them also worked in other areas nursing education.
Some has come from from the military, for example, to train the training to be a prison officer in Norway is a two year program at the Academy. Last year this program received university status, so it's actually now an accredited degree. And you can also do a third year on top of your two small academically kind of focussed.
So the recruits come, they come in with a lot of experience and once they're in the academy, the subjects they study includes criminology, law, psychology, interpersonal skills as well as more traditional topics of Australian self-defence and so on. The recruits spent the first six months at the academy. The next year they're out in prisons. But when they dare to do duty two days a week of education. So you have a supervise, but also a teacher out in the prisons for the final six months.
The bucket, the academy. Norway is one of the world's richest countries with a very low unemployment rate. And last year, the academy took in 300 recruits, but 2000 people applied. So it's a very it's a popular job people want to do. This is something they're very proud of doing. It's, you know, in Australia, this wouldn't come as a surprise.
Yeah, it's it's 8 to 10 weeks and now in Victoria it's down to four because they need people to come through because it's a big short shortage of staff, because the prison population is increasing so quickly due to politics. Different topic. And so not only aren't they well-trained, many of them haven't finished high schools. Some of them are probably reading, writing. They they joined the service because they wants to retire in the country.
But really, those boards, I mean, the job cuts are quite good. Those people need to pay the mortgage. I worked in a different company, you know, driving a truck, whatever. They failed. I mean, you know, I needed a job. Quite a few of them have been in the in the military. I spent some time outside it and then want to get back into uniform again. So the key difference is everyone I spoke to in Norway when I said, why did you choose this job?
The first response was, I want to work with people. One person said that in Australia it was all the other reasons there. They're like, Oh, look around Paris, my pension retirement fund. I see something very bad at the job. Yeah, but the motivation is different and there's also a prison staff in Norway feel valued. They unprompted that I love my job, I wouldn't change it for the world.
Whereas in Australia it's like being on the stand. What we do with the front line of work, dangerous people, management don't care about us. They, you know the society that we live in there and understand what we're doing and they feel undervalued and supported. Anyway, that's nice. So let's move on to the view from the outside. So those are the inside. Yeah, but I want to show you some photos basically of different prisons.
They all have something to put this discussion on to and also give you some more information about those. And the point of doing this is that that's I think for the book that I did with John and other works were done in the area. Presumes that prisons are. They look very different in the two countries that they. The point is that they don't. What does difference is happens inside them and they are different for for a range of reasons.
So hopefully this will help restrict. So this is back increase Christian in Norway. Can you see that properly? It's kind of, yeah. To fight water. This is a high security prison. Just the next picture shows you where it's at. This is the west coast of Norway. Riddick is a beautiful obviously when you're inside, you can't see the water. Yeah, you can only see you can see the mountains on the other side, but you can't see the water.
So it's going to take you back to this work. You've see it more. Does it have, Grace? It doesn't seem to raise a lot. No, no one does not. In Australia, it's only race wire, almost this very few walls. Or in Queenstown this reservoir is soon be editorial. Norway the also in the seconds. So because this is on the wall in the West Country, as it is called yesterday, this is the high security prison for all prisoners.
So they have when they come in here, this is for the young people, the youth prison. They're outside the walls. They're coming here, you know. Hello, welcome area. And these two things are remand interceptions. The remote prisoners are in the same prisons that sentence prisoners in Norway, which they don't do in Australia, for example. The and the reception is, you know, where you arrive, you can spend a couple of days there or a couple of months depending on your mental status.
And the point is, I think in remand in particular, as we mentioned, I've been receiving a lot of criticism from the European. You can be sued for? No. This one specific counts. The ones that do torture investigation, but they don't do torture. But some people take it. Yes, that's right. And again, 2023 are on in very small cage exercise yards, have no phone contact, no visits, no news, no nothing is complete isolation. That could be for a few weeks, up to two years.
And there is an enormous amount of fatigue for this as the complete account tracks the exceptions in cases. Yeah, because he was there in the same prison, so it's not a different location and reception. And then once again, he says, Do you move to this area here, this fence? Which way you. Yeah, where you're more self-catering. I cook your own food and many units education.
You have a library, you have exercise sports on some sofas and the you here is it's it's a it's a treatment unit that people can self-refer to for drug and alcohol addictions here. When was the posting to there? And yeah, this one first. This is the next level up. So you get more freedom, more responsibility. You're on your way, aren't you. That so this one is here for people with with heroin addictions or ADHD.
ADHD on super takes was here is different name but it's speed yeah something to train persons and obviously doing so so when we come to the treatment unit which is for drug and alcohol addicts, they very were in lockdown someone who got hold of that hotchpotch of stigma and they had a big party of nights and you know, it's you everyone on.
Well do you had a bit of speed right so so we weren't allowed to interview them that these sorts of things that happens they're can still work and this area here and this area here is also different units for men and women. So a lot of prisoners in Norway have men and women, same prisons in different wing.
So you kind of access to each other. It's what they do socialise and I male times in sport and leisure time since I'm sorry forget condoms are free Norwegian prisons just in case you wanted and I'm not joking outside this prison it's it's an open prisons that's where do you transfer to next from that prison you can go into back into the city to to get to university or to school to work during the day and come back in need.
And then you do excursions into walking multisystem. This is high security. This is the other two, how securities are quite different. And I think that the prisons in Australia in at least in in each state are very, very similar, is a similar culture in how security, all the prisons across Queensland for example, and the same in Victoria on this is between private and public. In Norway, every prisons difference is distinct culture. For every high security prison is every low security prison.
So I'm really interested. Is there obviously all the things that plays a role support from that kind of national context, the one to top left there is still the fact that some prison and this is the the place where they took to the worst of the worst. Why is the former president. Sorry, it's the table which as a whole is a there's an even for you. So it's just make you if you know this is to I think rear camera and so in prison they have the worst of the worst.
This is where they sent Breivik. Yeah. After the the bombings and shootings in Norway 2012. Do you know this? Thank you. Yes. This patient, he spent time there. The thing is, this one here, you can better see this is the main building. This was the majority of Christians, six. They have 140 for them. That's a really big prison. And these prisons are also sent to something called Tovar. And this question these. Detention. It's some of these attitudes and symptoms can be maximum 21 years.
It's a life sentence and already can't get home that we can add for volume on top of that. So even if you get a five year sentence plus providing you get sent to either prison includes more observation. Your staff will be around you all the time. They are anyway. But take notice of everything that you do because you're you're seen as to be very, very dangerous person as just an extra level of surveillance, that surveillance this person and not not static.
They don't have the cameras on. It was just a lot of staff around all the time. So there's no joke about it. This is the fence around it. You can see it barely. Yeah, it's. It's a fence, like you said. Yeah, that's all there is. They're now building a second fence around it, but they built a second one in front of the grave. It was sentenced here presumably to kick journalist out as opposed to keeping people in.
It's never been seen and a need for that. You know, it's a it has a heightened security because of that. The one who seems on the wall is called South Wing. They want access underneath the wall and the snow went through on the walls and that's what babysits. This is always the also the management units and for the people who simply can't cope in mainstream they. They end up there, but not that many people in there at the moment of the few attending and his age.
The prison is located northwest of Oslo, but next to it, it's it's it's a it's a six year time in the country and lots of houses around it. A lot of prison staff live in those houses it's convenient is walk to work so you know to the west of the west prisoners this way they're talking about themselves as well. Once you've spent enough time in the main building, you're going to load out on daily excursions to go priming canoes.
You know, you can't go right. And there's also here, you can't see big greenhouses where they grow flowers and they sell to the public twice a year. Some of them go out all day and work out all day and then go back inside the fence. That's high security. You know, one very few escapes, very few incidents. But it does happen. When it happens. It's usually serious. It is on the one is from Halden prison was probably heard about this, the one everyone talks about in Norway.
Listen, Times magazine and the world's most humane person. Yeah, it's a nice prison. Yeah. As far as prisons go. But this is the big thing. So this picture here with all the trees is from the back side of two of the main units. There are exercise yards in the area with trees in them and with rocks and things. And then you have this massive, massive grey wall that you can't see over. They also have other wooded areas which aren't allowed into Ottawa, and they would like to, but they're not large.
So it's very too stone controlled, very restricted. But again, a lot of staff and a well-trained staff where the aim is to release the prisoners who can be your neighbour. That's the that's the area that fortress is supposed to contain until we have to see. But you also have these units, huge doors, exercise yards and the same prison where you're in the smaller units. And these were the ones that are trying, which in winter looks less than.
We think this is Queensland, Australia, about a thousand prisoners. And the points are quickly gone too quickly. These these units here and these units here are secure. So you have 50 special. 24, another 50 in each. Upstairs. Downstairs. A classical panopticon design here. Staff sits behind the glass wall. They don't often go from as they have to prisoner spend.
Are they locked out of the cells during the day for human rights reasons here and they can spend time out in this cage area is probably the size of this room. 50 people all day. Everyone in one room. Yeah I have been be there and I also know how long do they spend here talking progressed to the next level with some of the independence weeks could be ten years.
Yeah. Some of them do progress to this area here school, residential, a lot of high security in Queensland have this because they abolished or medium security there is nothing in between residential you cook your own food, you can look around but you want to do some kind of progression. Most of these people would never go to open prison. They are simply aren't allowed to too dangerous. So instead tape is going to release them. It makes complete sense if your politician puts. And Austria, Norway.
This is actually a prison belonging to back in prison. The one you saw before is an island. Have to show this picture because it looks ridiculous. The beautiful. We were here to eat fish and take the boat out to the island. Just a little close up. So this is what it looks like. Prisoners and staff people. Low security prisoners. They don't wear uniform. Yeah. So when it comes to low security, everyone wear stolen cars. Prisoners don't wear uniforms at any level.
They're all their own clothes in high security. I mean, not, you know, it's just part of the research in isolation. Yeah. But we don't. We don't want the device to go to work to try to, to to counteract the kind of negative impacts of institutionalisation of prisoners on these islands that can be done to bargain during the day, to study a work, to go to the train, to sit and then come back here. Some prisoners who have spent time in high security and then come here.
They really appreciate this. Yeah. People who go straight into low security, they hate it. For them, it's as punitive as high security movie because of deprivation of liberty. Yeah, same in Australia. So it looks nice, but so this is obviously exceptional. Norway, this is Paling Creek. You know, this is also an open prison, a low custody prison in Queensland for they have high security, they have a few.
These there's not many. This is a farm about 2 hours north west southwest of Brisbane, unbelievably beautiful. And the mount is called Scenic Rim because it looks like and and that's it. There's no fence. It's a little walk. Some of the prisoners there in pieces that have fenced in vegetable garden to keep the kangaroos out. Yeah, because it has to keep people in there so they can look exactly the same. It's not so different from the Norwegian procedure.
And the difference is the culture inside here, which I said before, translates straight from high security in these big divisions. I think they're going to have a lot more close cooperation than they do, but they don't enormous they work to change that. So I'll leave it up and I'll just conclude. So Christmas himself. And indeed, a lot of staff are very clear about what makes Christmas better or worse.
And it's people and the way they interact. So as mentioned by an Australian president, high security people matter. The physical environment is less important now. Another, this time in low security, said doing jail in itself is easy. It's other people dragging you down. People make the prison and the physical environment doesn't really matter. Yep. So the point is that under the hegemonic influence of the total institution, such sentiments matter.
Always play out in practice. This is about giving respect. Sorry. So in low security with it, perimeter might consist of a low fence and no fence at all. Static security's minimal, but the dynamic security has been maximised. So in low security you have eight musters per day when you count people in in in wages. I think it's morning and evening, if anything. And so it's the quality of human interactions that matters, not the quantity.
So what became very obvious in this research, a very stark, very punitive, high security environment can be made to feel better, more humane, if characterised by such interactions, in the same way which an open prison can be more coldly punitive due to a lack of such interactions. Hence, a large distance is not automatically negative. It depends on the type and form of interaction that takes place across the divide.
But prison staff in both Australia and Norway were very clear what such interactions looks like. It was characterised by respect. Clear boundaries, consistency. Trust, uncertainty. I'll finish. Thank you. Excuse.