“In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison, they are likely to behave like animals. Here, we pay attention to you as human beings.” — Arne Nilsen, Governor of Bastoy Prison, Norway.
Imagine a suspect saying: “My Lord, I plead guilty to all the crimes for which I have been charged by the prosecutor. My allocution is however that in sentencing me, temper justice with mercy by sending me to Bastoy Prison in Norway.”
Norway has a population of slightly less than five million compared to Nigeria’s approximately 170 million. It has fewer than 4,000 prisoners while Nigerian prisons housed 54,156 inmates as of October 31, 2012. Of this number, only 15, 804 were convicted persons while 38, 352 were awaiting trial persons. In terms of prison and prisoners’ management, the Nigerian Prison Service has a lot to learn from their Norwegian counterpart.Imagine a suspect saying: “My Lord, I plead guilty to all the crimes for which I have been charged by the prosecutor. My allocution is however that in sentencing me, temper justice with mercy by sending me to Bastoy Prison in Norway.”
Only one meal a day is provided in the dining hall. The men earn the equivalent of £6 a day and are given a food allowance each month of around £70 with which to buy provisions for their self-prepared breakfasts and evening meals from the island’s well-stocked mini-supermarket.
According to the reporter, in Norway, the loss of liberty is all the punishment prisoners suffer. Cells have televisions, computers, integral showers and sanitation. Some prisoners are segregated for various reasons, but as the majority served their term – anything up to the 21-year maximum sentence (Norway has no death penalty or life sentence) – they were offered education, training and skill-building programmes. One of the prisoners interviewed by the reporter was quoted as saying, “It’s like living in a village, a community. Everybody has to work. But we have free time so we can do some fishing, or in summer we can swim off the beach. We know we are prisoners but here we feel like people.”
Who will want to escape from Bastoy prison with the ‘royal’ treatment being meted out to inmates there.
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