Norway’s New Luxury Prison

By John Farrier in Travel on Mar 2, 2010 at 9:05 pm

Would you like to get away from the stresses of the daily life for the next five to ten years? Then Norway’s new Halden prison/spa is for you!

[...]every cell comes with a private bathroom and a flat-screen TV, as well as a view–the windows don’t even have bars in them. But what about facilities, you might ask? My college dorm had a foosball table, and a vending machine! This prison can’t match that, right? Wrong. Halden has a gym, training room, chapel, library, family visiting unit, football (possibly soccer) field, a school, and, most unbelievably, a sound studio. But it’s the design that’s most strikingly different from American prisons. Halden doesn’t shy away from bright, cheerful colors, and actually spent about $1 million to hire a graffiti artist named Dolk (sort of their version of Banksy) to paint beautiful murals all around the grounds.

Link | Photo Gallery | Photo: NRK

UPDATE: In the comments, Courageous Grace brings up a very good point. The prison opens on April 1. Is this a hoax?


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  1. Gutza
    Mar 2nd, 2010 at 9:18 pm

    Yes, this might seem quite strange. The thing with Norway though is that you just don’t get in that country, like at all. (Visit all you want, but you don’t get to be a citizen unless you’re born there or you’re willing to jump all the hoops ever invented.)

    Once you’re a Norwegian however, you have so many things coming your way *by default* that you must be rather insane to commit a crime. As such, most Norwegian criminals are very much patients who only need a gentle nudge towards rehabilitation, as opposed to criminals elsewhere who choose a life of crime out of desperation. So there, now you know.

  2. Courageous Grace
    Mar 2nd, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    When it opens on April 1st? I think I see something here…

  4. Lea
    Mar 2nd, 2010 at 10:06 pm

    What are their crime rates?
    In America, we are so rooted in *Punishment* this would never fly, no matter the statistics…
    I have very mixed feelings on this from my readings now.

  5. Skipweasel
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 12:56 am

    Lea – we’re headed that way in the UK, too. Silly really, ‘cos harsh punishment is what the public wants rather than what works – but when did something sensible like that ever stand in the way of “progress”?

  6. rf
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 6:07 am

    When you go to prison, the punishment is the loss of freedeom, job, home, pets, family, a good night’s sleep, decent medical care, etc. Why is it that prison facilities that AREN’T torture chambers seem to offend people? Ever spent even one night in jail? Try it…you won’t begrudge a few creature comforts for those that have to stay for many years out of their lives.

  7. Neal
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 8:23 am

    Good old Norway…. living large off the oil revenue.

  8. Neal
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 8:26 am

    Lea and Skipweasel – API,March 2008- The crime rate in Oslo has been growing at an alarming rate and recent statistics show the Norwegian capital had 20 percent more robberies last year than in 2006.

    While crime in the rest of Norway has been going down, it has been quite another situation in Oslo, where personal and automobile thefts increased markedly last year.There were 10,600 crimes reported in public places in 2007, up from 8,000 a year earlier, writes Norwegian daily newspaper Dagbladet.

    Oslo had the highest rate per person in Scandinavia in terms of reported crimes, with 90 reported crimes per 1,000.

    Copenhagen had 50 crimes reported per 1,000 and Stockholm had 79.

    In New York, there were 22 reported crimes per 1,000 inhabitants.

    This means there were four times as many reported crimes per person in Oslo as in New York.

    The Oslo police are blaming the increase on an influx of East Europeans, and Minister of Justice Knut Storberget is reportedly partly in agreement.

    However, Storberget said it is necessary to be careful drawing parallels with such statistics. “But regardless, we can say the crime figures in Oslo are too high,” he was reported to have said.

  9. jermH
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 8:44 am

    Interesting.

    Jails need to be *effective* on the inside and thus employ the best methods known to rehabilitate even the most hardened criminal, regardless of whatever creature comforts need to provided.

    Yet on the outside, in order to prevent crime, jails need to *seem* like a living hell to act as a deterrent.

    THEREFORE, if someone/some system could somehow portray an image of total hell but SECRETLY be a high-tech therapy centre and somehow maintain that secrecy… it would probably be worth celebrating. But then… it might already have been done. We just don’t know about it.

  10. LUXURY
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 10:10 am

    LUXURY AT HTTP://WWW.LUXURPLC.COM

  11. Padraig
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 4:44 pm

    I find the sound studio particularly interesting. This seems to be an experiment in order to see, if given the opportunity, how many inmates would grow creatively – and how that would affect prison life in general.

  12. dooflotchie
    Mar 3rd, 2010 at 5:24 pm

    There is already a prison like this in Austria, so this very well could be for real and not an April Fool’s joke.

    http://damncoolpics.blogspot.com/2009/03/5-star-prison-in-austria.html

  13. Martin
    Mar 4th, 2010 at 2:15 am

    Why would it be a aprils fools joke? These kind of facilities are common in more skandinavian prisons.

    Everyone don’t believe in a “prison break-esque” kind of prison where its like a living hell.

  15. Odd
    May 1st, 2010 at 3:57 pm

    Floyd – If you want to know more about that prison, check out this video. Michael Moore visit that prison in the end of this film.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4L6-0WRfSA&feature=related

  16. Bedda
    May 7th, 2010 at 12:23 am

    Lol, The reason there is so much crime in Oslo is cuz, most criminal people are from Pakistan. There are lots of Criminal people coming from east Europe for some extra cash. Cuz we Tend to leave our stuff unprotected :

  17. Bermuda
    May 17th, 2010 at 8:37 am

    With a 20% reoffenders rate (compared to 60% in Britain), they must be doing something right…

  18. Norwegian
    Oct 31st, 2010 at 11:57 pm

    @Gutza: Check your information. Norway is one of the worlds most liberal countries where as immigration is concerned. The last few years, the immigration levels have even superseded birthrates.

    @Bermuda: Well, you can’t contribute luxury jails which is a relatively new invention to old statistics. Norway has a very liberal and extensive welfare program and is still a fairly congruent society as we’ve got oil riches to throw at the many servere challenges multiculturalism bring.


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