‘This is not what I signed up for’ – Danish prison officers’ attitudes towards more punitive penal policies
| Author | Dorina Damsa |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211068870 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
‘This is not what I signed up
for’–Danish prison officers’
attitudes towards more
punitive penal policies
Dorina Damsa
University of Oslo, Norway
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 limita-
tions set on welfare services available to non-citizen prisoners. Examination of officers’
subjectivities at Vestre prison shows that punitive penal policies have produced an envir-
onment fraught with tensions that affect prison work, institutional culture, and the offi-
cers’professional identity. These findings also raise questions about the shifting nature of
Danish penal power.
Keywords
Denmark, prison officers, prison work, professional identity, punishment
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
Corresponding author:
Dorina Damsa, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, Faculty of Law,University of Oslo, Postboks
6706, St Olavs plass, 0130 OSLO, Norway.
Email: dorina.damsa@jus.uio.no
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(2) 430–448
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745211068870
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
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 implemen-
ted (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 excep-
tional 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 puni-
tive 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’- nego-
tiate, 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 ethno-
graphic 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 mea-
sures: stricter body and cell searches, the penalization of phone possession, and the pro-
hibition 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 implica-
tions 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 pol-
icies of the service are found in the Sentence Enforcement Act,
6
the Programme of
Damsa 431
To continue reading
Request your trial