Foreign national prisoners form a major constituency in prison populations in many Western European countries (for recent a statistical report see Aebi et al. (2019); for the most recent raw data see Space I data collected by the Council of Europe on an annual basis (Council of Europe 2023). Foreign national prisoners have increasingly been the subject of scholarly interest (e.g., Van Kalmthout, Hofstee-Van Kalmthout et al., 2013; Kaufman, 2015; Ugelvik, 2017a) although the UK’s Inspectorate of Prisons already produced a report as early as 2006 (HMIP, 2006). There is little doubt that foreign national prisoners are at increased risk of suffering. This is on the one hand to do with their specific circumstances. They may face disadvantages in terms of language, culture, religion and support. In addition, they may face issues that are specific to their legal position or citizenship or lack thereof. Foreign national prisoners may be subject to policies focused on incarceration, isolation and deportation, rather than oriented towards rehabilitation and resettlement, and may therefore experience both more austere conditions and harsher treatment as well as more uncertainty as to their legal status and their future. But we know less about how foreign national prisoners cope. How do foreign national prisoners adjust to confinement in a foreign land? This paper focuses on foreign national prisoners in two open prisons in Iceland. It is unique in several respects. The first is the use of a wholly immersive methodology in which the researcher stayed in both prisons in the role of quasi prisoner. The second is that the experience of foreign national prisoners is considered in Iceland where this has not been done before. Iceland is particularly remote, and has no land borders with any other country. They may well impact specifically on the experience of foreign national prisoners. Thirdly, it considers how they cope in open prisons as it can be surmised that the prisoner experience, in relation to their foreign-ness will depend not only on the country they are imprisoned in but also the type of prison. The relative freedom offered in prisons may offer specific adaptations and ways of coping not seen in other types of prison. The objective of this study is therefore to explore the experience of imprisonment in open prisons in Iceland as felt by foreign national prisoners. Through observations, more formal interviews and a range of informal interactions, these experiences have been explored and analysed. The specific focus of many of these conversations was to explore how these prisoners make sense of their experiences and any coping or adaptation mechanisms they themselves had identified or displayed. These questions are the topic of this study. In short, this paper found three types of coping, two of which are positive adaptations to the specific surroundings of Iceland’s open prisons. The prisoners whose attitudes show these adaptations I call in summary the Betrayed, the Isolated and, finally, the Caretakers. The first adaptation is the least productive and is characterised by a resentment against the Icelandic state, its criminal justice system and the country at large. These prisoners feel distrustful and betrayed. For this group the benign conditions of Iceland’s open prisons offer little solace. The second is characterised by prisoners feeling isolated yet grateful for the benign conditions, the relatively safety and the fact ‘prisonization’ can be avoided, at least up to a point. This allows these prisoners (often serving their first prison sentence) to not have to assume a prisoner identity but maintain their outside identity to a reasonable degree. Finally the Caretakers are prisoners assuming a relatively high status caretaker role in response to weak power structures within the establishment. This adaptation is mainly reserved for seasoned prisoners with extensive prison experience in other countries with harsher prison conditions than Iceland’s open prisons.
Francis Pakes
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Portsmouth, St George’s Building, 141 High Street, Portsmouth, PO1 2HY, UK