just returned from jyderup state prison, about an hour and a half outside copenhagen. doubtlessly, yesterday was practice; today it’s really snowing, and sapna and i had to make our way through the white to arrive at 8:15. something mutely, eerily wild about snowstorms. i think of inmates throwing pointless tantrums against padded walls. you know it won’t hurt you but you tread carefully all the same, even for a while afterwards.
in my case, i had to keep my head bowed, otherwise the wind blew the snow down my collar. it’s a smart move in this country of cobblestones anyway, as if you don’t watch where you’re doing you trip.
but the prison: well, first off, it doesn’t look like a prison. there’s no wall, no barbed wire, no guns. (the guard held up her walkie-talkie and quipped, “there’s my gun.”) inside the buildings are painted as bright as the nursery skool or the folk college. a little room off of the main gym/weightroom area contains a solarium. you have to pay a little to use it, of course.
they make their own food, shop and cook in kitchens just like we have to do in kollegiums. my jaw dropped at the rooms themselves. kenneth, our inmate guide, had a radio shack set up: tv, computer, stereo. when they call them ‘cells’ they laugh.
kenneth’s a smart, tan, well-dressed, well-spoken guy in his late twenties serving a three year sentence for drugs. i was never addicted, he says. neither were the folks he sold to. he never thought he’d get caught but he did, and compared to the closed prison he spent the first bit of his time, this open prison was heaven. here he gets to leave every day to continue studying — which he’d started on the outside, with the intention of being a folk skool teacher. all the same, he’s eager to get out. it’s the little things, he says. you don’t appreciate freedom til it’s taken from you. you have to sleep without your girlfriend, you can’t leave whenever you want.
would he be angry in the prison system in america? we see those programs, he says, laughing. of course if you locked me up in a tiny cell with a huge afro-american and i left after ten years of abuse (a girl and i raise our eyebrows at each other across the table) i’d be angry at the society. but here? no.
he doesn’t look angry. he’s sitting there, calm and sane, bulgy with strength but not it seems with anything repressed, a coffee cup in front of him and an untouched cookie. in two months he’ll be out and living, in fact, in amager. oh that’s where we live, says the girl next to me. we all look at each other. are we scared? is he scary? there isn’t really a gate in this prison. if he wanted to run out and rampage through the town he could. but he doesn’t, and the other inmates don’t either. why should they? i’m wasting my youth in here, he says. i just want to get out, live again.
my teacher asks if there are more questions. i lean in. do the other prisoners look like you? his face crinkles in puzzlement. i explain: first day of class, teacher distributed a sheet of questions, one of which was, what do prisoners look like? everyone laughs, including kenneth. they come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, he says. they look exactly like you and me. a dwarf just got in from copenhagen. everyone laughs again.
reflecting, i don’t think i’m scared. the recidivism rates are lower at open prisons. people are more adjusted to the outside world because they venture in it from time to time; they’re never too isolated from it. right outside the not-too-tall walls it waits, a temptation, sure, but also a dangling carrot. they’re not angry. not defeated, not resigned, not institutionalized. inside i’m still suspicious, even though teacher tells me he’s never been a guide before, and he doesn’t get rewards for saying anything in particular. some guides have been caustic or simmering. i still sort of wonder what criminals look like. i don’t feel convinced yet. i wonder why.