Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the implications of the ‘imprisonment queue’ in Norway. Based on interview data (N = 200), we show that while interviewees waiting to serve their sentences enjoy certain benefits such as being able to prepare for or negotiate the terms of their imprisonment, they also suffer from uncertainty and powerlessness. The suspension of their lives while they wait hinders them in pursuing their ground projects, things that really matter to them. This peculiar phenomenon has not received attention from prison scholars generally, as well as scholars writing on Nordic Exceptionalism specifically. This article addresses that gap and poses questions about the relative mildness of the short Norwegian sentences, and more broadly, about what constitutes punishment.

Highlights

  • Yes, it’s like a sentence before the sentence

  • As the quote above suggests, waiting in the prison queue may not be experienced in this way by people who wait for months and sometimes years to start serving their sentences

  • In drawing on the idea of ground projects, one aim has been to demonstrate that experiences of the prison queue are varied, and often, for individuals, highly conflicted, and to explore the impact of waiting to serve a sentence on what matters most to those undergoing this peculiar experience of the criminal justice process

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Summary

Introduction

It’s like a sentence before the sentence. You sit there waiting and waiting and waiting. In Norway, the operation of a ‘call-up’ system—the prison ‘queue’—in which convicted offenders are only admitted to prison when a space becomes available has been designed to avoid the possibility of overcrowding that characterizes many other systems (Ugelvik 2016).. As the quote above suggests, waiting in the prison queue may not be experienced in this way by people who wait for months and sometimes years to start serving their sentences. The prisoner quoted here describes the experience of waiting as ‘a sentence before the sentence’. This raises important questions about the complexities of this apparently humane penal arrangement and, more fundamentally, about what constitutes punishment

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