Special Report to the Storting Document 4:3 (2018–2019) 40 Both Sweden and Denmark have minimum national standards for association with other inmates. Both countries have provisions stating that inmates may not be locked up in their cells for more than 12 hours a day. In Denmark, this is provided for in a separate set of regulations: ‘In closed prisons, the inmates’ own cells may be locked for a maximum of 12 hours during the period between 20.00 and 9.00’.131 In Sweden, inmates of closed prisons may be locked up in their cells between 19.00 and 08.00. An administrative decision on ‘segregation’ (exclusion from the company of other inmates) is required to lock up inmates in their cells for more than 12 hours a day.132 2) Limited activities The Correctional Service shall make suitable ­arrangements so that convicted persons through their own efforts can avoid committing new acts of crime. This includes that the prison shall arrange for inmates to be offered activities during daytime, for example education or work. Remand inmates may not be ordered to participate in activities other than ordinary cleaning, but are entitled to participate ‘insofar as this is practically possible’. Those who are not offered activities are largely locked up in their cells for 16 hours or more a day. In some sections, inmates are in effect confined to their cells for 22 hours or more several days a week because they are not offered activities. According to figures provided by the Correctional Service, an average of 19 per cent of the inmates did not participate in daily activities in 2017. This figure says little, however, about the extent to which inmates are actually locked up in their cells as a result of lack of activities. For one thing, only four hours of activity is required for an inmate to be registered as having a full programme of activities in the Correctional Service’s system. With two hours of activity, the inmate is registered as having a partial programme of activity. In addition to work and education, leisure activities of more than two hours’ duration may also be registered as activity.133 This means that many inmates who are offered activities are also locked up in their cells for more than 16 hours a day because the offer is very limited. We have seen numerous examples of this during our visits. Our findings show that an inadequate offer of activities is one of the main reasons why a large number of inmates are locked up in their cell for much of the day. 41 Several prisons have explained the long period of being locked up partly by the lack of funds to employ more staff following the alterations to the rota scheme in 2014, and partly by the apparent reduction in the use of stand-ins. The Parliamentary Ombudsman has found documentation of this in several prisons. In several instances, the prison employment unit has been closed so that the employment officers can cover for officers on sick leave in the regular prison sections. This means that inmates who should have been working are locked up in their cells for the hours they should have been at work. In one prison where the employment unit had not been closed once in 2016, this happened 18 times in 2017. Another prison reported closing down the employment unit during the summer months. All these cases added to the inmates’ isolation. In some prisons, whole sections are closed down from time to time, so that all inmates are confined to their cells during periods when they would normally have the possibility of participating in activities or associating with other inmates. Prisons have reported that the number of positions in the employment and recreational units has been reduced. They have also reported that inmates with special needs and those who were held in isolation were offered fewer activities than prior to the staff cuts. Our findings also indicate that few activities and under-staffing in communal areas can reinforce the risk of self-isolation among inmates (see section 6.3 Solitary confinement by choice). ‘There’s not much activity here. Two to three hours out of the cell. People don’t get mentally ill like from what they have done, but from being here. I’m marked by it, too’. Inmate interviewed by the NPM Corridor for open air cells used to provide fresh air for inmates in solitary confinement. 131 The Danish Ministry of Justice, Bekendtgørelse nr. 866 om indsattes adgang til fællesskab m.v. med andre innsatte i kriminalforsorgens institusjoner (’Implementing Regulation No 866 on prisoners’ right of association with other prisoners etc. in the Department of Prisons and Probation’s institutions’), 25 June 2018, Section 6. 132 Kriminalvården i Sveriges föreskrifter och allmänna råd om fängelse (’The Swedish Prison and Probation Service’s provisions and general advice on prisons’), 2011, Chapter 6. 133 In the course of 2019, the Directorate of the Norwegian Correctional Service will prepare new guidelines for keeping activity records. The possibility of socialising with other inmates is often particularly limited during weekends. In December 2018, the ­Directorate of the Norwegian Correctional Service carried out its first day survey of social contact between inmates at weekends. The survey showed that nearly half (46 per cent) of the inmates had the possibility of associating with other inmates for less than eight hours. As ­mentioned above, this figure must be seen as a minimum estimate (see section 5.2 Sources of error in day surveys). In several prisons we have visited, the inmates had less than five hours’ out-of-cell time a day at weekends. In Arendal Prison, all inmates in the section for convicted offenders were locked up in their cells for 20 hours and 45 minutes a day from Friday afternoon to Monday morning.134 Many of the inmates were clearly marked by this. The inmates’ cells were also unlocked for less than the r­ ecommended minimum eight hours a day at weekends in one of the juvenile prisons. ‘I don’t work, so I generally just lie here on the bed. Go out for the one hour that it is possible during the day. We have half an hour together in the morning, half an hour at dinner and one and a half hours in the evening’. Inmate interviewed by the NPM A central part of Norwegian prisons activity and rehabilitation work has been programme activities. These ­programmes have helped to increase the individual ­inmate’s out-of-cell time. In the vast majority of prisons we have visited, both inmates and staff tell us that the range of programme activities has been drastically reduced over the past ten years. Programmes like ­Brottsbrytet (‘Getting out of crime’), Pappa i fengsel (‘Dad in prison’) and Sinnemestring (Brøset) (‘the Brøset model of anger management’) are no longer offered in several prisons. There is a demand for programme ­activities among both inmates and staff in several ­prisons. The prison administrations tell us that there are no longer funds to cover the costs of such programmes.135 134 The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s reports after its visit to Arendal Prison, 7–8 February 2018, p. 17. 135 Despite this, figures provided by the Correctional Service show that, while there was a drop in programme activities of 21 per cent from 2014 to 2016, participation in such activities almost doubled from 2016 to 2017. One reason for this seems to be a circular issued by the Directorate of the Norwegian Correctional Service in 2015, in which the threshold for what should be recorded as a programme was lowered. According to prison staff, this has now been given a much wider interpretation than under the previous definition of programme activity.