Doing Prison Work in Australia and Norway

This book aims to more fully understand the interaction between the prison environment, staff, and prisoners in different penal settings, and secondly, to explore how the nature and quality of such interactions mediate social distance and processes of Othering in the two national contexts. This comparative lens illuminates the variables and processes that underpin prison culture, environment and practice in both places, through interviews with 240 prisoners and staff across 14 prisons in Australia and Norway.

By examining the larger conceptual framework of Nordic Exceptionalism and Anglophone Excess through narratives emerging from staff and prisoners in Australia and Norway, Anna Eriksson offers significant insight into prison practice in each of those countries.

Exploring themes including staff training, communication between prisoners and prison staff, and how prison work is viewed in both countries, Eriksson also looks at the rapid increase in the use of technology in prisons and how it might impact the management of security, the possibilities of an erosion of proximity and the ramifications of that within the different penal cultures.