Dynamic Security or Corruption of Authority?

Abstract

Abstract “Dynamic security” and “normalization” are important principles in Scandinavian prison systems where they are supported in penal law and promoted in key policy papers and administrative guidelines. In a sense, this means that central aspects of what Sykes calls the “corruption of authority” – what he terms “defects of total power” in the form of friendship, reciprocity, transfer of duties, etc., – are to some extent legally based policy aims in Scandinavian prisons. In other words, running a cellblock with both the stick and the carrot (Sykes, 1956) is not necessarily “corruption of authority” and hence Scandinavian prison policy might challenge Sykes’s understanding of that term. In reality, dynamic security and normalization are difficult principles to put into practice; sometimes prisoners are not interested in contact with prison officers, which can cause them significant problems vis-à-vis the prisoner community. In addition, a recent surge of penal populism has narrowed the scope considerably for practicing dynamic security and normalization within the Danish penal estate. New prison policies address drugs, illegal mobile phones, and the use of punitive solitary confinement. Based on empirical data from Danish prisons and concerning penal policy in Denmark this chapter analyzes the “corruption of authority” in a contemporary Nordic penal context. It argues that what is currently “corrupted” in Danish Prison Law and penal practice are the legal principles of dynamic security and normalization rather than the traditional more or less sovereign penal power that Sykes associate with “authority”.