‘This is not what I signed up for’ – Danish prison officers’ attitudes towards more punitive penal policies

Abstract

A humane approach to punishment has been integral to the work of the Danish Prisons and Probation Service. However, Danish penal policy has recently taken a punitive turn. What happens when punitive policies are adopted by a penal regime built on a humane approach to punishment? To address this question, this article focuses on prison officers at Vestre prison and how they adapt to punitive political decisions and prison policies. The increased focus on security in Danish prisons is considered, together with limitations set on welfare services available to non-citizen prisoners. Examination of officers’ subjectivities at Vestre prison shows that punitive penal policies have produced an environment fraught with tensions that affect prison work, institutional culture, and the officers’ professional identity. These findings also raise questions about the shifting nature of Danish penal power.

Introduction

According to Bo Yde Sørensen, head of the Danish Prison Federation, the Danish Prisons and Probation Service ‘is in the middle of a historic crisis’ (Danish Prison Federation, 2019) ¹ . This crisis, he says, follows a turn in ‘the wrong direction’, away from the original ‘humane objectives’ of the service and the ‘vision of making a difference in society’. Danish prison officers are not meant to ‘simply lock and unlock doors’ (Sørensen, 2019). What is at stake, Sørensen (2019) believes, is the purpose of the prison. Should it be a place to ‘store offenders’ or one that ‘benefits society’? Danish prisons are at a crossroads, as punitive penal policies steadily increase. Security measures designed to maintain ‘control’ and enforce ‘law and order’ have been recently implemented (Engbo, 2021; Minke, 2021; Smith, 2021) ² and welfare services for non-citizens have been limited to produce ‘real punishment’ ³ for them (Justitsministeriet, 2016; L 130, 2017) ⁴ . While Scandinavian welfare states have generally been described as inclusive, with ‘longstanding characteristics of moderation, restraint, and forbearance’, even exceptional in terms of their humane approach to punishment, they seem to have undergone a ‘punitive turn - Nordic style’ (Balvig, 2005; Lappi-Seppälä, 2016: 25; Pratt, 2008a; Pratt and Eriksson, 2013: 90, 94; Smith, 2011, 2021). ⁵ What happens when populist and punitive penal policies take root in a humane, welfare-oriented prison regime?

As noted by Bo Yde Sørensen, the conflictive aspects of punishment are intensifying in the Danish Prisons and Probation Service. One way of approaching this conflict is by examining the subjectivities of prison officers who - as ‘prison wing bureaucrats’ - negotiate, mediate, and reproduce different notions of legitimacy and authority in the name of the state (Fuglerud, 2004; Lipsky, 2010; Shannon and Page, 2014). Drawing on ethnographic observation and interviews conducted on a wing of Copenhagen's Vestre prison, this article examines how these officers adapt to the current punitive shift and its effects on prison practice. Officers’ attitudes to two kinds of policies designed to produce a more stringent prison regime are considered. The first of these are security measures: stricter body and cell searches, the penalization of phone possession, and the prohibition of abusive language for the entire prison population; the second are cuts to welfare services available to non-citizens.

In the following, the context of these changes is outlined. First, the principles of the Danish penal system are described, together with the recent punitive penal policies on prisons. Literature on Scandinavian welfare-oriented approaches to punishment relevant to the work of Danish officers, the challenges they face, their institutional cultures and professional identities is discussed. A description of the methods used in this research is then provided. The findings highlighting the increasing tensions and dilemmas that have arisen as prison officers at Vestre attempt to navigate the changing penal landscape are presented. The implications for prison practice, the institutional culture, and officers’ professional identities at Vestre prison are further discussed. Lastly, the possible implications of the findings for the Danish Prisons and Probation Service and Danish penality are considered.

Danish penal principles and recent developments

Discursively, the Danish Prisons and Probation Service describes principles, working goals, and an organizational culture based on a humane, welfare-oriented approach to punishment (Smith, 2011, 2021). The foundational legal sources and the basis for the policies of the service are found in the Sentence Enforcement Act, ⁶ the Programme of Principles, ⁷ and the Financial Agreement ⁸ between the service and the government drawn up every four years (the last one in 2018).

The main purpose of the Danish Prisons and Probation Service, according to the Programme of Principles (1993), is to ‘contribute to reducing criminality’. This requires officers to ‘recognize human worth’ and the prisoners’ human rights, not place more restrictions on them than legally required, respect the underlying considerations of punishment when implementing it, and take account of the general sense of justice in society as indicated by the courts. To achieve this purpose, the service has two equally important tasks: to ensure ‘control and security’ in prison and to ‘support and motivate the offender to live a crime-free life by assisting personal, social, vocational and educational development’. These tasks are guided by the following principles: normalization (prison conditions should resemble those in the community as much as possible), openness (maintaining contact with the community) ⁹ , responsibility for one's life and choices, security (which has passive and dynamic aspects, the latter being dependent on officers’ ‘close’ relationships to prisoners), minimum intervention (maximum power is not always most effective), and the optimum use of resources (Programme of Principles, 1993). This adds up to a humane, welfare-oriented approach to punishment, where the ‘normalization’ of prison life, the ‘development’ of prisoners, and dynamic security, all relying on ‘close’ interpersonal relationships, represent explicit policy goals (Smith, 2021).

Officers learn about these laws and principles and prison practice during a three-year programme of theory courses and work experience in different prisons. According to the programme's mission statement, graduating officers will be responsible, ‘on the one hand, for maintaining control and security, on the other hand for supporting and motivating prisoners to live a crime-free life’. The statement describes the officers’ work as ‘about people’, since they will work both with prisoners and ‘colleagues, both in uniform and civilian’ (Kriminalforsorgen, 2018, 2021). This approach reflects the welfare-oriented professionalism favoured during the ‘golden age’ of Scandinavian social-democracy (Bruhn et al., 2017; Petersen and Christiansen, 2001).

Lately, however, as outlined by Bo Yde Sørensen, there have been ever more conflicting pressures, due to the proliferation of punitive penal policies and the impact of neoliberal restructuring of the Danish welfare state (Andersen, 2019; Engbo, 2021; Minke, 2021; Smith, 2021). Neoliberal economics and New Public Management (NPM) reforms have been taking hold throughout the Danish public sector, including in prisons. Prisoners are referred to as ‘clients’, efficiency and cost-cutting are priorities, along with more detailed rules, routines, and reporting. Non-citizens, for instance, are expected to contribute to the cost of their own deportation if possible (Andersen, 2019; Aftale om kriminalforsorgens økonomi, 2018). Politicians of all parties have espoused a punitive penal agenda, driven by discontent with the criminal justice system and the wish to get ‘tough on crime’, protect law-abiding citizens, and punish offenders more harshly (Smith, 2011, 2021).

The political demand for increased security, order, and control in prisons has resulted in a more stringent regime (Minke, 2021; Smith, 2021). The list of prohibitions has lengthened, some offences being punishable by disciplinary solitary confinement, such as phone possession, abusive language, and smoking indoors. ¹⁰ Cell and body searches have also become stricter. In certain circumstances, officers are required to place prisoners in solitary confinement, following the national guidelines (Engbo, 2021; Minke, 2019, 2021; Smith, 2021; Straffuldbyrdelsesloven, §36, 67, 68, 70, 2021). Prior to the changes in the law, officers had ample room to assess a situation and decide the punishment (Kolind, 2015). The new punitiveness is most visible in the quadrupling of the use of disciplinary solitary confinement, despite a decrease in the number of court mandated cases – 1289 cases were recorded in 2001, 4422 in 2019. There has also been a rise in extended periods of disciplinary solitary confinement: in 2015 there were seven instances of disciplinary solitary confinement for more than 15 days, against 705 in 2019 (DIGNITY, 2020; Kriminalforsorgen, 2020). The various, often lengthy, forms of disciplinary solitary confinement employed in Danish prisons and their harmful effects have been extensively documented and have been condemned both nationally and by international human rights treaty bodies (Reiter et al., 2018; Rua and Smith, 2019). The legality of the use of disciplinary solitary confinement for some of the new offences (e.g. abusive language) has also been questioned (Engbo, 2021).

Politicians have also expressed the desire to ‘make imprisonment harsher’ for non-citizens, who make up 30% of the prison population (Kriminalforsorgen, 2020; L 130, 2017). They are portrayed in political discourse as less deserving, and their access to welfare services is now limited, except in special circumstances (e.g. long sentences). Amendments to the Sentence Enforcement Act limit access to educational activities, work, and treatment programmes, and end the service's obligation to prepare release plans for non-citizens (Justitsministeriet, 2016; L 130, 2017). Søren Pape Poulsen, then Conservative Minister of Justice, wished to ‘send a signal to foreign criminals’ that imprisonment in a Danish prison would be ‘real punishment’ and, since they were ‘deportable’, nothing would be spent on their reintegration. This, the minister argued, ‘will strengthen a sense of justice’ in Denmark (L 130, 2017; Justitsministeriet, 2016).

So then, Danish prison officers, moulded by a welfare-oriented approach to punishment, now face changing policy priorities, organizational pressures, and managerial styles. While the most significant aspects of policy are shaped by political and policy elites, structured by administrators, and influenced by occupational norms, literature suggests that officers as ‘prison wing bureaucrats’ have a measure of discretion in how they apply policy, depending on organizational goals, rules, resources, and their own values (Lipsky, 2010; Shannon and Page, 2014). The following section addresses existing research on the work of Danish prison officers and the challenges they face regarding welfare-oriented approaches to punishment. The findings of this research are then presented, detailing the increasing tensions and dilemmas resulting from the new more stringent policies and Vestre officers’ attitudes to them.

The Danish prison officer

Existing research on prison work has shown its necessarily conflictive nature: officers constantly balance the demands of care and control. Interpersonal relationships are seen as essential ‘instruments of power’, with officers having to negotiate their authority on the prison floor on a daily basis. Relying on both personal and institutional power, they use a repertoire of accommodating and coercive practices. As noted by Liebling (2011: 485), ‘what is distinctive about the work of prison officers is, first, the centrality of often enduring relationships to their work and, second, the harmonizing of welfare and discipline, or care and power.’ Officers maintain the prison's everyday social world - they lock and unlock prisoners, conduct searches, allot punishments and privileges, and deal with requests. Discretion is central to their work: they must constantly decide whether to go ‘by the book’ or use their ‘common sense’. Their attitudes towards punishment and prisoners may then also be crucial to prison work (Bennett et al., 2008; Jewkes et al., 2016; Liebling, 2000, 2011; Liebling et al., 2011).

Danish prison officers are expected to implement the interconnected principles of a welfare-oriented approach to punishment: the maintenance of security and provision of welfare, requiring close relationships with prisoners. As scholars have pointed out, however, tensions already exist in the principles of the Danish Prisons and Probation Service. Normalization and openness, for instance, are inevitably limited, especially in closed prisons (Minke, 2021; Vollan, 2016). A greater punitiveness - fewer furloughs, longer sentences, increased use of disciplinary solitary confinement, and more prisoners in closed prisons - has further reduced the possibility for normalization and openness (Minke, 2021). The ‘rehabilitative’ requirement to ‘motivate’ prisoners to lead a ‘crime free life’ and contribute to their ‘development’ reflects the rather interventionist, intrusive, and paternalistic aspects of welfarist penal power, incompatible with rights-based principles (e.g. normalization, openness, non-intrusiveness). Although supposedly humane, welfarist penal power has been described as invasive, and sometimes, less than humane (Smith and Ugelvik, 2017; Ugelvik and Dullum, 2011). How, then, has this approach to punishment translated into prison practice?

Like their counterparts elsewhere, Danish prison officers must constantly juggle the competing goals of incarceration (Reiter et al., 2017, 2018), balancing welfare-oriented work with surveillance, security, and discipline. Research shows that Danish prison officers are generally committed to the other welfare-oriented aspects of their work, especially supporting the ‘development’ of prisoners (or ‘rehabilitation’ towards ‘reintegration’ in society). They ‘strongly believe in the “good” of their work and want to make a difference’ (Lemmergaard and Muhr, 2012: 192). This is particularly true of officers involved in cognitive-behavioural and treatment programmes, or working closely with social workers: they seem to adopt a ‘softer’ approach to punishment and emphasize the importance of the ‘treatment ethos’ in their daily work. Such officers seem motivated to ‘do something more’ with prisoners (Laursen, 2016; Kolind et al., 2015). An officer in a small in-depth study explained ‘prisoners are no longer only the object of control and surveillance - they are to be rehabilitated’ (Lemmergaard and Muhr, 2012: 189). Such efforts are often challenged or thwarted, however, by the tensions arising from the disciplinary aspects of prison work (Kolind et al., 2010; Lemmergaard and Muhr, 2012). Institutions, professional roles, and the officers’ own attitudes also affect this welfarist orientation. ¹¹

How do Danish prison officers attempt to balance the conflicting requirements of their job? Studies show that it seems to be largely by attempting to create ‘close’ interpersonal relationships (Andersen, 2017; Programme of Principles, 1993; Smith, 2021). ¹² Officers conceptualize prison work as about ‘meeting the person in front of them’, thereby achieving security in daily life and reducing negative emotions (Andersen, 2017). Reciprocity is necessary to good relationships and helps officers exercise personal authority (Smith, 2021). Establishing personal authority, rather than just relying on institutional power, is seen as essential, and officers rely on it to off-set the intrusive aspects of penal power. (Kolind, 2015; Smith, 2021). They may accept or punish certain offences, as needed, to maintain ‘adequate levels of peace and order’ on the prison floor. Discretion is central to making these choices (Kolind, 2015).

Danish prison officers therefore see creating positive relationships with prisoners as an important aspect of their work, but recently this has been affected by the increasing use of intrusive controls and sanctions in prison, as shown by several reports (Minke, 2019; Smith, 2021). In a report for the Ministry of Justice, Minke (2019: 19) shows that constant body and cell searches affect relationships with the prisoners. One officer said, ‘the relationship with the prisoners has deteriorated […]. When we do so many strip searches, we do not have sufficient resources to go into the units and wings […], to get out and talk to them.’ A Danish Prison Federation survey of 1231 of its members ¹³ found 99% of those surveyed believe that ‘relationship work’ is an important aspect of their work, necessary to dynamic security; 40% said they would resign if their work just became passive security, as desired by Søren Pape Poulsen, then Minister of Justice (Danish Prison Federation, 2017). Some Danish prison officers do, however, favour passive security rather than dynamic security (Smith and Jakobsen, 2017).

Especially in closed prisons, welfare-oriented principles may have detrimental effects on the wellbeing and professional identity of Danish prison officers. The conflicting goals of welfare and control often produce emotional dilemmas (Lemmergaard and Muhr, 2012; Andersen, 2016, 2017). Role conflict and the ‘dirty’ aspects of prison work cause officers to employ disidentification strategies and construct ‘a space of indifference’ (Lemmergaard and Muhr, 2012). They engage in demanding emotional labour to address the emotional dilemmas arising from their work, and establish relationships that are neither too close nor too distant, neither too flexible nor too rigid. Officers must manage not only the prisoners’ impressions, but also their colleagues’. ¹⁴ They may feel powerless because of their limited ability to relieve prisoners ‘pain or suffering’ (Andersen, 2017). Similar professional challenges were found in a large-scale health study of staff burnout in Danish prisons (Andersen et al., 2017).

Most prison officers then appear to support the humane approach of the ‘golden days’ of the Scandinavian welfare state (Bruhn et al., 2017) - especially those involved in cognitive-behavioural and treatment programmes, or working with social workers, whom they see as colleagues. ¹⁵ Positive relationships are central to their work, and necessary to maintain security and achieve the welfare-oriented goals of punishment. However, the disciplinary goals of incarceration already make implementing welfare-oriented policies difficult, while the recent focus on security makes it harder still. Prisons and wings may have their own cultures, with some officers favouring rules and discipline, and setting ‘limits’: this results in an uneven landscape of care and control (Reiter et al., 2017, 2018). ¹⁶ Denmark seems to be diverging from its Scandinavian neighbours in its approach to punishment and prison practice, ¹⁷ growing more punitive towards the prison population (Engbo, 2021; Minke, 2021; Smith, 2021). This article examines how Danish prison officers at Vestre adapt to the greater punitiveness prescribed by political decisions and policies.

Methods

The findings reported in this article result from research carried out during February and April 2018 on a wing of Denmark's largest remand prison, Vestre, in Copenhagen. Vestre is a closed prison, with 506 cells. It is a four-wing panopticon structure, with the school, library, church and administrative offices at its centre. Besides prisoners on remand, Vestre also holds sentenced prisoners, of all genders, ¹⁸ Danish citizens and non-citizens. My research was conducted on a wing with a capacity of 33 cells, but housing about 45 people: women and men, Danish citizens and non-citizens.

I carried out observation, ethnographic interviews and semi-structured interviews. I shadowed nine of the 13 officers regularly working on the wing and, during February 2018, observed their work and interviewed them informally. ¹⁹ I alternated morning shifts and evening shifts, to shadow different officers and to familiarize myself with all aspects of prison work and prison life. During April 2018, I conducted five in-depth semi-structured interviews, and in April 2020, I conducted a sixth follow-up interview, through the phone. This enabled me to gather rich empirical material regarding the participants’ work lives and professional identities. The ethnographic data and self-reported data were analysed thematically to identify patterns of change arising from the new more punitive penal policies perceived by the officers (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Fieldwork was affected by stressors and tensions within the Danish Prison and Probation Service, to do with prison security and the officers’ excessive workloads. I was subject to the same restrictions as the prisoners, initially carried a panic button, and was escorted by an officer at all times. When my presence was normalized and I had established rapport with the officers, I could move about independently. However, after a month, the prison management suggested the security situation was deteriorating, and that I should return at a later date for the follow-up interviews, as described above.

This research therefore captures a specific moment in a specific institution. As research across the Nordic region shows, penal institutions have their own ethos and may develop quite different regimes. ²⁰ The sample size, compared to the number of uniformed officers in the Danish Prison and Probation Service (roughly 3000) is a limitation of the research, but I aimed for depth and to faithfully capture the nature of prison work on a wing at Vestre at a particular moment in time. Small ethnographic studies such as this can be seen as a ‘slice of the whole’, indicating avenues for further research (Coleman and Hellermann, 2011). While the findings may not be generalizable to the whole Danish Prison and Probation Service, they do call for more systematic empirical exploration of the changing landscape of Danish penality.

‘This is not what I signed up for’

Recent law and order measures designed to exert greater control over prisoners have reoriented prison practice at Vestre. Officers felt the new security regime was displacing a welfare-oriented approach to punishment. When asked to describe his work, Matteus, who had been at Vestre for a decade, said ‘security, security, security - definitely not the job he had ‘signed up for’. Freia, another officer, thought Denmark was ‘ten years away from [becoming] the US’. More stringent cell and body searches, more offences punishable by disciplinary solitary confinement, and being required to use disciplinary solitary confinement in set circumstances have tilted the balance towards surveillance, control, and discipline. The officers observed that the measures created an increasingly punitive environment, including for remand prisoners:

Matteus: We have many regulations. The bosses [the government] want things to be harder and harder, they want to punish the inmates more than they already are, and that makes my job harder, because some of the ‘open door’ has been, you know, taken away from them.

Vigo: Most of my colleagues and I, we know we cannot change the world, but we can maybe make it easier to be in here. And it's like somebody at the top says ‘no, it must not be easy to be in here’. But why not? We are not the government, we are not the judge, we are not going to give them a sentence. And when they have been sentenced, yes, we have some things we have to work on inside, some rules. But if the rules are OK, then why make it harder?

Officers at Vestre saw the strict security and marked rise in the use of sanctions, especially disciplinary solitary confinement, as a product of a punitive political agenda, rather than a practical necessity on the prison floor. Having to punish accumulations of minor, non-violent misbehaviour was seen as unwarranted and detrimental not only to the prisoners’ wellbeing but also to prison work:

Author: I’ve read about disciplinary solitary confinement going up …

Vigo: Yeah, but it is, you know, the government's fault, because of all the restrictions they have made. With smoking there's a restriction [sigh], if someone talks through the window there's a restriction [sigh], a punishment of this, a punishment of that, and so on… They have made it harder for us to work here, and for the inmates, too.

The officers saw increased punitiveness and the set requirements and sanctions as limiting their professional discretion. They frequently had to impose sanctions, including disciplinary solitary confinement, without room to assess the situation and decide the best course of action. Previously, while still having to balance soft and hard policies, officers felt they had more room to manoeuvre and choose the best course of action rather than use maximum power.

The focus on security, control, and discipline and the limitation of professional discretion was seen to damage the ‘relationship work’ that was central to their job, and to the production of dynamic security. Good relationships meant security for both prisoners and officers. Therefore, officers argued that the measures designed to increase security in fact reduced it:

Vigo: And you talk to them [prisoners], and you know about them, and you have a relationship with them […]. But, of course, we have dynamic security, and this suffers because we have to implement the punishments, like for smoking, all the time. So, if we have conflicts in one area, we have more conflict all the time. It hasn't been this bad, ever. It's a small department. It's the way to go in the prison. If you know the prisoners, there's no penalties, there's no reports, there's no yelling. You don't get sick, you don't get threatened, you don't get hit, if they know you as [name redacted], rather than some guy who's here, but knows you. […] If I’m ever in trouble, all the prisoners would help me, if you know what I mean.

The officers perceived the shift from dynamic security towards passive security to be absurd, futile, and counterproductive to prison work. Whatever their political views, officers felt increased punitiveness prevented them from making a ‘positive change to the prisoners’ lives’ and that the room for dialogue with prisoners, a core element of a welfare-oriented approach to punishment, had diminished, reducing opportunities for normalization and rehabilitation:

Elise: This is not what I signed up for, when I came here. It was nice, you had a dialogue. You came in here and could talk, you know, to the inmates, do a lot of things with them, but, you know, the space is less and less and less and less. That is not what I signed up for, you know.

To some extent, the officers at Vestre saw themselves as welfare workers, and this meant the shift from a welfare-oriented approach to punishment led to professional identity crises. They felt they had become what they most feared - turnkeys. Matteus, for instance, said he ‘didn't sign up to be the bad cop, to be the guard who is, you know, going over to the big house, where you lock the door.’ ²¹ Emil said his motivation to become a prison officers was a desire to work with people, especially young people ‘failed by the system’. He recalled being told during training that he ‘could go out and save someone, change their whole life’. After some time on the job, he now realised ‘this is not always possible’, so he mostly tried to ‘make people feel it's not so bad in here’. The welfare-oriented approach to punishment, reflected in penal law and the interconnected policy goals of the service, and central to the officers’ training, appears to be challenged by the realities of prison work, and further threatened by the new punitiveness (Kriminalforsorgen, 2018; Danish Prison Federation, 2019; Programme of Principles, 1993).

Some professional challenges manifested most acutely when officers were working with non-citizens. The limitations on welfare services available to non-citizens (such as education, work, and treatment programmes) and the termination of the duty to prepare release plans have significantly reduced the scope for welfare work (L 130, 2017; Justitsministeriet, 2016). Officers observed that the limited opportunities available seriously affected non-citizens’ wellbeing. Officers no longer did ‘relationship work’ or ‘development’ and ‘rehabilitation work’ with them. Since ‘reciprocity’ was absent, officers just provided ‘basic needs’:

Elise: You can't do much for them, you can see that they get food, and go to the toilet. Basic needs. But that's it. […] We put them in a room, close the door, and wait for them to go [that is be deported] So, you think, that's not the point of your job. I like to have a relationship or try to have a relationship with the prisoners and maybe give them some guidance. But why should they [non-citizens] talk to you? You cannot help them with anything. You cannot help them stay in the country. You cannot help them come back to the country. You cannot help them get a job in their home country. You cannot help them in any way. So why should they talk to you? Why should they care?

Budget cuts and reduced time available for activities made prison work more difficult, in general, and with non-citizens in particular. The officers attempted to remedy the situation by arranging placements in the sewing workshop and involving non-citizens in sports or cookery classes. Nonetheless, welfare work, despite officers’ commitment, was especially difficult to implement in relation to non-citizens.

Some officers then sought to resist the more punitive climate and exercise a measure of discretion when allocating punishments and privileges. Others, however, felt bound to follow the rules to the letter, even if they did not agree with them. The rift was acknowledged by officers and significantly affected the atmosphere and relationships between colleagues. Vigo described his approach, based on ‘relationship work’ and dialogue with prisoners, and spoke of disagreements among offices:

Author: Do you have differences with your colleagues? Regarding how the job should be done?

Vigo: Yes, big [differences]. We should talk to the inmates, we should talk about problems. We’re all humans, nobody has been sentenced yet, they are innocent, if you know what I mean. It's easy to yell and be a bully [imitates anger]: ‘Do what I say! What did I tell you last time?!’ [in a calm voice]: ‘Listen, what is it that you want?’ You get nowhere by yelling. This is the way to get respect, not yelling. You have to show who you are, then everybody comes to you. There's a line.

Initially, differences in attitudes to the new measures were routinely discussed in staff meetings, resulting in ‘many arguments’, but ‘no one really changed their mind’. Differences were immediately obvious on the wing. When officers favouring ‘discipline’ came in, the atmosphere would change on the wing, and troubled prisoners and other officers. This meant officers tried to work with colleagues who were on the ‘same side of the parameters’ of care and control.

Even officers who favoured discipline felt the new security rules negatively affected their daily work, since they were not informed by the reality of prison work or based on input from officers or research. They, too, supported humane punishment and condemned the political decisions impacting welfare-oriented prison practice. Officers felt that ignorant and impractical political elites lacked their professional experience and accumulated knowledge:

Matteus: It's like they don't have a connection to Earth, you know. I think it's because the people they have upstairs [that is the government] maybe don't have the same training as us, and they have not been down here […]. They don't know what work in prison is like, how to work in prison. And when you make a change, that change will always make a wave. You can make a good wave, because you have everything prepared, and have thought about it. Sometimes, it's like they just thought, ‘Oh, I have an idea, we’ll do this, yes, let's do this’. But they haven't thought about what kind of wave [this generates].

The officers also resented NPM measures. They felt increased paperwork and all the reporting protocols took time away from prisoners - the ‘real’ prison work. The situation was described as ‘more and more tasks’ in ‘less and less time’ with ‘less and less money’. The requirement to report all their actions was seen as ‘pointless’, ‘useless’, and making them ‘inefficient’. Frustrated, Matteus asked, ‘What the fuck is the point? To give someone in an office something to read?’ Officers had less time to ‘talk to prisoners’, and less time to discuss issues amongst themselves in the way they used to.

Some of the tensions on the wing, resulting from increased punitiveness, NPM strategies, and the disconnect between politics and policy elites and prison realities, were clearly shown by the ramifications of the smoking ban. Although a health measure, the ban, coupled with stringent cell and body searches and the required allocation of sanctions, means that smoking indoors is eventually punished by disciplinary solitary confinement (after a prisoner has been fined three times for it). Officers described this as a ‘half measure’ resulting in more work without achieving anything positive:

Emil: The smoking ban has changed my work. We have a lot more to do, we have a lot more searches. […] Actually there's a guy in here who figured out how many hours we spend on a search where we find one cigarette. That’s because searching takes time. Then you need to write a report. That takes time, too. Then you need the chief, the one who gives the penalties, to spend time on it too. Then we all spend time on it after, if they get solitary. So, that’s a lot of work for one cigarette that doesn’t make any difference in here anyway.

Officers spoke of the difficulty of maintaining a positive sense of self and of their profession, given the increasingly challenging work environment. They felt they could not do their job properly, that their core work was affected by the recent stringent measures, and their values were misaligned with those of political and policy elites. In light of this, most officers were considering other professional opportunities, some were actively searching at the time of the research, while others had left Vestre prison by 2020.

Discussion

The officers interviewed in this study described how their work has changed in the last few years. It is now more security-oriented, with stricter cell and body searches, and an extended list of offences, and increased use of sanctions, particularly disciplinary solitary confinement. Prison work is already conflictive, and the stricter regime is perceived by the officers in this study to undermine core goals of the service such as the ‘development’ or ‘rehabilitation’ of prisoners and ‘dynamic security’ (Programme of Principles, 1993). The traditional welfare-oriented approach to punishment appears to be under challenge. While this shift from a welfare-oriented penality to ‘cultures of control’ has been extensively documented in such jurisdictions as the United Kingdom and United States (inter alia Garland, 2001; Pratt et al., 2005; Simon, 2007), Scandinavian penality has been seen as fundamentally different, based on principles consonant with the ‘meta-ideology’ of the welfare state (Cavadino and Dignan, 2006; Bruhn et al., 2017; Pratt, 2008a). Nonetheless, Scandinavian welfare states, and Denmark in particular, have long relied on penal power as ‘a tool in a larger project for constructing a better society’, which employs both mild and harsh penal practices (Nilsson, 2017:53; Smith, 2011; Barker, 2013). Vanessa Barker and Smith (2021: 1540), for instance, seek to unpack ‘the logic of punishment’ in Denmark, specifically ‘the welfare nexus and Nordic exceptionalism’. As maintained by Garland (2019: 273), it is not that ‘economic structures determine penal outcomes but rather that penal outcomes are consciously negotiated within the limits that economic, political and ideological structures impose.’ Thus a ‘return to law and order’ (Balvig, 2005) and the impact of neoliberalism and NPM strategies on the organization of welfare (Andersen, 2019) are increasingly affecting the nature and use of punishment in Denmark.

Prison practice at Vestre also appears to be changing with regard to non-citizens, following the limitations on welfare services. When working with non-citizens, officers felt they had become what they most dreaded - turnkeys, and the prison, as feared by Bo Yde Sørensen, head of the Danish Prisons Federation, was just ‘storing’ these prisoners. Non-citizens’ limited access to welfare and lack of release plans, supports Barker and Smith’s (2021:1543) perspective on perhaps there no longer being a ‘straightforward relationship between strong welfare states and humane or mild penal regimes’. A ‘bordered’ form of penality and welfare, like elsewhere in Scandinavia, may be developing in Denmark, as formal citizenship status plays a crucial role in the way justice and punishment are delivered (Aas, 2014; Barker, 2018; Damsa and Franko, forthcoming; Shammas, 2016; Todd-Kvam, 2019).

This study's findings also substantiate current divisions over punishment in Denmark, as described by prison officers, who have a central role in mediating, negotiating, and delivering penal policy (Liebling et al., 2011; Shannon and Page, 2014). The distance between the officers and political elites and policy makers seemed to be growing ever greater. Politicians were perceived by the officers in this study as ignorant of the realities of prison practice. Tasked with implementing policies they might not agree with, some officers still felt compelled to comply fully. Others sought to resist them and carry on as before. Garland (2019) argues that discursive transformations in the sphere of penality are driven by actors with specific motivations, and ‘penal forms’ result from struggles over penality and conjunctural politics. The head of the Danish Prisons Federation has voiced officers’ concerns in public forums, but it remains to be seen whether prison officers and the Federation can influence approaches to punishment in Denmark.

Officers in this study also expressed concern about their professional identities. Carrying out everyday prison work requires professionalism, expertise, and personal skills (Smith, 2021), and officers felt these were declining. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the laws, principles, and policies that have guided Danish penal practice hitherto, and the historical dominance of welfare as a ‘meta-ideology’ in the organization of state services (Bruhn et al., 2017; Petersen and Christiansen, 2001; Westrheim and Eide, 2019). The security-oriented approach was felt to undermine the ‘relationship work’ and the ‘dialogue’ with prisoners central to Danish prison practice, and to destabilize the officers’ identities as ‘welfare workers’. It is not unexpected that there should be different approaches to policy delivery among prison officers (Kelly, 2014; Sim, 2007). However, it is somewhat surprising in the case of Danish prison officers, who so far have shown a rather homogenous professional identity (Minke, 2012). Evidently, the tensions inherent to prison practice and professional identity are increasing, relationships between officers are under pressure, and the distance between officers and policy and political elites is growing. This fragmenting therefore requires further systematic empirical investigation in the Danish penal landscape.

Conclusion

Punitive policies are increasingly shaping the prison regime at Vestre. They have created tensions and left officers caught between conflicting priorities. Officers perceive these policies as damaging to prison work, and contrary to the humane, welfare-oriented approach to punishment traditionally taken by the Danish Prisons and Probation Service. Most remain committed to treating prisoners humanely, building relationships, and producing dynamic security, but, despite their commitment to it, the welfare-oriented approach of the service may be weakening. The new security regime seems to erode the ways in which a welfare-oriented approach to punishment can be operationalized. While punitive practices such as solitary confinement have always been part of the penal repertoire of the Danish welfare state, alongside its more commonly discussed humane qualities, current trends may accentuate such punitiveness. Therefore, conditions for prisoners are becoming ever harsher (Engbo, 2021; Minke, 2021; Smith, 2021). Some officers seek to resist this punitiveness as much as possible in their daily work. The new stricter regime, however, is more acceptable to officers who find it necessary to fully comply. More generally, Danish prison officers unhappy with their working conditions and remuneration are leaving the service (Danish Prison Federation, 2019). And possibly, those willing to follow a more punitive approach to punishment are more likely to remain or to enrol in the service. A question then arises in relation to these developments - will Danish prison officers continue the humane tradition of punishment, or will they embrace a more punitive form of penal power?