0000000000637913
AUTHOR
Alice Ievins
Nordic penal exceptionalism: A comparative, empirical analysis
Abstract Based on a survey administered in 13 prisons in England & Wales and Norway, as part of a research programme with explicitly comparative aims, this article seeks to address both the relative and absolute dimensions of the Nordic penal exceptionalism thesis. It outlines the consistently more positive results in Norway compared to England & Wales, explaining them primarily with reference to the former’s much higher quality and use of open prisons. At the same time, it emphasizes that, even in an unusually humane prison system, prisoners report considerable pain and frustration. The article also makes the case that comparative analysis should strive to be systematic, but that s…
Authoritarian exclusion and laissez‐faire inclusion: Comparing the punishment of men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales and Norway*
Abstract: Comparative penologists have described neoliberal and social democratic jurisdictions as though they exist at opposite ends of a continuum of inclusion and exclusion, and as though neoliberal states are inactive and social democratic states are invasive. This article, which is based on more than 129 interviews with men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales and Norway, uses Cohen's work on inclusion and McNeill's typology of rehabilitative forms to complicate this simplistic binary. It argues that the punishment of men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales was demanding but exclusionary; it imposed strict legal restrictions on these men during and after their imprison…