Can Prisons be Humane? with Dr. Jordan Hyatt

Today's episode features Dr. Jordan Hyatt, an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Justice Studies at Drexel University, where he also sits as director of the Center for Public Policy. 

 In this episode we discuss:

• a pilot program in a Pennsylvania prison that is attempting to emulate the Scandinavian prison model
• how the prison environment impacts correctional officers
• whether it's possible for prisons to be humane places

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Transcript

Speaker 0    00:00:01    I mean, there's that often cited statistic that the average lifespan of a correctional officer is about 59 years, significantly less than general population. And so everybody on the staff side goes into this project with that kind of in the back of their mind. So we want to try and see how changing the climate, changing the way that people interact, at least on this housing unit, may be beneficial overall.  
Speaker 1    00:00:26    Please listen carefully.  
Speaker 3    00:00:31    Welcome to Critical Conversations. I'm Abbie Henson, your host and an assistant professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. This podcast is a space to learn from change makers and experts on racial, social, and criminal legal issues, and to inspire further dialogue with friends, family, and community in order to impact culture and ultimately achieve equity and justice for all. I hope you enjoy being part of these critical conversations. Now let's get into it. Today's guest is Dr. Jordan Hyatt, an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Justice Studies at Drexel University, where he also sits as the director of the Center for Public Policy. Have you heard the last podcast episode? You're now familiar with the Norwegian prison model? Today's episode describes a pilot study that Jordan is leading where he has implemented Norwegian Carceral values and designs in a prison right outside of Philadelphia.  
Speaker 3    00:01:33    The unit is called Little Scandinavia, and it is fascinating to hear of such innovation taking place in a United States prison. I hope that you enjoy this episode, and if you do, I really hope that you leave a review because it's one of the best ways to enhance the growth of this podcast. And if anything comes up that you would like further discussion on, please email cc office hours@gmail.com. And don't forget to check out the breakdowns that Joan and I do in our YouTube series, office Hours. The link can be found in the show notes. Okay, let's get into it. What is little Scandinavia? What exactly was it inspired  
Speaker 0    00:02:13    By? So the project as a whole has two parts. So the first part of the project was really focused on figuring out whether or not it was possible to empower frontline correctional officers to change the way that they think about prison, both for them and for the people who are incarcerated. And the way that this particular project kind of brings that out is by taking them to Scandinavia, kind of embedding them at the front lines of a very different correctional context, and then working with them to see what they would want to change. And then from there it was about bringing those ideas into reality and understanding what that means for both the people who live on this unit and the people who work on this particular unit.  
Speaker 3    00:02:57    How was that? Like how many officers were you able to bring over there and what was their experience like? What was the kind of feedback you were hearing?  
Speaker 0    00:03:05    So the project began really in its current iteration in about 2017 where Ado, who was then the governor of Halden Prison in Norway, came to S C I I Chester, located just outside of Philadelphia to give a talk about his work and the Norwegian prison system and how different it was than what we have here in Pennsylvania. And he was joined on that panel by then Secretary of Corrections, John Wetzel, who spoke about the Pennsylvania context. And after that kind of beginning collaboration, we were able to put together a group of American and Scandinavian researchers, some of us who had already been working together on other projects and kind of pitched the idea of doing something in that space to the secretary. And we made the same kind of pitch to the correctional leaders in Norway and Sweden, uh, and Denmark as well. And then by the summer of 2019, we were able to bring a group of about 10 correctional officers and leaders from S C I Chester, uh, as well as staff from the central office of the statewide managers to Scandinavia to learn and experience firsthand what that particular system was like.  
Speaker 0    00:04:14    So the first week of the program, the correctional officers and the leaders spent the entire time together traveling around Norway to halfway houses, juvenile detention facilities, to Halden Prison, to the University college where the correctional officers do their education, really trying to understand like the, the whole landscape of what the Norwegian Correctional System was like and how they do their jobs from the practical stuff to the philosophical stuff. After that, the group split in half. So the officers went to work in three prisons in the greater Oell area, where each was paired with a mentor officer and they basically followed them around. They did what they did, they saw what they saw, they ate what they ate, and they learned what they learned both in special trainings for the Americans and also in the regular things were happening in each of those facilities. Over the course of the time that they were there, the leaders on the other hand were sent to Sweden and to Denmark to see different aspects of Scandinavian corrections.  
Speaker 0    00:05:11    They were a little bit less represented in the Norwegian system. So in Sweden they went to Kuah Prison, uh, which is an older maximum security facility in Sweden that is responsible for housing some of the most serious, uh, individuals that they have within their system. And there the goal was understanding how do you implement these principles of humanity in an environment that is not new, that is not custom designed for the way that the Norwegians were doing. And to be clear, they have older facilities as well in Norway, but Kumala we felt really encapsulated that particular dynamic. And in Denmark they went to a prison called Amark where they learned about kind of special, special programs, special trainings, specifically focused on gang violence reduction and some imprison training program. So when that kind of exchange concluded in the end of the summer of 2019, the whole group returned back home to Pennsylvania and really undertook the hard work, right?  
Speaker 0    00:06:09    They had to try and understand both what they had learned, how it could be adapted and made to fit in the very different environment in Pennsylvania. So for them, that looked like a series of workshops where they focused on kind of structural design and planning and figuring out how to implement some aspects of what they had seen in a very different building. And the, the lionshare of the work really focused on the policies, right? How did they redefine the role of a correctional officer? How did they reconceptualize the role of an incarcerated person who they decided to call residents?  
Speaker 3    00:06:43    Did the individuals who live there or who are housed there, did they have any input in being called residents?  
Speaker 0    00:06:52    I don't remember when that decision was made, whether it was after the, the first six guys were selected or not. But it was, it was a conscious effort to move away from inmate prisoner convict to a lesser extent, but the more stigmatizing language that exists within the prison. And I think the language is a complicated and very powerful aspect of the experience of incarceration. But that may evolve over time too.  
Speaker 3    00:07:19    Yeah. Cause I have this very distinct memory. I was working at S e I Phoenix and I was working there for like six years working as a evaluator for a prison based fatherhood program. And I was walking outside with one of the men. He was like, oh yeah, that's my block. And I was like, oh, that's where you live. And he was like, whoa, that's not where I live. That's where I stay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like he was very like, this is not my home. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, this is not like, I am not choosing this to be like my living space. I am being forced to be here. And I remember being like, oh, I like, I gotta come correct <laugh>. And I was just when thinking about the idea of resident, even though the intention to move beyond these kind of more dehumanizing terms of inmate prisoner.  
Speaker 0    00:08:19    Yeah. So they were able to work with designers, with policymakers from other jurisdictions architects. They heard from academics from the United States and abroad about how they might be able to do that. And they worked with the leaders in both their facility and in the D O C overall to move closer and closer towards their ideal. That process kind of went on for several months leading up to the spring of 2020 when the first six men moved onto the unit, all of them were sentenced to life in prison and they were selected using a lottery to become the first pilot group of folks on that unit. And they were charged with not only kind of kicking the tires on what had been done, but also taking ownership over mentoring programs and rules of operations for the kitchen. Those kinds of things that were developed in coordination with the, the staff who had been over to Scandinavia.  
Speaker 0    00:09:14    Of course, as we know, spring of 2020 kind of everything went a little bit of haywire. And so there was a bit of a gap. Um, but then the, the full group returned to the full group of officers returned to Sweden in the spring of 22, uh, to have a refresher program working with the Swedish prison and Probation Service. Uh, there were some new officers on the team. And so it was to kinda revisit those Scandinavian principles again in a different context than they had seen in Norway. Uh, but again, they went to the training academy, they went to the national headquarters, they visited Komala again and other facilities to see how these principles were being implemented. And that of course, led up to the opening of the unit in May of 2022 when the first 30 additional men were randomly selected with a lottery and moved on to the unit. And then the unit was filled up earlier this year, uh, in October. And now it's operating at full strength for the first time in its lifespan.  
Speaker 3    00:10:11    And that's with 60, right?  
Speaker 0    00:10:13    64, yeah.  
Speaker 3    00:10:15    64. And so with those original six, uh, I know you said it was a lottery. Did they all, did the six just happen to have life sentences or did you specifically choose to do a lottery of individuals who had life sentences?  
Speaker 0    00:10:32    So the lottery was designed so that it was as fair as possible. So everybody in the facility who meets the criteria was eligible to be moved to the unit. It's not an honor block, it's a regular housing unit with a very different characteristic. But it's also designed in a way that the population of the little Scandinavia unit really mirrors the population of the facility as a whole with regard to how much time people have left on their sentence. So Pennsylvania is an indeterminate sentencing system. So you never really know when you're going to get out, but you know when your minimum sentence date is, when it's possible for you to be paroled out. So the, the way the selection was done is stratified so that there are some people who have short mins or a little bit of time left, some people have a little bit longer, some folks have longer than that. And then the lifers are kind of the, the tip of that pyramid. And they were picked first because of their tenure in the institution. Some of them are certified peer specialists, so they have special skills in mentoring and training. And they were ones who had demonstrated, uh, an aptitude for kind of working on programs like this. So it was an intentional selection, but part of a broader effort to make sure that the unit selection was most fair and representative.  
Speaker 3    00:11:46    You said it's not an honor block, so it's pretty representative of the general population in the prison. Can you speak to if there are any eligibility criteria that would disallow an individual from participating?  
Speaker 0    00:11:58    So the biggest criteria really has to do with the amount of time they have left on their sentence. Again, to meet that goal, there aren't any restrictions based on conviction offense or anything like that. But people did have to have a recent history free of serious misconducts drug issues and things like that. But otherwise, any individual who was able to move to the unit was potentially able to be selected. Folks who were in residential treatment, for example, couldn't leave that. And so were not eligible at that moment, but as soon as they finish, they're able to rejoin that pool. And as people leave the unit, as they're paroled out, then they'll be replaced with new folks, uh, from the facility as well.  
Speaker 3    00:12:36    What does this look like? What in its design, what makes it unique?  
Speaker 0    00:12:41    So the biggest and most, I think, important aspect of, of the unit is the staff and what they bring to this environment. And they've also received a range of trainings that are offered within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, but often aren't given to all of the frontline officers on any given unit. So that includes things like motivational interviewing. They've done extensive work on a program called Yield Theory, um, and a number of other kind of conflict resolution and mediation trainings that the D O C uses kind of generally. But again, never on a unit like that. The other big piece is just the ratio of staff to incarcerated people in this facility. In many facilities in Pennsylvania, you can have one or two officers to 128 incarcerated men. On this unit, you're looking at any given time, three or four staff to 64 incarcerated men on that unit enemy one time.  
Speaker 0    00:13:36    So a fundamental shift. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> still a far cry from the almost one to one that you might find in some facilities in Scandinavia, but moving more meaningfully away from where we typically find things here in the United States. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and those officers, because there are more of them are asked to do more with the residents on the unit. So they base this off of the contact officer model that you'll see in Norway and Sweden where not only are they responsible for the kind of static security elements, making sure the unit is safe, but they're also responsible for what they would call dynamic security. So getting to know the residents of the unit, understanding what their needs are, what their concerns are, and taking a more active role in their reentry. On the little Scandinavia unit, that means being involved with the counselor and helping prepare reports, getting people ready for programming and potentially parole. And it also means working with them on a number of different kind of structured and semi-structured activities to build a culture and a community. But I think most candidly, it means getting to know them as people and sitting down with them in a kind of controlled and structured way, but communicating not only as a staff member and a resident, but as people and leveraging that connection in a way that will hopefully create a more holistic climate and one that can also be safe.  
Speaker 3    00:14:59    I know what's unique in a lot of ways to hold in prison and some of the other prisons is that individuals who are incarcerated there are able to wear their own clothes and they're able to walk freely around the unit and they have their own room that's designed in a way that feels more light and humanizing in terms of what they're able to have in there. Are those elements seen in the little Scandinavia unit or is it really mostly about the relationship with the staff?  
Speaker 0    00:15:30    So this started as a regular housing unit. It wasn't custom-built like the facilities in, in Scandinavia are. So the big pieces of the unit exist as they were before, right there, there are 64 cells on this unit. There are two tiers, uh, and there's a very standard kind of L-shaped design. But within those parameters, the officers reconceptualized, how some of the things look and where some things were in order to get closer to what they had seen abroad. So the biggest thing you would notice when you walk onto the unit first is that it is brighter, but they couldn't create new windows. So they did it by selecting new colors, by putting in sound dampening panels around to create an environment that was a little bit less chaotic than you would find. Um, in that common area. Uh, instead of kind of the standard table and chairs that you would find on other housing units, you would see custom design furniture that's very kind of Nordic inspired.  
Speaker 0    00:16:31    There was made specifically for the unit in a layout that is set up to encourage communication. So where there used to be kind of a central desk where this single officer would stand and look at everybody all at once from a kind of a panopticon kind of a perspective. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that desk has been removed and replaced with a long table with a rather large fish, fish tank on it, surrounded by more comfortable chairs and small tables, again, designed to create an area for conversation where the officers used to stand at that central table. They've actually moved all of that into an office for them that they call the bubble, where they have access to their computers that they use to run the facility, but also access the information that they might need in order to do that contact officer work with the people to whom they are assigned.  
Speaker 0    00:17:23    And of course when you walk in there, this probably the thing that draws people's eye the most is the kitchen. So there's a full commercial kitchen in what used to be a storeroom. There are ovens and microwaves and all the things that you need, uh, large refrigerators as well that the residents of the unit are allowed to cook their own food, uh, and eat the food that they prepare, as well as work with staff to learn how to prepare food if they don't know or learn new recipes or just create a sense of community. Cuz food certainly does bring people together. The other kind of structural stuff is designed to bring the residents and staff on the unit a little bit closer to nature, which is an important theme in many, uh, Scandinavian prisons, especially, uh, in Norway. Halden Prison for example, has a forest in the middle of the, the campus that people generally kind of notice very quickly cuz it's really unique.  
Speaker 0    00:18:19    And obviously they're not building a forest inside of S C I Chester, but they did build planter boxes and have plants running around the perimeter of the second tier. The plants are doing quite well mm-hmm. <affirmative> and they also have a landscaped yard that is kind of designed to allow people to not spend their time in a concrete square, but rather have a little bit more access to plants in nature and things like that as well. And of course the men all have single cells. So what used to be 128 men in 64 cells is now 64 men in 64 cells. So the officers kind of reconceptualize the furniture that would go in that space as well. So now there are lockers with wood veneers and single bunks and chairs that are not kind of bolted to the desk, but rather are more like what you might find in a regular kind of office space or something like that.  
Speaker 3    00:19:13    How many total officers work in this unit?  
Speaker 0    00:19:16    So they, they rotate on several shifts. So there are uh, about 10 to 12 officers who are trained at any given time to work on the unit, but there are three or four on the unit at any given time.  
Speaker 3    00:19:28    Okay. And how many officers work at S C I Chester in total?  
Speaker 0    00:19:33    A few hundred. I don't know the exact number. I can find that up  
Speaker 3    00:19:36    For you. So do those 12 feel, you know, ostracized in some way or is there kind of this ongoing internal battle between maybe the philosophies and frameworks that the general guards are working with versus what they've been exposed to and what they're trying to cultivate?  
Speaker 0    00:19:57    I think that anytime you try and implement a massive change on, you know, any kind of program, there's going to be people who are supportive and there are going to be people who are resistant. Corrections as a whole hasn't really changed all that much over the last 200 years and this is a very different way of doing things both within Pennsylvania and in the United States. And so I think you see that playing out in the facility as well. There are some who are supportive, there are some who are skeptical and there are some who just think that this is not the right way to be dealing with this particular population in this particular moment.  
Speaker 3    00:20:34    And so when you say this particular population in this particular moment, can we be explicit? Who are they talking about and what is the moment?  
Speaker 0    00:20:44    So there are people not only in corrections, but in American society generally, who believe that prison is part of the punishment and that it is not the role of prison to do anything more than incapacitate. And there are people who see this as a zero sum game, right? Resources spent on incarcerated people are resources that are not being spent on people who haven't committed crime. But, you know, there, the other school thought is of course that it is the role of prisons to prepare incarcerated people to return to the community, as the Norwegians would say, to become people's neighbors. And so you can't really do that in an austere or punitive environment, but rather you have to find a way to kind of support people and help them remedy the deficits that got them into prison in the first place. And this project kind of sits on that side of the continuum, finding ways to integrate normality and a bit more humanity into what it is generally a very difficult environment to make progress towards rehabilitative goals.  
Speaker 3    00:21:46    I'm gonna ask a similar question that I just stood up. The guards there are 64 men inside. How many individuals are incarcerated in S C i Chester?  
Speaker 0    00:21:54    So s c i Chester holds about 1,190 people or so. So this unit is just a small piece of a much larger institution, but it operates very differently than the rest of that institution.  
Speaker 3    00:22:08    Has there been kind of a change in the other folks who aren't getting in but maybe want to get in or are feeling some type of way that they're not included in this or they want to be and there's no space for them? How, how are you navigating or how is the prison navigating that kind of conflict?  
Speaker 0    00:22:31    So I think communicating how the selection process works was an important piece in helping the community at Chester understand what the, what the unit was about. And so making sure that people understood that it was a lottery, you could opt in or you could opt out, and that everybody who met the criteria would have a chance was important. And I think, you know, after having had two rounds of this selection, I think people see that it's not just the, you know, the frequent flyers or the best behaved folks or anything like that. It is very much a representation of the general population in that facility, for better or for worse. Right. There are some people who think that this is an honor block without people who haven't earned their way onto it. And there are others, again who see this as an opportunity to change the way that general population housing could be thought about in a facility like this.  
Speaker 3    00:23:22    How did you communicate what was going on to the rest of the population?  
Speaker 0    00:23:27    So fortunately there's a, there's a TV system that broadcasts both within the, the cells and to kind of TV screens throughout the institution. So that is used to kind of make announcements of all kinds, including the ones about this project. And in between the, the first and second selection wave, the unit itself, the, the residents with support of some of the staff produced a newsletter about what the project was and what the unit was like, and that was distributed around the institution as well. So there are kinda ongoing efforts to communicate this project's goals and, and needs and things like that. Within that environment,  
Speaker 3    00:24:03    The 64 that are housed in this unit, are they interacting with the rest of the general population at all or are they now only interacting with the 64 men who are in this unit?  
Speaker 0    00:24:16    So it, it's still just a housing unit, right? It's not a self-contained jail. And so the individuals who live on little Scandinavia still go into the rest of the facility for education, for programming, for visiting, all those kinds of things. Currently, the kind of large mess hall is closed. This is a kind of a covid accommodation. So they get their food delivered to the unit no matter where they live. So that particular piece of the interaction is done. Some of them take their yard time in the main yard, they have the, the other yard to use at times as well. So there is some interacting between the, the men living on little Scandinavia and the rest of the population of the facility. But there's a, a gate in front of this particular unit that makes sure that all the little Scandinavia specific things. So the, the things that relate to the, the programming and the kitchen and stuff like that, that stays on the little Scandinavia side to limit the amount of crossover between kinda the project and the rest of the facility as a whole.  
Speaker 3    00:25:16    Is the goal to ultimately turn all of s c I Chester into a medium size Scandinavia? Like, is the goal to then train all of the officers, the hundreds of officers in this philosophy? Is it to have everyone individually housed and to have access to this kitchen and the kinds of programming? What is the kind of long-term goal here?  
Speaker 0    00:25:43    So this project is a collaboration between the research folks. So myself, my colleagues at the University of Oslo, uh, sun Anderson is the lead there, uh, and the departments of correction in Pennsylvania and Norway and in Sweden. So those are questions really that the, the, the corrections folks would have to answer. You know, the goal of this project was first to see whether it was possible and now it is to see what it means, right? For the, for this little unit where we go from here is a policy decision made well above my head, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>, we can show what this means, but people have to decide what they want the prisons to look like. You know, there are plenty of things that one could take from this particular effort to build a slightly more humane environment inside of a prison and roll them out in other places, right?  
Speaker 0    00:26:31    It doesn't have to be a mini little Scandinavia, but rather maybe there are policies or ways of interacting or trainings or access to services or resources that are on little Scandinavia that could be adopted piecemeal throughout the rest of the departments of correction. Maybe little Scandinavia could become a model for a transitional housing unit or a re-entry facility helping people bridge prison life into the community using this kind of experience as gap filler. There are lots of different ways that the lessons of this project, depending on how it goes, could be used. But we're still only in the first year of the evaluation, there's plenty more time to figure out what comes next.  
Speaker 3    00:27:13    So what are you evaluating, like what is the goal for these men in particular, the 64, how are you measuring that success and how are you defining success?  
Speaker 0    00:27:24    So the evaluation focuses on kind of three primary outcomes. So the first is prison climate, which we measure using a standardized instrument called the prison climate questionnaire. It was developed at the University of Liden and we've adapted it for use here. We also look at behavior, so primarily administrative data, looking at misconducts. Um, and then in the long term, as most, uh, correctional evaluations do, we'll look at at recidivism. So when enough people have left the unit, how do they fare when they're returned to the community?  
Speaker 3    00:27:57    I always see that as a really problematic measure since it truly has very little to do with the actual experience in prison. Yes, it has much more to do with the opportunities and resources in the community, whether the individual has a hypervigilant parole officer mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, if they live in a hyper surveilled community by the police. So I always really struggle when evaluations are looking primarily at recidivism cuz it just seems like a silly measure when it's really a community based based measure to evaluate a prison based experience. So I'm wondering if you are also looking at kind of the wellbeing of individuals and their self-perceptions, whether they feel more human, whether they feel more sense of pride in who they are because they haven't been treated like dog shit, <laugh>, you know, like is there, i, is there some other measure of wellness that you might be taking?  
Speaker 0    00:29:06    So, absolutely. So we have some really, really great qualitative researchers on our team, uh, including Borowitz from, uh, sun Buffalo who speak with the staff and the residents on the unit about exactly those kinds of issues, right? How they experience their time in prison on little Scandinavia and how that may be different than kind of the standard conditions of confinement. I think you're absolutely right that asking a prison based program to change community-based behaviors is a heavy lift and an unrealistic expectation, but it's also the language that policy makers and decision makers want to hear. So whether we think it's the right measure or not, if we don't at least try, we don't have an opportunity to push the future conversation, especially in an evidence-based world towards meaningful prison reform. But I think that your sense that there's a big gap between prison based rehabilitation and community-based behaviors, especially during that difficult reentry period. It is, right? But I think we also live in an evaluative space where we have to kind of develop the data and the evidence on these kinds of programs, especially really innovative pilot ones. Otherwise we're not gonna get a chance to do kind of version two and version three and move that needle hopefully towards more effective community reintegration, more humane caral conditions. Kinda the, the broader package of reform that we think about in this, in this space.  
Speaker 3    00:30:34    Yeah, I think the other thing that's really important too is that so often, you know, you discussed how there are people in the Department of Corrections as well as the general public who think that giving such a luxurious experience is problematic for individuals who have committed crimes or who we've assume have committed crimes. Because I think the reality is that there are people in prison who haven't actually committed a crime. But one of the things that I think is so often forgotten and that it seems like you're really engaging with in this research is that the kind of environment that is traditional within prisons is extremely stressful for staff, right? And so I think that often we for, we forget about staff wellbeing mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so if you're not only kind of, I think people romanticize this idea of what we're doing for the incarcerated individuals without actually thinking as well as how this might impact staff. And it's probably the people who would have that perspective on incarcerated individuals who would be the most supportive of staff. It's important to think about, okay, if you take this little Scandinavia model where there is more human interaction and the individuals who are working on the unit feel as though they have more power and input and impact on those around them in a positive way, does that actually cultivate a better sense of self for the staff as well?  
Speaker 0    00:32:13    Yeah, the staff wellbeing angle of this project is really important and it's something we've explored with regard to how the project officers conceptualize their role and what it means for them, but also comparing that to how Scandinavian officers feel about those same work obligations. It's certainly not the case that being an officer in little Scandinavian is easier because there are fewer men because they're asked to do more, you know, they have paperwork and all of the things that fall under the umbrella of dynamic security to do that a regular correctional officer doesn't have to do. So it's not that it's easier, but I think you're right that it's different. Right. And how does changing kind of the temperature and the tone and the climate of that unit impact that community? I mean, we saw this during the pandemic where what happened to the correctional staff in terms of infection rates and mortality also happened to the incarcerated people because they live in a very, they live and work in a very kind of sealed off bubble for most of their time, right?  
Speaker 0    00:33:12    And so understanding that things that are beneficial for the climate as a whole can be beneficial for those two groups that we don't generally think of as interrelated, even though pragmatically they're very much connected. So the project kind of tries to do those things together and we collect almost as much data on the staff as we do on the residents of the unit. I mean, there's that often cited statistic that the average lifespan of a correctional officer is about 59 years, significantly less than general population. And so everybody on the staff side goes into this project with that kind of in the back of their mind. So we want to try and see how changing the climate, changing the way that people interact, at least on this housing unit, may be beneficial overall.  
Speaker 3    00:33:59    Yeah. I'm curious too, like when the staff kind of were able to examine the environment, like the physical environment of the unit from this new set of eyes, if they were looking at it and they were like, oh wow, like this is really fucked up <laugh>, you know, like, oh wait, the things that we thought were so normal and were so just indoctrinated into our view of normalcy is actually mm-hmm. <affirmative> really problematic.  
Speaker 0    00:34:32    Yeah. I mean, look, if the only thing you ever know is, you know, one way of doing things, it's hard to find even a sense of what different might look like. It's why we on this program and others have gone all the way to northern Europe in order to let people walk through a facility or a housing unit or you know, a juvenile facility or something like that, that's different. You have to look really outside what your kind of environment is in order to challenge your assumption of what's possible, right? Right. It's not hard to conceptualize, you know, doing something Scandinavian in the United States, there's a laundry list of people who've gone to Scandinavian and said, wow, this is really cool. We should definitely do this at home. I think what SATs this effort and others like it apart is that these officers and this particular facility has taken that leap, right?  
Speaker 0    00:35:23    They've taken a sledgehammer to the double box, you know, they've destroyed the desk, they've rebuilt the office, they've put a kitchen inside of a housing unit, right? These are things that require not only a leap of faith, but a belief that it is possible to do something different. And it might work and it might not work, but there is that implicit recognition that something has to change for the staff and for the residents of the, of the unit because it's just not working right? Higher re citizen rates, low life expectancy on either side of that equation. The prison environment isn't working for the people who spend their time in there. If you think about them in those terms, they work for incapacitation, but that's really about it. And so this project is about pushing that boundary on both sides, right? For staff and for the residents of the unit just to see if it's possible, right? And now that we've seen that it's possible, what does it mean?  
Speaker 3    00:36:17    Yeah. I think that's one of the most ironic things is like if you did a pure evaluation of any prison, it would deeply fail. You know, like if we look at prisons on a national scale, if we're at a 65 to 70% recidivism rate and we're using recidivism as as a measure of success, if we were pulling that stat as this like innovative pilot program that we're testing that will get squashed immediately, you know, like that would, no one would wanna fund that. And yet we funnel millions and billions of dollars into our prison systems in America that don't work. And, and I think that that's really the question that you all seem to be asking or raising is what does it look like to work? What, what, what does it mean for prisons to work or not work? What is the intention of the prison?  
Speaker 3    00:37:17    And, um, I, I'm pretty explicit that I'm an abolitionist in all the ways. And so when I was speaking with Hoyle, I was thinking as he was speaking, I was like, you know, I feel like this Scandinavian model could really actually be integrated into the abolitionist agenda where we know that there are certain individuals who are a threat, an immediate threat to themselves or others, or who need deep resources and, uh, counseling and um, you know, all of these different treatments. And so what kind of facility, what kind of space can be set up for those individuals specifically? And then thinking about it being this kind of humanizing and deeply integrated with staff model, um, I think that's something that's really interesting. And as you were saying, kind of thinking about how this philosophy can be placed in reentry services or be placed even in policing. Like if we're gonna have these systems as we're like trying to pull them apart, <laugh>, if in the meantime can we transfer this humanizing philosophy to these other more punitive, dehumanizing entities in order to then cultivate more public safety? Because what we know is that punitiveness and dehumanization does not afford increased security.  
Speaker 0    00:38:54    But I think you have to think about why we have prisons, right? On one hand, they don't work for reducing recidivism, but that's not actually the like guiding philosophical point of American prisons, right? They exist in a retributive way to incapacity people. So 100% of people in prison don't commit new crimes in the community for the entire time that they're in prison. So in that way, they work really well, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So the shift there is to, you know, the Scandinavia model where they have that purpose, but they are also intended to be re rehabilitative in a kind of meaningful way, right? If you talk to the folks in Norway, they'll tell you in Sweden as well, you know, Reva rehabilitation begins on their first day, right? It's not something you do to prepare to for release, but it's something that's built into much of that system, including the relationship with staff, right?  
Speaker 0    00:39:45    So there you can judge a system based on recidivism because that's what it exists to do here. That's not what it's for. And so it's yet another reason why judging a prison system or a prison program by its impact on recidivism is probably not the most kind of appropriate metric. So this effort is trying to bring those two things together, right? It is still as incapacitated as in any other prison, but within that environment, what pieces can you move? What changes can you make that may have an impact on both the experience of being in that temporal and physical space, right? For staff and the incarcerated people, but also maybe does that bleed over into the, the community? But I think that we could make a, a really reasonable argument, at least I would think so, that this is something you can do inside of prisons, that even if it doesn't impact recidivism, it makes things more kind of balanced within that environment.  
Speaker 0    00:40:48    So it's at least not reductive, right? It's not going to make people who live and work there worse off than when they came in. You know, some of the climate data we're seeing, you know, the levels of stress and fear and kind of things that we know negatively impact people's mental health in the short and the long term, right? Maybe there are places where changes can be made on those parameters such that incarceration as a whole can be part of a more unified system to solving these broader social problems, right? Prison isn't gonna solve rec recidivism, but maybe it doesn't have to undermine the work that people are trying to do, recognizing, especially in, uh, certain communities and certain places because of policies going back decades that, you know, people cycle in and out of prison right there. There has to be a way to change that. And while most of the burden will fall on the community, this may be a way for the kind of carceral side of things to pick up some of that weight as well, at least changing the kind of experience during that time.  
Speaker 3    00:41:51    Mm. Do you have any preliminary data?  
Speaker 0    00:41:55    So not yet. We have some findings that we've kind of shared descriptively about how the unit is different compared to the standard conditions of confinement, again, using that P C Q instrument, but we're not far enough along to be able to say much more because people really need to spend time in this environment and the environment needs to develop organically. Little Scandinavia is a community that evolves along with the needs and wants of the staff and the residents and the kind of environment inside of that facility. So it's still too early to tell whether or not it, you know, makes a meaningful impact on recidivism or misconduct. But what we're seeing overall, uh, in the early data at least, are that there are meaningful differences, we think, in the way that the residents perceive their relationships with the staff and as well as how they kind of see the environment, right? The access to food, the access to autonomy, uh, the opportunity to be in an environment that is a little less chaotic, a little bit greener, a little bit quieter, these kinds of things. So in that way we're seeing some indicia that the unit, at least prima fascia is accomplishing what it intended to do, how that plays out over time and what that means long term. I think that's still an open question.  
Speaker 3    00:43:10    You know, I don't know if you have the numbers on how many of the 64 have been incarcerated prior to this current incarceration or in carceral period, but there are expectations of what prison is gonna be like. And especially if you've been there before, it may be less intimidating to go back because you have an idea of what it'll be like. But now you're then in this new situation where you're having to learn everything from scratch, even if you haven't gone through a full carceral period prior to this, if you're pulling people from general population, they've likely had some idea of what general population is and they've become r you know, routinized in whatever they're doing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so now they're having to do this on learning as well.  
Speaker 0    00:43:54    I mean, prisons are places that function on routines and consistency both on kinda a practical level and an and an ideological level. And so this is very disruptive, you know, everybody, as you said, came from general populations. So whether or not it was their first period of incarceration or not, they'll experienced something. These aren't people who showed up at the unit on their first day in prison, so they had to move, right? They had routines, they had things that were disrupted by that transition. And it's something that will require adaptation. One of the benefits of being a smaller community and having a contact officer assigned to you and maybe a life or mentor or something like that is there are, are more resources not only just in the facility but within the housing unit to help people through those challenges and maybe others like that.  
Speaker 3    00:44:38    How long is this study?  
Speaker 0    00:44:41    So we're looking about two years out now for enough people based on historical release rates to power the recidivism study. And we'll get data on climate regularly over time and those results will come out sooner. And how long this runs for is a function of, you know, the same factors that guide any kind of correction, evaluation, you know, funding, support of the leadership, you know, political wins. There's, there are a lot of moving pieces on this one as well.  
Speaker 3    00:45:07    Well, I'm excited to keep my eyes on it and see how it goes and I hope that it's beneficial for everyone who is involved.  
Speaker 0    00:45:18    I, I hope so too. And where we go from here will be a really exciting and I think interesting kind of journey to follow.  
Speaker 3    00:45:24    Thank you so much for speaking with me today.  
Speaker 0    00:45:26    No problem. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.  
Speaker 3    00:45:30    Thank you so much for joining me in my critical conversation with Dr. Jordan Hyatt. I hope that you found it as interesting as I did. It brings up a lot of questions for me about the purpose of prison and how reform efforts such as this fit with or challenge the abolitionist agenda. I'm really curious your thoughts, so please email cc office hours gmail.com with any feedback and be sure to check out Juwan and my breakdown on YouTube. You can see the link in the show notes. Please review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know, and I'll catch you next time.