Abstract
Some of the most marginalised and exposed populations during the COVID-19 pandemic have been those incarcerated in penal institutions. In the present article we compare how Norway and Denmark handled the pandemic in their prison systems and analyse these efforts through the lens of how the authorities tried to invoke specific national cultures of social solidarity during the crisis. In both countries we find that increased isolation, inactivity, lack of information, and loss of trust and contact with the outside world aggravated the prison experience. However, in Norway a bigger effort was made, compared to Denmark, to lower the prison population, as well as to create possibilities for maintaining contact with friends and families through video-visits. We then analyse the pandemic prison policies in the context of how both governments through very specific national terminologies appealed to an alleged community spirit. We examine the role and situation of prisoners in connection with these national and cultural projects of social solidarity, and find that in several cases prisoners reacted to the restrictive pandemic regimes by displaying a censorious attitude towards prison staff and authorities much in the manner originally described by Thomas Mathiesen (1965). Prisoners, in other words, held the authorities accountable to their call for community spirit and the values of social solidarity they claimed to represent. This also raises a question concerning the degree to which Danish and Norwegian policies and practices live up to the notion of Nordic penal exceptionalism, or whether the crisis unveiled different penal values.
Introduction
As we pass further into a post-COVID-19 pandemic world, one of the most pressing questions is the degree to which vulnerable groups have suffered secondary effects of the various forms of lockdown that came to characterise our societies. Equally interesting is the broader question of what our treatment of these vulnerable groups can tell us about the societies we live in and the values they are based upon. During the pandemic, some of the most marginalised and vulnerable groups were the institutionalised populations, such as the elderly in care homes, detained migrants, and prisoners in penal institutions. In this article, we will zoom in on the treatment and experiences of prisoners in Norway and Denmark and, in doing so, we will scrutinise the national projects of social solidarity that became part and parcel of combatting the pandemic in these two Nordic countries. Interestingly, the very moralistic national approaches seem to have triggered an equally moralistic response from the prisoners in this study.
To understand this response, we apply and revitalise the term censoriousness introduced by Thomas Mathiesen in his seminal prison study, The Defences of the Weak (Mathiesen, 1965). Here Mathiesen described ‘individual censoriousness’ as a way of standing alone as a prisoner, rather than ‘being a member of a solidary social category’, and demonstrating ‘consensus with established norms’ in doing so, ‘rather than adhering to deviant norms’ (Mathiesen, 1965: 14). Importantly, prisoners would then hold ‘the ruler’ in the form of prison staff accountable for these established norms and criticise them whenever they did not live up to them, thereby making the ruler ‘appear and feel as the real deviant’ (Mathiesen, 1965: 12).1 Interestingly, in the present study, we found Mathiesen’s more than half-a-century-old theory more relevant than much of the contemporary sociological work on prison pains and the effects of imprisonment. As we shall see, this may have to do with the particularly moral manner in which the Norwegian and Danish governments chose to approach the pandemic.
In Denmark, the Prime Minister (PM) reintroduced the Danish term samfundssind, signalling a special community spirit that everyone was expected to embody, while the Norwegian PM called for a national dugnad, a unique Norwegian form of collective, unpaid, voluntary work deemed crucial to stop the virus from spreading. In both cases, the purpose was to communicate that all citizens – as members of a national and societal community – had to stand together for the survival of the nation. For the majority of the population in both countries, as well as in many others, the lockdown precipitated a substantial shift in ways of living, leading to much less physical proximity, on the one hand, and a hyper-digitalised life on the other. However, the impact of lockdown policies on vulnerable institutionalised populations, and the extent to which these measures were carried out in a spirit of social solidarity, is a rather different matter. This article addresses this issue through a case study of prison policies and practices in Norway and Denmark during the pandemic, and explores the extent to which prisoners were included in the national projects of social solidarity. This also raises questions about whether these policies and practices live up to the values associated with Nordic penal exceptionalism (Pratt, 2008).
The article is structured as follows. Initially, we will describe our data and methodology before introducing the Norwegian and Danish national projects of social solidarity in the forms of dugnad and samfundssind, which framed the general anti-COVID-19 policies in the two countries. We will then proceed to analyse the Norwegian and Danish prison infection control regimes and the practices they created on the ground. In doing so we will focus on efforts to reduce the prison population; the use of solitary confinement; visit restrictions and practices; and the introduction of compensatory measures. Finally, we will discuss the prison experience during the pandemic in light of the national projects of dugnad and samfundssind and the notion of penal exceptionalism, and we will demonstrate how prisoners displayed an attitude of censoriousness and held authorities accountable for their alleged projects of social solidarity.
Data and methodology
The data sources originate from two different projects, both addressing prison life during the pandemic. While the aim of the first project was to examine the Nordic criminal justice system’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in general, and how prisoners experienced physical and digital isolation in the face of the pandemic outbreak, the other focused on healthcare services in high-security facilities for women prisoners in Norway during the pandemic.2
There are few studies involving face-to-face data collection among prisoners during the pandemic, particularly in the first phase targeted in the present study, simply because prison estates to a large degree were under lockdown and out of bounds to the public (Suhomlinova et al, 2021; Maycock, 2022; Munkholm, 2023). The need for creative solutions with the prison estate physically shut off to researchers made a mixed-method approach the most sensible. Altogether, in the two projects, we have gathered four different types of empirical data: 1) prisoner diaries; 2) interviews with prisoners and staff; 3) survey data; 4) administrative data/ internal correspondence/ guidelines and so on from the Danish Prison and Probation Service, the Norwegian Correctional Services, and the Danish and Norwegian Ombudsman institutions.
In the first project, through contacts with a prison chaplain in Denmark (apparently the only one who was not sent home as ‘non-essential’ staff during the first phase in the Danish prison estate), we managed to inspire prisoners to write diaries, three of which we later received copies of. These diaries gave a very interesting insight into the initial phase of the lockdown. We were later able to interview two of the diary-writing prisoners to confirm and discuss details in the diaries. As soon as lockdowns were temporarily eased during the summer of 2020, we further secured the opportunity to visit two prisons in Denmark (one high-security and one open) and one in Norway (high-security). During these visits we interviewed seven staff members in different positions (a social worker, a priest, two prison governors, two prison officers and one doctor) and three prisoners. Other participants were recruited with the help of a prisoner organisation, the Norwegian Correctional Service, and the healthcare services, and were interviewed primarily during the autumn of 2020. In the second project, we interviewed women prisoners, ex-prisoners, prison staff, and healthcare staff working with women prisoners in high-security facilities in Norway, during the autumn of 2020 and early 2021. Additionally, a supplementary small-scale survey was conducted with 12 respondents in a Norwegian women’s prison.
In terms of interviews, the data from the two projects altogether consist of semi-structured interviews with 36 individuals, including 11 prisoners (six women and five men), two ex-prisoners, one relative of a prisoner, and 20 staff members (two prison governors, four prison officers, three nurses, three doctors, three psychologists, one priest, and a social worker). Additionally, two persons engaged in re-entry work within a voluntary organisation were interviewed during the pandemic. Among the prisoners, three were interviewed in person at a high-security prison in Denmark, two via screen/video in Norway, and six over the phone from their respective cells in Norway. The two ex-prisoners were interviewed in different private facilities in Norway. The Norwegian staff interviews were predominantly conducted as video meetings at their ‘virtual’ home offices, while three interviews with Danish staff were face-to-face (two in prisons and one at the Danish Institute for Human Rights), and three high-level staff were interviewed together online. In the analysis, participants are given fictitious names, except for the quoted open-ended survey responses, which are referred to simply as ‘survey respondents’. The data in the two projects were gathered from April 2020 to February 2021.
Advantages of video interviews over traditional on-site interviews include cost and time savings, less disruption of the interviewees’ professional activities, and a potential to access a wider pool of respondents in a hard-to-reach setting. The loss of the social dynamics of interactions and the non-verbal communication that occurs during face-to-face interviews is among the important obstacles posed by online contexts (Kaufman and Tzanetakis, 2020). However, we generally experienced a relaxed atmosphere, open-mindedness, and commitment among participants, which might have to do with the interviewees feeling it was easier to talk freely in their ‘out-of-office’ setting and displaying a strong commitment to contribute to research in ‘extraordinary times’.
We also gathered administrative data and statistics in the project on the criminal justice system during the pandemic. Through a freedom of information request, we gained access to the Norwegian Correctional Services’ internal correspondence with the prison regions from March 2020 to February 2021, which included information on the prison population, solitary confinement, video-visits, suspended sentences, and so on. Similarly, we gained access to internal orders and regulations from the Danish Prison and Probation Service from 6 March 2020 to 10 February 2021.
The present article thus includes a wide spectrum of data sources from a hard-to-reach research context shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the study is limited in the sense that we are unable to account for or represent the many diverse lockdown experiences in Norway and Denmark, which include, for example, the possible relevance of prisoner ethnicity. Furthermore, many of the interviews took place in the first phase of the pandemic and reflect staff’s and prisoners’ views at a time of many restrictions. Importantly, however, this is also the period where we know the least about the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on everyday life in prisons. Also, we analyse our interview data in the context of the system-wide administrative data we have gathered and, on this basis, find that we are able to use our qualitative material as ‘critical cases’ in Flyvbjerg’s (2006) understanding of the term – that is, as experiences that highlight the specific problem under investigation.
Samfundssind and dugnad: invoking national contracts of social solidarity
On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic.3 On the very same day, the Danish PM, Mette Frederiksen, declared a national lockdown and argued that we all had to demonstrate ‘an especially great responsibility’ towards the ‘most vulnerable groups in our society’, and mentioned people ‘with chronic diseases, cancer patients, and the elderly’ as examples (Frederiksen, 2020). She furthermore explained that ‘we all have to stand together by keeping apart’ and then invoked an old Danish term to underline her message: ‘We will need samfundssind’, she explained (Frederiksen, 2020).
The term samfundssind, is made up of two Danish words, samfund, which means ‘society’, and ‘sind’, which can be understood simply as ‘mind’ but which conveys something slightly different, and the English word ‘mentality’ therefore seems more fitting. Taken together, the term can be translated into something like ‘community spirit’. The Danish dictionary explains samfundssind as a mentality or an attitude ‘that testifies to how one prioritises society above one’s own narrow self-interest’ (Den Danske Ordbog, 2022). The term has Danish historical connotations and was used in 1936 by probably the most important PM throughout Danish history, Thorvald Stauning, as a call for solidarity in another time of crisis (The New Nordic Lexicon, nd). The word samfundssind was on everyone’s lips after PM Frederiksen reintroduced the term on 11 March 2020, and the Danish Language Council chose it as Denmark’s ‘word of the year’ for 2020.
The day after Frederiksen addressed the Danish nation, the Norwegian PM, Erna Solberg, gave an equally important speech, where she declared a lockdown and urged the Norwegian people to demonstrate a spirit of dugnad (Solberg, 2020). According to Solberg, it was ‘absolutely crucial that all inhabitants of the country participate in a dugnad to stop the virus’ (Solberg, 2020). In the Norwegian context, the concept of dugnad has deep-rooted traditions, and carries positive recognition, symbolising the Norwegian people’s mentality and community spirit. Participating in dugnad entails doing voluntary, unpaid work in a group, where people meet face-to-face. A dugnad is an effort that benefits a given community and is carried out for a limited period (Simon and Mobekk, 2019 in Nilsen and Skarpenes, 2020). A core element of dugnad as a social phenomenon is that it is an activity that everyone, in principle, can contribute to, regardless of who you are, where you come from, your resources, and your abilities.
Dugnad serves several social functions (Nilsen and Skarpenes, 2020: 263–4). Importantly, dugnad is related to the ideal moral repertoire of the socially responsible citizen and must be understood as an embedded part of a specific welfare mentality that supports ‘… the sustainability and resilience of the Norwegian welfare model’ (Nilsen and Skarpenes, 2020: 263). Dugnad can contribute to social investments by building networks and, crucially, in alignment with Granovetter’s (1973) theory, strengthen otherwise weak ties between groups in society. It therefore has the capacity to foster social resilience, community spirit, and a sense of belonging. Equally important, it can both be a tool for and contribute to social control. For example, in the context of the pandemic, participating in the dugnad required compliance with strict rules and regulations. Importantly, everyone in the group in question – a neighbourhood, community or nation – is expected to commit their efforts to the dugnad. Although it is initially voluntary to contribute, those who do not may be faced with loss of status, distrust, social distancing and, at worst, exclusion and marginalisation.
Social solidarity, penal exceptionalism and trust
Interestingly, the Danish and Norwegian responses to the pandemic, and especially the way that the terms samfundssind and dugnad have been invoked, quickly attracted positive international attention in a way not unlike what the Nordic welfare states and their penal practices have become accustomed to (Smith and Ugelvik, 2017). International articles about samfundssind and dugnad underlined the allegedly special character of the community spirit and social solidarity in these countries (Simon and Mobekk, 2019), in a way that appears to be reminiscent of the international reputation of the Nordic welfare states (Froelich, 2020; Johanson, 2020).
Indeed, the Nordic welfare states have for many years, and not least since Esping-Andersen identified the three ‘worlds of welfare capitalism’, been seen as a cluster of states with uniquely high levels of decommodification, as well as universalist, inclusive and egalitarian policies (Esping-Andersen, 1990). In the literature on Nordic penal exceptionalism, the character of these expansive welfare regimes has been used to explain the relatively low levels of punitive penal policies, and relatively benign prison conditions, in the region (Cavadino and Dignan, 2005; Pratt, 2008; Pratt and Eriksson, 2013). Importantly, several of these, and other authors, have underlined the importance of trust in the Nordic states – trust among fellow citizens as well as trust in the state itself (Lappi-Seppälä, 2008; Pratt and Eriksson, 2013: 62, 87). Lappi-Seppälä, for example, found a strong relationship between trust in people and trust in the legal system, on the one side, and low rates of imprisonment, on the other side, in the Scandinavian countries (Lappi-Seppälä, 2008).
Indeed, a certain level of trust is a precondition for dugnad and samfundssind. From pandemic research we know that trust is critical, and maybe the most important contributor to achieving compliance with regulations and recommendations (Norheim et al, 2020; Bollyky et al, 2022). It has been claimed that the overwhelming support for the COVID-19 restrictions in Norway and Denmark, and the ‘dugnad-spirit’ and demonstration of samfundssind of the populations in the two countries, was made possible by the high level of trust (Baekgaard et al, 2020; Sætrevik et al, 2021). However, we also know that problems concerning trust are particularly urgent in low-trust settings such as prisons (Liebling and Arnold, 2004; Tyler, 2006; Lundeberg, 2017), as prisoners have reasons to be ‘highly sensitive to poor treatment, unfairness and minor acts of illegitimacy’ (Crewe, 2009: 94). As we shall later argue, our data suggest that the institutional responses to the pandemic further exacerbated this problem. The national projects of social solidarity in Denmark and Norway invoked and sought to capitalise on trust, which likely had significant consequences vis-à-vis prisoners in both countries.
A diverse body of literature has nuanced and, to varying degrees, questioned the exceptionalism thesis (Ugelvik and Dullum, 2012; Lundeberg, 2017; Smith and Ugelvik, 2017; Pakes, 2020; Barker and Smith, 2021). Nevertheless, the notion of Nordic exceptionalism remains strong (Crewe et al, 2023), and on the face of it, the exceptionalism thesis seems to have been strengthened by the Danish and Norwegian policies of samfundssind and dugnad, which promised an inclusive and egalitarian form of social solidarity. In the following, we will put this to the test.
Prison infection control regimes: overall strategies in Norway and Denmark
Research has demonstrated that countries with overcrowded and densely-packed prisons provided ideal conditions for the transmission of the coronavirus, resulting in thousands of lost lives behind bars.4 Both in Denmark and Norway, one can say that the prison pandemic strategies, at first glance, appear to have been relatively successful, as far as the first phase is concerned. Apparently, few were ill and infected in prisons, and no one died. During the first outbreak, there were no documented cases of COVID-19 infection among inmates in high-security prisons in Norway (Johnsen, 2022). This can, at least partly, be attributed to relatively high material and hygienic prison standards, and in that sense be seen as an example of penal exceptionalism. Nevertheless, prisoners were never targeted as a high-priority group for vaccinations, despite their obvious status as a vulnerable group.
Both countries reacted quickly, and extensive initiatives were taken from 12 March 2020, immediately after the respective PMs had announced countrywide restrictions. On an overall note, both countries applied a two-pronged strategy to prevent the spread of the virus in prisons: 1) prisons were to varying degrees closed off to the outside world and contact between prisoners was restricted; 2) initiatives were taken to reduce prison populations. The first part of this strategy persisted throughout the pandemic, while the second was especially evident in the first phase. Since the initiation of the lockdown in March 2020, there were occasional relaxations and temporary lifting of restrictions, with some measures later reintroduced.
In Norway, closing off prisons and reducing contacts between prisoners was achieved through the use of solitary confinement (especially of new arrivals); a ban on prison visits (which later turned into visit restrictions); a no-leave policy; and a reduction/stop in prison activities (work, education, and so on). Reducing the prison population was achieved using early release; sentence-pause (with certain restrictions of movement); electronic monitoring (LOV-2019-12-20-105); and postponing imprisonment of a number of newly-sentenced prisoners. As a result, the prison population decreased by nearly 20 percent in less than two months (from 12 March to 5 May). By early May 2020, only 75 percent of the prison capacity was utilised (Johnsen, 2022).
In Denmark, the prisons were similarly closed off during the first phase, and contacts between prisoners was reduced through the use of solitary confinement (especially of new arrivals); a ban on prison visits (later followed by visit restrictions); a no-leave policy; and a reduction/stop in prison activities (work, training, education, and so on). However, efforts to reduce the prison population were quite timid, and mainly involved a decision to, temporarily, not take in newly-sentenced prisoners. Consequently, the prison population decreased slightly during the initial phase of the pandemic, but ultimately increased compared to the preceding year. On average, the prisons ran at a capacity of 100.3 percent in 2020, indicating overcrowding (Kriminalforsorgen, 2021: 14).
In the following, we will briefly address three key issues that highlight important similarities and differences between the Danish and Norwegian policies: 1) the implementation of quarantine isolation; 2) restrictions on visits and family contact; and 3) measures aimed at mitigating the impact of the restrictions. Subsequently, we will discuss the resulting experience for prisoners and their families.
Quarantine isolation
Isolation procedures (practised as solitary confinement as defined by the Mandela Rules, Rule 44) were swiftly implemented in both Norway and Denmark, and remained a feature of the in-prison anti-pandemic repertoire. This is not surprising given that a) isolation is a well-established method to prevent contamination; and b) the Nordic prison systems are physically well-equipped to isolate prisoners, with a history thereof (Smith and Koch, 2019). However, the negative health risks associated with the use of solitary confinement are well known (Haney, 2018; Lobel and Smith, 2020), which raises questions about whether the rights and health of prisoners were considered.
Unfortunately, there is little to suggest that such a balancing exercise was undertaken in a serious manner during the first phase of the pandemic. Automatic two-week isolation of newly-arrived prisoners was practised for a significant period in both Norway and Denmark without any apparent regard to the mental health of prisoners. Indeed, the Norwegian Ombudsman later found this practice to be in violation of human rights standards (Sivilombudsmannen, 2020; Nilsen and Schlanbusch, 2020: 13). Closed prisons functioned as quarantine units for all arriving prisoners, subjecting many prisoners to stricter conditions than necessary, in breach of §15 of the Execution of Sentencing Act (Johnsen, 2022).
On 30 April 2020, 70 percent of all official cases of solitary confinement in the Norwegian prison system were due to this measure (Nilsen and Schlanbusch, 2020: 13). Critically, court decisions stating that such a practice could only be temporarily justified under emergency law (Borgating Lagmannsrett 3 April 2020, LB-2020-50640), along with a subsequent report by the Norwegian Ombudsman emphasising its lack of legal foundation (Sivilombudsmannen, 2020: 27, 29),5 played a crucial role in ending this practice.6
The trajectory in Denmark looks slightly different, but also involves the use of isolation to prevent infections. Between 12 March and 4 May 2020, new arrivals were screened, and prisoners were isolated only if they showed symptoms.7 However, from 4 May to 8 June, all newcomers were automatically placed in solitary confinement, typically without being tested. This practice was based on a general precautionary principle, but clearly did not consider the mental health of prisoners. From 8 June onwards, the automatic isolation of new arrivals was abandoned. Instead, prisoners were tested if they showed symptoms and only isolated in such cases (Folketingets Ombudsmand, 2020a: 8).8
Visits and contact with family and friends
Visits were stopped completely during the first phase of the pandemic in both Norway and Denmark. In May 2020 visit restrictions were gradually lifted but could to some extent still be invoked throughout 2020 and most of 2021. Importantly, in June 2020 the Norwegian Ombudsman found that the visit restrictions did not have a proper basis in law (Sivilombudsmannen, 2020: 12). This was later remedied together with a number of COVID-19-related changes to Norwegian prison law (Lovvedtak 47 2020-2021: §45a). In Denmark, limited access for children visiting parents was granted from 18 May 2020, and from 26 May all sentenced prisoners were allowed visits from close relatives.
In Denmark, remand prisoners faced an especially problematic situation as the police cancelled all their visits, allowing only brief phone calls (Folketingets Ombudsmand, 2020b). For those with visit and correspondence restrictions (the majority), these calls had to be made from a specific police station on the outskirts of Copenhagen, under the observation of a police officer, making contact nearly impossible for people living far from Copenhagen. This system persisted with minor adjustments throughout most of the pandemic.9
Measures designed to mitigate restrictions
In this area strategies were different in Norway and Denmark. Compensations were minimal in closed prisons and in remand institutions in Denmark. However, during the first phase, prisoners in open prisons in Denmark were allowed to use smart phones, which enabled them to have online contact with family and friends. But digital communication was never introduced in any form in closed prisons or remand institutions. In Denmark, the most important measure was to allow prisoners more telephone time where possible, and calling fees were temporarily eliminated. Old and outdated gaming consoles were also made available to prisoners during the first phase of the pandemic.
In Norway, digital technology was employed in a very different way, as the introduction of iPads and video-visits provided an important opportunity for many prisoners and their families. More than 79,000 video-visits were made between 22 March 2020 and 22 March 2021. Still, 30 percent of the prisoners surveyed by the Ombudsman reported that they had not received any offer of video-visits (Sivilombudsmannen, 2020: 18) and there were technological problems (FFP, 2020). Despite these challenges, many prisoners reported that the video-visits were much valued (FFP, 2020).
Social solidarity, trust, and the pandemic prison experience
So much for the extra steps we all had to go together. We are cooperative. We are ready to make sacrifices in the crisis. We want to help the management. But nothing has come the opposite way, apart from a box of gaming consoles from 1993. If only a representative from the management would come to our prison wing with news once a week so we could ask them questions. We are ‘the others’…. A herd of cows that the farmer does not have to inform about anything. (Lars, diary note, April 2020)
In both countries, we observed that heightened isolation, physical inactivity, and poor communication could erode trust, intensify the hardships of incarceration, and further marginalise prisoners. Prison studies in other countries have also identified ‘a further deepening of the pains of imprisonment through the COVID-19 pandemic’ (Maycock, 2022: 219), and demonstrated that extended restrictions could affect the mental health of prisoners and intensify feelings of insecurity and uncertainty and a sense of being forgotten (Gray et al, 2021; Suhomlinova et al, 2021). Interestingly, in Norway and Denmark, the national dugnad and samfundssind initiatives seemed to exacerbate some of these problems. This is likely because trust and voluntary participation were crucial elements in the national projects of social solidarity. Citizens were animated to partake in these projects, thereby demonstrating their willingness to make sacrifices while being fulfilled by a sense of belonging and community spirit. As described by Lars, the prisoner quoted above, prisoners were ready to play their part in these endeavours by exhibiting trust and sacrificing their limited freedom for the greater good, but they were in practice denied this opportunity by being locked up, subjected to harsh restrictions perceived as partly illogical, and treated like they were untrustworthy ‘others’. As a result, censoriousness surfaced as a form of reaction, where prisoners called out the authorities for not living up to their own slogans and alleged values of social solidarity. In other words, the projects of dugnad and samfundssind were perceived by some as unfair and hypocritical, contradicting the very principles of social solidarity they were based on. We will get back to the element of censoriousness later and start by looking at the (anti)social situation many prisoners found themselves in during the pandemic.
A recurring theme in prisoners’ accounts was the intense element of uniformity and lack of meaningful activities during lockdowns. This had a profound impact on prisoners’ everyday life, leading to a sense that ‘all days are the same’ (Niels, diary note, March 2020). Initially, some found this monotony relaxing, but in the long run, the situation proved extremely challenging. Some prisoners in Denmark slept most of the day and gamed at night, describing it as a return to a ‘teenager-life’. The longing for ‘small prison freedoms’ like visiting the library or the prison shop was a common theme among prisoners in both countries. The challenge of boredom was frequently cited as overwhelming, and prisoners found it increasingly difficult to find ways to occupy themselves. Moreover, most compensatory measures mentioned by prisoners were described critically and were not perceived as acts of solidarity to alleviate the suffering of pandemic imprisonment.
For many prisoners, the most significant source of frustration stemmed from the lack of contact with family members and friends, giving rise to what has been characterised as ‘symbiotic harms’ (Condry and Minson, 2021: 548). There was a palpable concern about the ostensibly shifting and unpredictable nature of life beyond prison walls. The separation from their families was a contributing factor to this overarching concern (see also Munkholm, 2023). Several expressed significant worries about their families facing challenging circumstances during these hard times. Not being able ‘to be there to help, protect, and support’ their families, as articulated by Jens, who had not seen his Norwegian family in eight months due to COVID-19 restrictions, deepened the sense of hopelessness and brought on feelings of guilt and shame. The profound precariousness experienced in this situation further strained relationships. Two Norwegian men shared their experiences of losing their girlfriends as a direct result of the lack of permissions for leave or physical visits over extended periods. One of them, Stein, described how the uncertainty made everything ‘so painful’ and eventually, his girlfriend could not handle it anymore: ‘So she just made the choice to cut it off because there is so much uncertainty, and you know nothing, and “when are you coming home”, “I don’t know”, “when are you on leave”, “I don’t know”, and you don’t get an answer’ (Stein, Norwegian prisoner).
While far from alleviating all these pains, the introduction of video-visits in Norway presented a significant new opportunity for many prisoners and their families. However, according to prisoners, the video-visit experiences were quite mixed. Some considered this opportunity to see real-time images of their family and to talk more freely from their cell, without being disturbed, restricted, or monitored by staff or overheard by others, a huge improvement. Espen, who finally had the chance to see his children, who resided far from the prison, also highlighted the experience of the confidential aspects of video-visits with his children. He gained more privacy, when he ‘got it in his cell’, and he could communicate ‘unmonitored; at least that was what they told us, and what we believed’.
However, prisoners across various prisons experienced weak internet connectivity as stressful, finding sudden interruptions particularly painful. This theme was also prevalent among our survey respondents serving time in a women’s high-security prison. One woman expressed despair over ‘… iPad visits where the iPad in 90% of cases does not work’. But there were also other secondary effects of substituting physical visits with video-visits. Some prisoners described feeling ashamed that their children could see how ‘miserable’ their cell was, and many expressed that facing their loved ones on a screen was a poor substitute for physical visits. One female prisoner described the emotional strain of seeing how ‘the children are crying and say they wish they could come through the screen to sit on my lap. It’s incredibly sensitive and painful, especially difficult when trying to explain it to young children’ (survey respondents).
The lack of meaningful contact with family members was for some exacerbated by a feeling of being forced into isolation with others, again without any kind of agency being granted to prisoners. The sentiment, ‘Hell is other people’, originating from Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, No Exit (Sartre, 1958), encapsulates the challenging atmosphere within a Danish prison, as noted by a prison chaplain in her diary entry on 27 March 2020. According to the chaplain, what proved particularly challenging for prisoners was ‘to live in very close proximity to the same people all the time’. The need to ‘get away from the others’ was perceived as even more crucial, given the authorities’ explicit instruction to maintain distance. However, literally echoing Sartre, there was no exit. Instead, the authorities created a situation where some prisoners experienced 23 hours of isolation during the day, while others had no choice but to invade each other’s private space. This seemed to transform the prison into a zone of increased conflicts and more frictional interactions. Prisoners and staff members in both countries described the unbearable sensorial atmosphere created by prisoners constantly wandering around, banging the doors, banging their heads against the wall, or shouting, with audible expressions of despair or anger (see also Lundeberg and Smith, 2023; 2024). See Herrity et al (2021) concerning sensorial aspects of prison experiences). This prison climate also led to heightened involvement in other prisoners’ personal issues and emotional struggles. In one diary entry, Lars noted how he could clearly ‘sense the frustration of my fellow inmates. Tempers boil’ (Lars, diary note May 2020), and in a later entry he described how the lockdown regime created ‘ticking bombs’.
In Denmark’s biggest prison, Vestre Fængsel, there was a yard strike on at least two occasions during the first phase, where groups of prisoners refused to return inside. A prison officer remembers one of these incidents, where 20 prison officers moved into the yard area in full riot gear carrying shields and so on, and confronted the 10 prisoners in the yard (at the time only 10 prisoners were allowed yard time simultaneously). After a while, the Head of the prison officer unit managed to negotiate with the prisoners and the strike was dissolved without violence. In Denmark prisoners also coordinated a big complaint action where numerous prisoners from different prisons wrote to the Ombudsman complaining especially about the restrictions on visits.
I feel that both myself and many other inmates in the prison were severely affected… during the worst months of the pandemic. That was when my symptoms somewhat worsened. I experienced suicidal thoughts and, in a way, a desire to die without receiving additional conversations or being assessed by a doctor. (Mette, Norwegian female prisoner)
Censoriousness
For me, dealing with the corona crisis underscores what I`ve been feeling all along. That ‘the inmates’ are a uniform mass that one must relate to as such, and not as independently thinking and feeling individuals. The distance between management and prisoners is too great, and consequently management do not see us as individuals. (Lars, diary note, April 2020)
Prisoners experienced confusion due to the many fluctuating changes in the COVID-19 security regime and the resulting lack of predictability, with their increasing needs often overlooked. The confusion was exacerbated by additional restrictions on various aspects of prison life, including social visits, inter-prison transfers, exercise, and activities such as education and employment. Often restrictions could impact parole hearings, access to resettlement, family contact, and health services. Accounts of no response to requests and absence of information emerged as frequent themes.
‘In a closed world’, Niels noted in his diary on 4 May, ‘we rely on the management, to look after us and to ensure that one can have confidence that decisions about our health are in the hands of others’. Their constant requests for answers were met with officers’ advice to ‘take one day at a time’. ‘The management sees questions as quarrelling’, Niels later wrote from his cell, ‘They do not understand why explanations for decisions need to be given. It’s like a parent’s response “because I said so”’. In July 2020, when we finally met the diary authors face-to-face four months into the lockdown, they still said that the prison management never showed up to provide help or explain.
This lack of transparency, and apparent dismissal of prisoners’ legitimate concerns, significantly contributed to a growing sense of moral indignation and mistrust within the prison population. Experiences of insufficient communication and being overseen or treated ‘as a uniform mass’ (Lars, diary note, April 2020), were felt as humiliating and degrading. This perceived unfairness along with the authoritarian forms of power employed by ‘the management’ led prisoners to criticise authorities by holding them accountable for their own and society’s core values, rules, and norms, that is, by displaying censoriousness. Interestingly, this process seems to be partly fuelled by the way that the national Norwegian and Danish projects of social solidarity highlighted norms of trust and inclusiveness, which clearly demonstrated that prisoners were not included in these endeavours. In essence, these prisoners felt a) that they were treated as a ‘uniform mass’, and not as equal and vulnerable ‘individuals’; b) that this treatment resulted in a loss of agency, hampering their sense of contributing to the dugnad and being part of a collective effort demonstrating samfundssind; and c) this ultimately revealed how they were not included in the national projects of social solidarity despite their status as a vulnerable group. Consequently, these prisoners experienced increased exclusion and marginalisation instead of social solidarity.
While criticising prison authorities and the details of the regime they were subjected to, these prisoners remained loyal to the overall rationale behind the government’s anti-COVID-19 policies by acknowledging the need for restrictions and interventions, and for making personal sacrifices in that regard. This dynamic highlights a moral paradox: prisoners strived to be more moral than their rulers while still conforming to the regime’s underlying principles. Simultaneously, the censorious response sheds light on how individuals navigate and uphold moral standards, while also revealing the contestation and negotiation of power within institutions of confinement. Demonstrating samfundssind and social solidarity during the pandemic became a deeply moral act that could result in criticism of the authorities as well as of fellow prisoners.
Conclusion: Solidarity, pandemic governance and trust
Initially, the pandemic prison policies in Norway and Denmark, were quite similar, aligning with measures adopted in many other European countries (Dünkel et al, 2022). Prisons were locked down, new arrivals put in isolation, and relatives were locked out – all enacted as safety-first measures to curb the spread of the virus. However, the decision to automatically isolate new arrivals occurred without due consideration for the mental health impact on prisoners, and violated UN prison standards (Suhomlinova et al, 2021). In Norway the policy of automatic isolation was not even recommended by the health authorities. This illustrates how a detained marginalised group of people were, for a period, treated in an authoritarian way as pawns in the battle against the virus. Importantly, the practice of automatic isolation changed in both countries and should be understood in the context of the ‘first phase’ of the pandemic, which included a much less efficient testing regime (compared to what was achieved later), and of course the general sense of immediate crisis.
When one takes a step back to examine all the policies and practices detailed above, the most significant contrast between the Norwegian and Danish approaches lies in the lack of willingness to introduce proper methods to reduce the prison population in Denmark. Denmark arguably chose a more ‘tough on crime’ approach, in the sense that the authorities refused to use early release, sentence pause, and electronic tagging in the home (all measures used in Norway) and similarly, and arguably even more important, completely refused to introduce video-visits in closed prisons and remand facilities. The lack of will to introduce video-visits in Denmark stands out even further given that traditionally more punitive jurisdictions, such as England, Australia, and the US, managed to make video-visits available for many prisoners during the pandemic (Dünkel et al, 2022; Hardwick et al, 2022). In that sense, the prison conditions offered by the Danish authorities do not fit well with the notion of Nordic penal exceptionalism.10 Norway chose an arguably more traditional rational welfare-state route. On the one hand, Norway demonstrated the swift bureaucratic power of a Nordic welfare state by quickly introducing automatic isolation of prisoners. On the other hand, though, the Norwegian state also showed significantly more respect for the rights of prisoners and their families to maintain contact by introducing iPads and video-visits. In that sense, the principle of normalisation, so often associated with a welfare-state approach, was honoured in Norway, while it was disregarded in remand facilities and in the closed prisons in Denmark, although maintained in open prisons, where even mobile phones were allowed early on.
Importantly, in prisons in both countries, we find that the concepts of dugnad and samfundssind lost their dimension of social solidarity and simply became vehicles for direct social control. Prisoners were given minimal agency and simply had to abide by the intense pandemic restrictions, which they experienced in a much more direct and severe manner than citizens in the free community. Furthermore, demonstrating dugnad and samfundssind was originally related to physical and social proximity and face-to-face contact, and not to a situation involving social distancing as in the case of the pandemic dugnad. In that sense the prisoners were simply offline victims of the pandemic rather than participants in a joint community effort. Not being voluntary and equal participants in the national projects of social solidarity bred mistrust and led prisoners to react with censoriousness towards the authorities. This response also revealed a moral paradox where prisoners claimed a moral higher ground while acknowledging the underlying rationale of the very restrictive regimes.
Regardless, the sacrifices made by citizens during the pandemic were not shared evenly and, as demonstrated in this article, prisoners were at the losing end and experiencing further marginalisation. In this sense, the policies of dugnad and samfundssind were a hoax, seen from the point of view of many prisoners, as they obscured the unequal distribution of burdens during the pandemic. Vulnerable and institutionalised groups were excluded and suffered disproportionately, compared to those who could voluntarily participate in community efforts.
Trust is a quality a government can cultivate and earn during a crisis (Bollyky et al, 2022). The perceived obligation to obey rules and make sacrifices strongly relates to the transparency of rules, inclusive decision making, and the opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns (Norheim et al, 2020). However, as our study demonstrates, the pandemic treatment of prisoners suffered from a lack of transparency, respect for rights, and measures promoting social connection. This produced moral indignation among prisoners and a response of censoriousness. Many prisoners were simply and literally left alone during the pandemic, cut off from the world including family and friends, with their limited agency curtailed even further, and with a stark experience of exclusion and not being part of the national communities of solidarity advertised in the recurring government slogans.
Notes
In 2021, one of the authors described how prisoners in Norway and Denmark during the pandemic reacted with individual censoriousness (in a presentation at the Mathiesen memorial seminar, Oslo University, 2 December 2021), and both authors highlighted this aspect in authors own (2022). Munkholm (2023) later similarly used the concept of censoriousness in connection with imprisonment in Denmark during the pandemic, although without analysing and explaining prisoner reactions in relation to the national policy of social solidarity, as it is done here.
The two projects were funded by Fritt Ord, and the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud, respectively. Both projects were carried out by the two authors, the latter study in collaboration with May-Len Skilbrei (see Hellebust et al, 2021).
The WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 on 11 March 2020.
See Prison Policy Initiative (2023). See also Metcalf (2021); McCarthy et al (2022); Braithwaite et al (2021).
Subsequently, The Norwegian Corona Commission, appointed by the Norwegian government, also found this isolation practice problematic and addressed the amount of potential harmful effects as worrying (NOU, 2021, 6: 394).
See letter from the Directorate of the Norwegian Correctional Service, 21 June 2020, regarding ‘New legal frameworks for managing COVID-19’.
Letter from the Danish Ombudsman to the Directorate of the Prison and Probation Service, 3 July 2020, p8 (in the following referred to as Folketingets Ombudsmand, 2020a).
Documents from the Danish Ombudsman obtained through a freedom of information request, 16 December 2020, p4.
On 10 September 2021 all restrictions were lifted as COVID-19 was downgraded as no longer constituting a critical threat to society, but on 11 November 2021 COVID-19 regained this status in Denmark, and hence restrictions in prisons became possible until COVID-19 was downgraded once again on 1 February 2022.
The available literature demonstrates that Denmark has been significantly influenced by ‘tough on crime’ polices (and this seems to be less the case in other Nordic countries). See, for example, Balvig, 2005; Barker and Smith, 2021; Smith, 2023.
Funding
The authors received financial support from Fritt Ord and the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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