To see how a humane prison operates, representatives from the Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania - the Helsinki Committee toured Halden Prison in Norway, where inmates enjoy many of the freedoms of everyday life, just not freedom itself.

We started our visit to the Halden Prison with a "prison style" breakfast, in the Conference Hall. Together with the director of the prison and the oldest guard on duty, we had omelettes with vegetables and ham, salad, orange juice and coffee.

The detainees get the same meal. Not like in Romania, where something is scooped from a cauldron. They receive precooked meals, which then they only have to warm up in the kitchens available in each prison section. There is a living area for every 10-12 cells, and it looks like a normal living area in a normal house. If they don’t like the food the penitentiary gives them, they can buy other products in the prison store, which looks like a normal supermarket, with a wide range of products.

Built with a different mindset

Halden is not a typical prison. Not even for Norway. Everybody is telling us that it is not a typical prison. We did see the same quality of the facilities in the Bredtveit women's prison, which we visited a day before. However, Halden was built with a different mindset.

On 30 hectares in a stylish small town in between the fjords of southern Norway, where people go to Sweden by boat for shopping because it is cheaper, some Danish architects put their talent at work. They built something that, if not for the surrounding wall, it would not be a prison at all. It could be a hospital, a school or any other public building, made of wood, glass, steel and stone. The windows have no bars, there are no surveillance towers, no barbed wires and no electric fences. There are also no cameras; not in the hallways, not in the rooms, not in the classes and not in the workshops. The guards do not carry guns.

As a former prison director put it, one cannot be more free than that; only if they would be given the keys to their cells.

They are using an innovative security concept known as "dynamic security": the guards are mixed with the prisoners and, by being permanently there, they manage to prevent potential conflicts by discussing issues with the detainees on the spot. There are 258 detainees at Halden, which makes it the second biggest prison in Norway by prisoner population, and it has 290 employees.

Restrained punishment

The concept applied there is a concept applied all over Norway: prison life must not be different from life outside of the prison; the only difference is the lack of freedom of movement. Punishment must not go beyond what is needed for the detainee to receive help; detainees are prepared for their release from their very first day in prison.

In Romania, the first thing detainees must do when they enter the prison system is to attend a course called "Preparation for life in prison." There are indeed other things as well, but only after that.

Are Høidal, Halden’s director, says that their goal is to make "prisoners work, pay taxes, have a family and motivation." That is why detainees are, from their very first day in the facility, helped to find, through counseling, their motivation. Not all of them find it. Halden is a maximum security prison, where there are murderers, sex offenders, mentally ill people, drug users and petty criminals.

In the news, at a cost

Høidal prides itself on being the best prison in the world, and one where every convict would want to be incarcerated, and 20 percent of its released inmates reoffend - far lower than the average rate in Norway in previous decades, and far lower than current rates in Romania and other countries.

The relapse percentage is a debatable concept, however, because it should be measured five years from release in order to be correct. It should also be taken into account that some of the criminals are foreign citizens; foreign citizens actually make up a third of all inmates in Norway, and they are not counted in the percentage because most of them are expelled back to their country of origins after release.

As Are Høidal admits, that 20 percent is only measures for a period of 2 years after release, and only takes into considerations citizens of the Nordic countries.

Halden is already famous for what is happening there. Michael Madsen and Michael Moore have made documentaries about it; it has been covered in the international press; the guards made, at its inauguration, a video where they sing "We are the world"; delegations come there weekly to learn its secret.

The secret is, of course, in the attitude towards detainees; but it is also in money. It was opened in 2010 at a cost of 250 million dollars, and Høidal admits that today the costs would be double. Not all countries can afford to offer such conditions to their prisoners. At the same time, not all societies are willing to treat their inmates in such a humane way.

One gun per prison

In the 1980s, the things were very different in Norway as well. Are Høidal entered the prison system in 1983, and he remembers that many of the detainees had psychiatric problems back then, prisons were penetrated by drug cartels, inmates were protesting and escaping, three guards were killed and the relapse rate was 70 percent - as it is in Romania today.

Guards don't carry guns, however, and they didn't then. In case of need, they called the police. The director claims that even in the 60s, there was only one gun in each prison, kept in a safe place.

"When I entered the system, I was told that we do not have to talk to prisoners about their problems; our duty was just to guard them. The interaction of guards with prisoners was minimal. Our guards now work, eat with prisoners, they do sports and take walks together. This is the concept of dynamic security. The guard has become, more than a guard, a social worker," says Are Høidal.

Sure, some did not like it; both among detainees and among guards. Even today there are jokes about the high level of closeness between these two categories. In the dining room there is a huge mural where a guard is painted like a giant mosquito. It says that all those finding life unbearable next to a guard, should see how life would be living in a tent full of mosquitoes.

'It takes a village'

The success of this concept is not, however, strictly the work of the justice system; the whole community needs to be involve. The Resolution (the White Paper) adopted in 2008, according to which the justice system has to focus on normality and in rehabilitating inmates, was supported and signed by five ministers: justice, education, culture, health and for local authorities.

Just as it takes a whole village to raise a child, so it takes a whole community to help a former detainee be a good citizen again. In the Norwegian system, for example, the employees such as doctors, priests and teachers do not exclusively work in prisons; they also work in the community, so the community gets gradually used to offenders, and offenders get used to the community.

A similar Paper for the prison system was signed in Romania; it even became law through an emergency ordinance in July 2015. It's called the "National Strategy for Social Reintegration of Detainees, Implemented at a National Level." Its philosophy is, essentially, that there should be collaboration, and all parts of the community should be involved in the reintegration of prisoners. Just that this strategy obviously does not work. Nobody knows, at least officially, why.

Prisoners stay active

In Halden, as in any other prison in Norway, prisoners cannot just hang out in rooms and in front of the TV, although they have everything they need in their 12-square-meter cells. They are obliged to choose between work and school. They can make various courses, from creativity courses to school chemistry, physics and philosophy courses; they can also choose to specialize in one of the seven occupational courses offered, with a degree awarded, in the prison, including carpentry, car service, mechanics and metalworking. They can also choose to learn how to play an instrument in one of the three recording studios in the prison.

When we entered the studio, two detainees dressed like old rockers were working on one of the songs for their first album. Their band is called Criminal Records and they were laughing when we told them they do not look like detainees. "Well then let’s pretend that we are not," replied one of them, who added that he has to stay in prison "for three more albums."

'Still a prison'

As the director points out from time to time, Halden is still a prison. There are inmates who become angry and sometimes they need to be isolated. But even the spaces where detainees take walks are different. They have drawings on the walls and views to the huge garden surrounding the prison buildings. A drawing with an inmate who throws the ball from the chain that binds his legs is a sort of trademark of the prison. It's printed on various promotional materials made by the prisoners, in the graphic studio, and sold in the Red Cross shop in the city.

In the hallway of the prison, on the notice board of the Office for reintegration, there is an A3 poster which promotes a penitentiary that the Norwegians have rented in the Netherlands. "Holiday in Holland," jokes the director, while also saying that the prisoners who are eligible to be transferred to the Netherlands must know some English. This proved to be a problem for many of the foreign detainees.

Are Høidal wraped up the presentation of his "kingdom" without having said anything reprehensible about Halden Prison. During the walk we spoke with several detainees, even with a Romanian one. They have all praised the prison, except an Albanian one who complained, whispering that it is all a facade managed by the PR department that make Halden famous; he said that life in prison remains hard.

The director admitted that Halden is still a prison, but it's the best of what society can provide to offenders now, and it will be there for the next hundred years, if humanity cannot by then find another way to forgive those who make mistakes.