Virginia Hughes

“When we built our second home, we made sure it was green.
All 10,000 square feet of it.”

I can’t turn my head these days without reading about _____ going “green“: cars, skyscrapers (if that isn’t the biggest oxy moron…), hospitals, even weddings. The latest? Green prisons.

A low-security prison on Norway’s Bastoey Island—which uses energy from solar panels, makes most of its own food, and recycles galore—calls itself the world’s first “ecological prison.”

Its 115 inmates, who are allowed to roam the facility’s surrounding beaches, green fields, and nature preserve, and who do physical labor on the grounds, are encouraged to maintain these green habits once released.

“On a long-term basis, from a social and economic perspective, this is cheapest for society,” Justice Minister Knut Storberget told Reuters during a visit to Bastoey Island. The solar panels, for instance, save about 70 percent on energy bills. And the prison sells some of the food they make to other prisons.

But the most important aspect of the relaxed atmosphere, Storberget added, is to reduce the number of repeat offenders.

(Unfortunately, I doubt my country has the same objective. Thanks largely to the mandated sentencing that came about at the beginning of our all-mighty and never-ending “War on Drugs,” the number of incarcerated people in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1980, to 2.2 million, or about 726 per 100,000. In Norway, it’s 59 per 100,000.)