Analyse

Sociological interest in prisons has traditionally focused on common features with most attention paid to the more restrictive and closed prison regimes (Liebling 2004; Crewe 2007). This has changed over the last 10 years in part be-cause of John Pratt’s publication of his two-part article, “Scandinavian exceptionalism in an era of penal excess”. The shift has led to an interest in the qualitative differences that characterise different kinds of prison regimes and has cre-ated an awareness of the fact that a prison is not just a prison (Crewe 2011; Crewe, Liebling & Hulley 2014). The current article concerns the open prison, a regime that plays a big role in the Nordic countries. In the article, I investigate how inmates experience the transition from closed to open prison regimes, and how it feels to serve time in a regime without prison walls. In addition, I explore the ways in which inmates experience their possibilities for taking part in life outside the walls. The empirical foundation is based on interviews and a six-month period of fieldwork in a Danish open prison.