The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment

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Maybe I'm not there long enough to sense latent anger or profound despair, but Halden doesn't feel like a place where you have to look over your shoulder. There is some annoyance from staff at the focus on the buildings, rather than on the principle of rehabilitation that drives the prison. Compared with the 1850s Eidsberg prison, where he was before, Halden is a relief: "Being there and being here, it's like heaven and hell.

The Windrush Betrayal | Faber

At 3pm, a table is set for 10, with white china plates, glasses and white paper napkins, in the drug rehabilitation unit, where Robert, 45 and an ex-addict and dealer, is living. Everyone who is imprisoned inside Norwegian prisons will be released – maybe not Breivik, but everyone else will go back to society. There are no plans for a swimming pool, but Høidal does want to make a jogging track through the woods, and a young sports teacher (who is working on specialised programmes for recovering drug addicts) says he hopes to start rock climbing lessons in the summer. One wild-eyed ex-amphetamine addict slaps Høidal on the back, tells him he is a good man, but says he misses his old prison, Oslo, where he served an earlier sentence. While officers in Britain get a few weeks' training, Norwegians will have completed a two-year university course, with an emphasis on human rights, ethics and the law.But he was in the cell for two minutes," says Janne Offerdal, who teaches English to the inmates (mainly to foreign nationals caught smuggling drugs into the country; the Norwegian prisoners all speak impeccable English). Staff are encouraged to mingle with inmates, talking to them, counselling them, working with them to combat their criminality.

Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment

There isn't any of the enraged, persistent banging of doors you hear in British prisons, not least because the prisoners are not locked up much during the day. It is the flagship of the Norwegian justice system, where the focus is on rehabilitation rather than punishment. I see only one piece of prisoner graffiti, a rather half-hearted scribble on an A4 printed notice (to avoid causing permanent damage): "Fuck the rules" (only the pen has stopped working, so all that's really legible is Fuck the r).But this book by Amelia Gentleman, the Guardian journalist who broke the story, exposes it in its shocking reality. The governor, Are Høidal, is surprised when I ask about figures for prisoner attacks on guards, staff hospitalisations, guard restraints on prisoners, or prisoner-on-prisoner assaults. Høidal agrees that the style of Halden prison, with the relentless presence of guards wanting to talk and help inmates, does not suit everyone. I explain that British prisons are required to log this data, and that the last prison I visited had a problem with prisoners melting screws into plastic pens, to use as stabbing weapons; he looks startled, says there isn't much violence here and he can't remember the last time there was a fight. On the whole they don't believe the liberal regime from which they benefit should be extended to him.