IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/crimin/v65y2025i6p1280-1297..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘Exceptional’ Open Prisons Under Pressure: Austerity, Instability and Distrust

Author

Listed:
  • Pernille Søderholm Nyvoll

Abstract

This article examines the impact of various challenges on two Norwegian low-security prisons, Bastøy and Leira, during a particularly demanding period. Using ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with 51 prisoners, the article applies the conceptual metaphors ‘depth’, ‘weight’, and ‘tightness’ to explore the severity of control, restriction and psychological burden. Findings reveal a reduction in activities and an increase in restrictiveness in both prisons. Additionally, prisoners at Bastøy noticed reduced staff presence and deteriorated trust, possibly due to the prison’s larger size, workplace conflicts and complex restructuring process, exacerbated by COVID-19 restrictions and austerity measures. The results point to a diminishing ‘exceptionality’ in Norwegian prisons, highlighting the importance of stability, institutional autonomy, and smaller prison size in fostering trust and close relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • Pernille Søderholm Nyvoll, 2025. "‘Exceptional’ Open Prisons Under Pressure: Austerity, Instability and Distrust," The British Journal of Criminology, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, vol. 65(6), pages 1280-1297.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:65:y:2025:i:6:p:1280-1297.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azaf018
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:65:y:2025:i:6:p:1280-1297.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/bjc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.