UVA Students Visit Norway to Learn Better Approaches to Incarceration

Twenty University of Virginia students and staff traveled to Norway over spring break to explore the principles of “normality” within the country’s prison system. The experiential program was part of the UVA Batten course, LPPS 5670: Education in the U.S. and International Prison Systems, taught by professor of practice Gerard Robinson.

The semester-long includes five Batten MPP students, eight Batten BA students, and five undergraduates from different disciplines, different disciplines and explores the history of education and penal systems domestically and abroad.

Norway, which has gained international recognition for its more humane approach to imprisonment and reentry, seemed a natural fit for the cohort’s comparative analysis.

“If you want to show a student the importance of health you do not open a casket with a dead body. The same analogy is true for prisons,” Robinson said. “Going to Norway provided all of us an opportunity to see how other people address crime and punishment.

“I hope that each student returned to the U.S. with insights about how we can make the time people serve in our prisons a better place to prepare them to reenter society. None of this means U.S. prisons are all failing at rehabilitation. Successful models do exist. At the same time, some of the best lessons students can learn are at times taught away from Grounds. In this instance, on the other side of the Atlantic.”

Of the 18 student participants on the week-long immersion, 13 were Batten students, 10 of whom received scholarships, making the experience possible. Eight had never studied abroad before.

“The Batten School aims to make an international learning experience accessible to all students through a variety of offerings and a scholarship program to help students with financial need,” said director of academic operations Heather Downs, who also went on the trip.

The Norway itinerary was robust. On their first day in-country, the group went on a bus tour of the city and visited the Nobel Peace Center. Over the course of the week, they spent mornings and afternoons visiting with academics and practitioners at various sites in the region. At the University of Oslo, they heard a broad overview of corrections policies and practices in Norway, as well as a pilot program in Philadelphia called “Little Scandanavia.” At Norway’s National Corrections College, they learned that officers receive two years of immersive de-escalation-based training, versus a13-week curriculum in the United States.

The students also visited high- and low-security institutions, as well as re-entry, drug court, and community centers that constitute the Norwegian “step-down” model. In the evenings, the group was given leeway to explore the Norwegian capital city.

“[What resonates with me is] the restoration of humanity – in general society and within the walls of their prisons,” said first-year MPP student Stephen Kelly. “They don’t remove the humanity from their inmates, their residents. They still treat them like humans even though they’ve been convicted of crimes, but they don’t seek to break them but make them better.”

Unlike in the United States, the Norwegian prison model hinges on the idea that deprivation of liberty is punishment enough, and that the purpose of time away from society is a means of behavioral modification to be a “good neighbor” upon re-entry. Hence, human autonomy and dignity is to remain as intact as possible while engaged with corrections services, which largely function akin to wrap-around social services in the United States.

“I’ve been given proper insight into a problem I felt disconnected from, even with extensive experiential knowledge,” said Flight Larus, a third-year geography student who plans to apply to the Batten School following the study abroad experience. “Sometimes treating others with basic kindness and dignity can be a simple solution in working toward a more cost-efficient and human-rights-compliant approach in methodology.”

The Norway experience is the newest addition to our growing portfolio of Batten Education Abroad programs, which also includes courses with experiential elements in Ireland/N. Ireland, Vietnam, and Dominica.