Halden fengsel opened on 1 March 2010, about 6 kilometres west of the town centre. It holds 252 inmates and cost 1.5 billion kroner to build. TIME Magazine called it the world's most humane prison, and it has been featured in documentaries worldwide as a model of Scandinavian rehabilitation.
The architecture is designed to reduce the feeling of confinement. Cells have flat-screen TVs, private bathrooms, and large windows. There is a recording studio, a climbing wall, and a jogging trail through the surrounding forest. Guards eat meals together with inmates.
The reality is more complicated. Reports from Sivilombudet, Norway's civil ombudsman, paint a different picture. Inmates have been locked in their cells 19 to 22 hours per day due to chronic staff shortages. Suicide screening was found to be inadequate. In one two-year period, 83 staff members resigned. The gap between the international reputation and the day-to-day conditions has been a persistent problem.
The prison is not visible from any public road and cannot be visited. But it remains one of the more interesting contradictions in Norwegian self-image: a country that built the world's most humane prison, then struggled to staff it properly.
The architecture is designed to reduce the feeling of confinement. Cells have flat-screen TVs, private bathrooms, and large windows. There is a recording studio, a climbing wall, and a jogging trail through the surrounding forest. Guards eat meals together with inmates.
The reality is more complicated. Reports from Sivilombudet, Norway's civil ombudsman, paint a different picture. Inmates have been locked in their cells 19 to 22 hours per day due to chronic staff shortages. Suicide screening was found to be inadequate. In one two-year period, 83 staff members resigned. The gap between the international reputation and the day-to-day conditions has been a persistent problem.
The prison is not visible from any public road and cannot be visited. But it remains one of the more interesting contradictions in Norwegian self-image: a country that built the world's most humane prison, then struggled to staff it properly.