off in a moment to see gosford park — yes, again; i said from the start i’d have to see it more than once. cranky miserable weather outside, just the perfect kind to escape. this morning i woke up after a few hours sleep on my makeshift (god i love that word) alburtsland bed on andrea’s floor to meet my class and walk two minutes to the most secure prison in denmark. as you’ll perhaps recall, my crime class visited an open prison last week in jyderup.
well, from the outside, this one is different. there are walls for one thing. no barbed wire. a gate you have to pass through, security personnel. our guide, a nondescript blond guard, appears wearing a uniform that a catholic skoolboy would wear, enough to distinguish him but not to instill fear or knee-jerk respect for authority. no gun. there are no guns within the prison, or tasers, or clubs. some sticks and tear gas. that’s it. in fact the most dangerous weapons in the prison are the knives on the counter of the kitchens where the inmates cook one meal a day. we have to give them knives, he shrugs, if we want them to cook; anyway if they wanted to stab each other they’d find a way, with or without them.
true nuff. same policy holds for the security of the prison in general. each cell is a little room with a door, no bars or anything; and the lowest wall in the complex, by the field where the inmates can hang out during specified time outside, is hardly intimidating. we shall not create a jail that’s inescapable, he says, and whether he means cannot or will not i don’t know. about one prisoner escapes a year and nearly all of them are found. this country’s just too small to hide in.
granted i don’t know much about the american system (teach me!) but my impression is that there’s an astronomical difference between the treatment of prisoners and the philosophy behind the treatment. there’s a respect between the prisoners and the guards here and not too much difference between them. the punishment is less harsh if you are found with hash within this danish maximum security prison than it is at all back home. plainclothed burly men don’t sit in cages; they have tvs in their rooms, dvd players if they can afford them. they work 8 — 3 for about a dollar an hour.
the inmate who talks to us at the end is actually left unsupervised for a few minutes. he’s in there for trafficking hash. how much? two tons, he shrugs. he seems very open, says he doesn’t blame society or his mother, isn’t mad at the state, and won’t return to prison cuz it’s a waste of time. after some muttering someone asks, What about rape in the prison? rape?, he echoes, looking confused. there’s no rape; there’re no girls here.
when they get the feelin’, apparently, they call hookers. they’re allowed time with visitors.
on the way out, i notice butterfly stencils on the wall. i can’t tell, and i still don’t know, whether they’re ironic.