From Learning to Labour to Learning to Self-Control: The Paradigmatic Change in Swedish Prison Policy

Abstract

This article has been written from the position that we fail to understand the character of the changes in prison policy in the last decades if we concentrate too much on the new emphasis on control and security. By making use of Thomas Kuhn's paradigm model, the article argues that it is fertile to see the changes in Swedish prison policy during the last decades as a paradigm shift. Although the new emphasis on control and security is important, it is only one feature in a larger transformation which concerns changing perceptions of the criminal subject, new theoretical understandings, new treatment methods, as well as a new role for the prison in penal policy in general. The article conceptualizes the policy that has developed inside the Swedish Prison and Probation Service during the last decades as the developing of a new paradigm in contrast to the old prison policy paradigm of the welfare state. The article especially discusses the significance of the development of so-called evidence-based knowledge as well as the creation of a Scientific Council inside the Swedish Prison and Probation Service which have led to a re-pathologization of the criminal subject. Other features that make up the new paradigm are the numerous programmes built on cognitive therapy and the emphasis on individual risk assessments. On a general level, the new paradigm has developed during, and is congruent with, the dominance of a neo-liberal regime.

Keywords:

• Evidence-based
• Paradigm
• Prison policy
• Re-pathologization
• Swedish Prison and Probation Service

Notes

¹ The article is based on Nilsson (2012) in which a more detailed picture is presented.

² This does not, of course, rule out the possibility of dissenting and competing voices.

³ In the following I use the shorter Swedish Prison Service.

⁴ KRUM is an abbreviation for Riksförbundet för kriminalvårdens humanisering.

⁵ This growing emphasis of prisoners' rights during this period also resulted in that the prisoners' right to vote in general elections was confirmed by law. See Nilsson 2010.

⁶ Although labour in workshops and schooling play a large quantitative role in the prisons, the new paradigm assigns a limited role in crime prevention to these activities.

⁷ Out of nearly 40 contributions to this volume only a couple discuss crime and crime prevention from a social or social-psychological perspective.

⁸ In total 14 programmes are listed on the homepage. One programme (ROS) is said to have ‘some’ psychodynamic moments, and another (Twelve Steps Model) is said to be ‘spiritually oriented’.