Warden Of The Isolation Unit At Sweden's Largest Maximum Security Prison | The Entanglements Of Crime & Punishment

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Arne Anderson, Three Tours In Afghanistan For The Swedish Military #46

Swedens Elite Police Unit, Piketen #146

Christopher Neijd Police Lieutenant in Södertälje & Southern Stockholm #165 

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Because of my old mate, Arne Andersson - I’ve been incredibly lucky to have gotten to know several of his old military buddies. There are those listed above...

And then there is my guest for this episode today, courtesy to the serendipity proximate to Arne…

Peter, whose full name will remain redacted - is the head of the isolation ward at Kumla prison, which is the largest maximum security prison in Sweden. We recorded this about 6 months ago, so I am very late to publish, but I hope you’ll agree that the contents are evergreen. Not tied down to any particular time and news, and therefore as useful now as it would have been then as it will be in 5 years time. 

Pete and I sat down together to record this one in Stockholm last late Autumn, it’s as many ins and outs of the prison system that I could think to ask Peter. This is an exhaustive list, but it includes inmate demographics, the impact of overpopulation, the complexities of rehabilitation, the psychological effects of prison on both inmates and staff. the crucial differences between the Swedish prison system other countries, and how it’s portrayed in the media, particularly regarding sentencing and the rehabilitation processes. the challenges of institutionalisation, the dynamics of inmate behaviour. Leadership and de-escalation techniques in managing inmate interactions, as well as the influence of gangs and ethnic divides within the prison system. Informal power dynamics among inmates, the prevalence of violence, self-harm, and the challenges faced by prison officers. The changing attitudes of younger inmates towards authority, the psychological impact of incarceration, and the ongoing issues of contraband and drug addiction. The discussion also touches on the responsibility of prison staff to understand and support inmates, the metrics used to evaluate prison conditions, and the societal perceptions of crime and punishment.

In between all that there is as well Peter’s good humour and the natural tangents much of that may draw you down…

00:00 - Who Is Peter & Intro
03:02 Demographics and Overpopulation in Kumla Prison
05:51 Crime Types and Inmate Behaviour
09:00 Rehabilitation and Sentencing in Sweden
11:59 Isolation Units and Mental Health
14:48 Challenges of Overpopulation and Violence
18:05 Administrative Costs and Efficiency
20:56 Psychological Impact of Isolation
23:53 Interactions with Inmates
27:04 Handling Manipulation and Trust
30:00 Sympathy for Inmates and Their Stories
32:48 Mental Health and Rehabilitation Challenges
35:56 Conclusion and Reflections on the Prison System
45:09 The Nature of Work in Prison
51:49 Rehabilitation vs. Punishment in Nordic Prisons
56:08 Institutionalization and Its Effects
01:01:22 De-escalation Techniques in High-Stress Environments
01:08:15 Leadership in Correctional Facilities
01:16:55 Gang Dynamics in Swedish Prisons
01:26:13 Understanding Power Dynamics in Prisons
01:29:07 The Reality of Violence in Prisons
01:31:34 Addressing Self-Harm and Mental Health Issues
01:34:19 The Challenge of Knowing Inmates
01:36:34 Evaluating Prison Metrics and Crime Hierarchies
01:38:52 Religious Practices and Beliefs in Prisons
01:41:01 Changing Dynamics of Respect and&

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Because of my old mate Arnie Anderson who appeared on episode forty-six of this podcast, I've been incredibly lucky to have gotten to have known several of his old military buddies. There was episode 146 with a former member of Sweden's elite police unit, Piketin, another, episode 165, with a police lieutenant in Sertatelia and Southern Stockholm, Christopher Nad. And then there is my guest for this episode today, Courtesy to the Serendipity Proximate to Arne. Peter, whose full name will remain redacted, is the boss in charge of the isolation ward at Kumla Prison, which is the largest maximum security prison in Sweden. We recorded this about six months ago, so I'm very late to publish, but I hope you'll agree that the contents are evergreen, not tied down to any particular time and news, and therefore as useful now as it would have been then, as it will be hopefully in five years' time. Pete and I sat down together to record this one in Stockholm late last autumn. It's as many in and outs of the prison system that I could think to ask Peter. This is an exhaustive list, but it includes inmate demographics, the impact of overpopulation, the complexities of rehabilitation, the psychological effects of prison on both the inmates and the staff, the crucial differences between the Swedish prison system and other countries, and then how those differences are portrayed in the media, particularly regarding sentencing and the rehabilitation process, the challenges of institutionalization, the dynamics of inmate behavior, leadership and de-escalation techniques in managing inmate interactions, as well as the influence of gangs and ethnic divides within the prison system, informal power dynamics among inmates, the prevalence of violence, self-harm, and the challenges faced by prison officers, the changing attitudes of younger inmates towards authority, the psychological impact of incarceration, and the ongoing issues of contraband and drug addiction. The discussion also touches on the responsibility of prison staff to understand and support inmates, the metrics used to evaluate prison conditions and the societal perceptions of crime and punishment. In between all of that, there is as well Peter's good humour and the natural tangents. Much of that may draw you down. But I'm very pleased to say, with absolutely no further ado, here is Peter. Well, Pete, what is your job and what is the prison you work at? As a boss on the Cumla Prison in Sweden, the boss over the isolation unit.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

And the Cumla prison, what's the significance of this? Cumla prison is uh Sweden's uh nowadays Sweden's biggest prison, and we're also one of the top three secure prisons in Sweden. So basically Kumla, Saltvik and Hull in uh in Stockholm or so to tell you. So it's it's one of those maximum level uh security uh prisons, and also the biggest prison right now, even though they're building some some bigger prisons, which is gonna be finished like a couple of years.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Biggest by size or inmate count?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Inmate count. I don't know about size. I'd I'd guess size as well. Yeah. But uh inmate count, uh anyway, that that's the biggest one of prisons. There's also some pretty massive hectares. How many prisoners? Um, oh right now I'd say 700 prisoners, around 700 right now. I wouldn't be surprised if we hit like 750, 800 pretty soon. We're just uh we're just growing.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Interesting. In my mind, I had the idea of the biggest prison being thousands and thousands of inmates.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

That's I think that's that's a big difference in Sweden from from other other countries. Um, because other countries kinda we're kind of doing the same thing right now as well. But but they're massing together, they're building uh they're building like super prisons. And Sweden, we never actually had that kind of system before. But right now it's all about using the space as efficiency as as efficient as possible. Where you already have a prison, kind of try to put as many prisoners as possible inside of there. We haven't we haven't we haven't expanded that much in comparison to how many more prisoners that we've actually taken in. Before we every inmate had their own room, which a lot of people were joking about or not don't not just joking, being pretty serious about it being a luxury and comparing it to our elderly care. But uh nowadays it's uh it's double belaging, which means basically everybody's gonna have everybody's gonna have a bunk body uh who's gonna be living in the same room. There's uh very few rooms which hasn't been uh um uh occupied, yeah, exactly, by two inmates.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So 700-ish inmates, what's the prison to inmate ratio? Sorry, guard to inmate ratio.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, I I under I I understood uh thing is I I know that works pretty much like somewhere around seven, eight hundred, probably more nowadays, but a lot of people work in the prison. But there's there's a lot of people who work in the administration, in the kitchen, it's just maintaining uh there's there's a lot of maintenance uh personnel as well, just going around making sure things don't break down or stop working. So I'd probably say this is this is a a guess, but I'd probably say that we have somewhere around 250 perhaps personnel down on down on the floor um who are actually who are working security with uh with the inmates. That I think that's that's it, it's my estimation.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

And uh what what type of crime puts you in cumla?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Uh used to be long uh crimes which put you in uh long prison sentences. That was actually when I started, I started in Cumla prison at uh 2009. Back then it kind of started turning a little bit around, but it was also always that cumla had the prisoners with the the long sentences. So if you had committed a murder for example, then Kumla was pretty obvious for you. Yeah nowadays I'd say it doesn't really matter. First of all, you have the the crisis of just finding rooms for inmates in in in Sweden altogether, but it's also gotten to the point where it's not about how long a sentence sentence that you have, it's more of how well you adjust in p in prison, how much uh you uh misbehave, how much uh you you threaten or hurt uh your your other inmates or personnel.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Like that determines what prison you go to. So they'll you'll get a lot of transfers into cumla from other places.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Exactly. Um and also like what when people think of cumla, they they they used to think like bandidos mc Hells Angels uh you know the the the kind of like the classic the classic bike bike gangs, really, really dangerous individuals. Nowadays we have a lot of people from the from the suburbs, uh from uh from just the poor conditions who who don't really adapt super super great to um uh to to prison and life in prison. Um they're they don't but they don't necessarily have that long of a sentence, but they still end up uh at us because they they can't they they they don't function at at other prisons.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

So murder really really long sentences will get you into cum la. Yeah. What if I did something hectic but I didn't kill anyone, but I still got say a 20-year sentence? Or even can I get a 20-year sentence? What do I have to do to get a 20-year sentence?

SPEAKER_00 7:19

You have to be billing. Pretty much uh commit like a murder, or there are some crimes who are a bit unusual. But like um Well, there's always like the terror-based crimes, terrorism, which kind of goes into the crime of murder, example, for example. Uh there's also the like uh really dangerous spy, or if you do commit treason to your country, or that kind of crimes, though those are also possible. The the real the really the really big narcotic smuggler that and I haven't seen 20 years for any one of those. I'd say you 20 years, it most of the time it's uh when when we're talking that you get a lifetime in prison. Then basically a lifetime in prison isn't a lifetime in prison. It's uh it's actually you don't have a an end date. It's mostly based on how you how you rehabilitate in prison that puts you into the possibility of getting out. So you always have like a date where we review the case. Um okay. It's possible for this particular in individual to to get a set date to be released. It's not it's not the criminal ward and it's not the switch uh probation and and pen uh prison system who does it, it's uh it's uh it's the courts.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Okay, so that's a key distinction between Sweden and the US, where no matter how horrific your crime might be, you don't actually get a life sentence, you just get a date where your case can be reviewed.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

And assuming that you somehow can uh convince the people or truly rehabilitate yourself, you could be what back 20 years in the streets? Is that as long as it might take?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yeah, I I'd say probably I used to have a number on that. I I think that lifetime in prison used to be like somewhere around 25 or 26 years, somewhere around that, uh, which you actually spend in prison, like the the median number. Yeah. Uh and then you all you of course you had those who just who who just wouldn't rehabilitate or won't rehabilitate and stay longer, and you also have those who are well who behave perfectly from from the from the start, right? And who's gonna get out earlier?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah. Have you ever had a lot of sympathy for someone who, for instance, committed a horrific crime, but given all of the context, you can sort of see why they did it? Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

I I wouldn't say that I I'd excuse the act itself. There are some cases where I I wouldn't excuse it, but uh you know, I'd see the context of it. Um but most of the time for me I see a lot of a lot of inmates who has uh served like 15, 16, 17, perhaps 18 years, who starts to to to try to have the process of of like uh showing that okay I want to get out, you know, I I'm I'm rehab rehabilitated. Yeah. Um and who actually start off in in uh I'm just gonna say criminal board. It's the C S reformed and the Swedish probation and but who spent the first like five or six years just doing mischief and committing acts of uh of violence against uh against their surroundings, but then they stopped. And those kind of those you can't forget about them when you do a risk assessment in order to to release someone. You can always look at how has their behaviour been since the last time they applied to have a set date for release, but you always have to factor in all the history as well. So if they if they behaved really bad in the beginning, it's always gonna have some sort of reflection for them in the end. Uh which is sometimes I see inmates who don't do great acts of uh of uh misdemeanor and still it reflects on them and they they get their dates pushed on further and further and further. It's not up to me to actually make that call, but sometimes I feel bad for them. That that's the truth.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

As and your job is the warden of the of the of the isolation unit. Yeah. So when inmates are under your domain, yeah, are you also consulted when it comes to the probation hearings? How is this person rehabilitated over time?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

No, that that's not within uh what I what I do, that's not within my my working um my responsibility. What I what I do, my responsibility is uh to make sure that we other than the the obvious that we actually where we keep the the the inmates at us and don't let them escape um to record all kind of misdemeanours, all kind of acts of violence to try to counter all of that and also to actually record all the good things that they do as well so that you can have a have a great um a great case to show because we're the one who's documenting everything. They use our documentation in the end, which is really important then. So we have to make sure that we not only we not only document when they're misbehaving, but also when they're doing something good, when they're showing progress, or they're they actually show signs of rehabilitation, which is kind of a hard job to do because sometimes inmates try to manipulate us. Um and uh it's it's kind of hard to to know when when you have uh a true progress or when someone's trying to just say the right things, um, or just adapt to the tools that we use, the to the programs uh that we that we use.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

How do you overcome that type of manipulation, especially considering potentially a lot of people willing to commit a murder or something might have a you know a psychopathy to them where they can be very, very emotionally manipulative? Like how do you overcome this sort of stuff?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

My first thought was that you don't. But but you you just have to I'm always thinking of it dualistically, but you have to you have to put your emotions aside um and and try to see try to see the facts. Don't don't don't always listen to what an inmate say. Look at the actual um the actual actions that that he's taking and see, okay, is this actually correlating with uh what he says? Even though they say really want to be a better person, I really want to get out, I really do want to make a difference. I want to go home and be a better father, I want to be a better husband to my wife, I want to seek redemption for what I've done. Um are there actions showing that, or are they just words? And then sometimes, of course, you have to sometimes inmates are forced to take actions inside of prisons because of like prison rules. Not not the rules by law, but the rules by prisons where they're not always the ones in charge of everything that they do. Sometimes they end up in a bad situation as well. If someone if someone jumps them, for instance, in a section, in a ward, and and they defend themselves. We don't allow violence. If someone jumps you and you hit back, most of the times they're probably gonna get uh a warning, some kind of uh report, which is of course bad for them because we don't we we don't condone violence, we don't want them to act with violence where when someone acts with violence upon them, but sometimes they do end up in a really bad spot. So so it's it's really complex.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

So you've uh hinted on this, or rather not hinted, but explicitly said it, an overpopulation. A lot of people very few inmates will have their own room now. Is the overpopulation due to an increase of Sweden's population or an increase in crimes being committed?

SPEAKER_00 14:47

I think I'm the wrong person to ask this. So I'm just gonna I'm not gonna be uh criminologist. Yeah, exactly. So this is just my take uh as a as a as a practitioner in the prison. First of all, it's can we can clearly state that it's uh it's it's actually uh the result of the Tov toilet, which uh which we took, which uh which Kim Nall Warden started to to count a little bit on uh because it says it says a lot about uh the sentences and how we're gonna be judging people and how we're gonna be how we're gonna change uh the the the criminal the the probation system as well. So basically Kim Nall Warden needs to grow around like four times it's uh its current size. So right now I think the estimation was around 40,000 uh like places like to to to house forty thousand thousand inmates instead of around ten thousand, which is right now.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So lots of people are in prison awaiting their sentence because of the inefficiency of the Kriminal Ball then.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

We started we started uh doing uh Sweden started doing a lot of a lot of actions several years ago, which of course started to to make title weights. So like down in in Malma, for instance, and in Stockholm, there's been there's been like name-given operations where police try to actually enforce the law, get rid of crime. When you do arrests and you actually focus on uh on an area, well of course the arrests that you make are gonna go jail and then to prison if you sentence them. Um and then well, prison the prison population wasn't wasn't full by by then, but then as long as police and and the attorneys as well, as long as they get the resources, well of course it's gonna fill up the slots. And then uh after a while someone like someone said, um this is not good because it in like 2014-2015, I'm not born was actually shutting down prisons instead. It's a pretty costful business to to to to host a prison, especially if it's not full. So we were actually shutting prisons down around then. And then the police started to turn up their their activity, which actually well, which in case in case also led to a lot of more criminals being uh being jailed and and sentenced to prisons. So we had to do a 180 degrees turn and and start to ramp up our our part of the deal as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Yeah, which is creating more prisons, yeah, creating more space. Do you have any sense for the administrative costs like per inmates at your prison, what they cost per annum? I had.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

I had, but I don't anymore. I had I had a number a ballpark will do. Yeah, a ballpark. I think in 2012 or 2013 when I was uh uh I was going around and I was um uh Thur Lassa and I know the Toltoilet, which is basically like uh the government coming together and saying that okay, we need to make changes about how we how we practice uh law and uh penalties and how the the police system and the Swedish penitentiary system should work as well. And they say that we have to reduce the cost of each inmate as well. Um and that's one of the missions that is sent to to Kriminal Bournemouth as well that you have to oversee this, or you have to be ready to increase your population, and you also have to look at okay, how much the how much does this cost?

SPEAKER_01 18:12

So reducing costs if you put two guys in one room, maybe that reduces costs. Exactly. Or quality of food or transportation things. Like where do you cut costs in a prison?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

I think all of the factors that you named are are included as well. Um not part of this investigation, but all of them are are probably included. And we also have this well, so we have this problem in in Kumla prison, and I think in all prisons as well, where well you put in more inmates, well, obviously you're gonna put in more personnel, but just as the the inmates, their wards aren't they're not designed for that many inmates, yeah, and it gets crowded, you can put it and put uh too many prison officers in the the prison officers' uh lounges as well. Uh you you can they're they're pretty small. We don't have the workspace for everyone. So of course we need more prison officers for the security, but we don't have that many rooms to put them in. Um we've we've already started noticing that air quality, that kind of stuff, right? But like people don't have enough room to eat or warm their food and that like small problems, which is not the thing that you're gonna be like raising up in discussion, but there are always some some consequences when you start to like more prisoners, well, okay, more prison officers, better security. Not always. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

If you chip away at a block long enough, something will break. Uh so you've got this compounding problem of more of an increase to the population of the prison to then the decrease of the funds to manage that prison. And when you have more overpopulated eating areas, lounge rooms, even cells, does that invite more opportunities for violence and you know fights to break out between the inmates?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

When we introduced two inmates in one room, there was of course you have to you have to make an analysis before it, and you have to make some sort of risks that take part with it. So you can look at it, okay, there's probably gonna be a lot more fights and it's gonna be a lot more frets and that kind of uh that kind of in the beginning it wasn't that much violence, but I think that we start to notice now not as a selective part of two inmates sharing a room, but by having too many inmates sharing a ward, that this is just uh the recipe for not disaster, but for more conflict. More conflict, irritation, annoying, just not having anything to do. We can't give them all work all day. Yeah, they they don't have anything to do. These are broadly speaking young men with short attention span. When you don't give them anything to do and they're all there with a lot of testosterone, it's it's an invitation for them to get uh annoyed at each other.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Just looking for any excuse to stop the boredom or something. Exactly. Yes. Have criminologists or uh I don't know, academics who study prison systems and so forth, have they reached a an ideal number of people per square meters of space that minimizes the violence while also allows for efficiency of a prison to run? No.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I've I think I'd heard about that, but I do know that they said that we should never have two inmates in a room if it was if it's uh under this particular uh number of square meters, and which we which we follow for a long time, and then suddenly one day they said, Okay, that's not appliable anymore. So throw that out the window, make sure all rooms have two two inmates in them. I don't think it was it wasn't in fact a law, it was just that somewhere someone had had thought out a figure. This seems like a good idea to not have two inmates in a room which is under this particular number of square meters. Which also meant meant that well well we investigated which which rooms are are actually uh appliable for for having double inmates in. And then pretty much one day we just got the the notion that we're not using that anymore. Start looking at all rooms.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Say say I'm a lifer and I just want to get a room to myself and so I'll s I'll kick up some shit with every new person that comes into my room. Is this a common way for people to sort of get the way they want? Sort of fuck the consequences. I'm just gonna maximize the time I've gotten here.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yeah I yeah it's it's a pretty common theme up until they get isolated which is gonna happen because you you can't you can't start to try to to kick out everyone who's gonna be coming into your room for of course you can you can try to do it in a in a smooth way try to fool the the system which is also once again like you you look at what they're doing instead of what they're saying so most of the time there's gonna be a series of of weird circumstances oh my roommate well he was he didn't he didn't feel comfortable felt comfortable in this room or he can't stay in this section or he can't do this and he can't do that and then you see like three or four who are all gonna be living with the same guy can't live in that room okay then we know we know the three or four guys probably aren't uh the problem it's probably the the guy living there and if you it's usually some sort of consequence related with the with someone not being able to say they're probably getting uh getting threatened or threatened with violence um and then they all usually end up in isolation.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

And that's when they they fall under your purview yeah as the warden of the isolation unit. So how many at any given point individuals would you be in charge of? Uh around 40 right now. And they all have their own room and it doesn't have sharp edges that kind of that there's a lot of things to stop them from hurting themselves in there.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Yeah we actually we have different types of uh isolation rooms so we have what we call the soft cells um mu kisol in Swedish um where where they they actually have a TV and they have furniture inside of the room so they have a bed and they also have um drawer and a TV and it's it's kind of a pretty nice way you have to take everything into context but in in the isolation units it's a pretty nice way to live given the fact that you're isolated from from a lot of other people like you've done a lot of bad things to get there. Yeah and also the isolation in itself is a real punishment for a lot of people you don't have to do anything else they they just feel well they don't feel good being isolated it's it's it's kind of hard on the psych after a while I can imagine so does the isolation mean they only sleep by themselves or do they spend 24 hours by themselves? 24 hours by themselves it's the guards who are who are their company. Yeah um there are uh there's a few cells which we have actually made managed to maintain um their ability to walk with someone else so when they always make sure that they have somebody caught from an odd so they they get to go outside to get to the feel uh fresh air and and the weather I I'd like to say sunshine but this is Sweden so the sun isn't always shining which they they have the the possibility also to turn down of course but we always we always recommend them to go outside because just staying inside of your isolation you uh unit is that's not a good idea that's gonna lead to to um to bad the bad mental health uh in the end this is the soft isolation units then we also have the the hard isolation units um and they're basically a madress on the mattress on the floor um and they also had toilets which is just for us not to be forced to uh to to handle them if they're behaving really bad every time that you you have a social interaction or an interaction at all with them you're running a risk if they're if they want to hurt you. So if they have a toilet in their room well we don't have to take them out in order to take them to the toilet or the shower that that kind of thing. Usually if you if you're in the hard isolation unit you've committed some sort of act of violence you're a you're a risk of some sort there we don't have the sharp edges we don't have the furniture we don't want them to break the furniture and actually use it as a weapon against us or we can't trust them by some reason. That that's usually how we end up in the in the hard isolation units. So there is a distinction we always have to make some sort of note in our systems as well as soon as we place someone in hard isolation units because we can't just there's really hard regulations about these things. I can't just have a punishment system to like okay but you go into hard one and you go into soft one inmates always think that okay now there's a punishment and oh okay now I did something bad to the boss or someone who works there and that's why I go to no but if you pose a risk if you start to threaten the personnel well that's gonna get you into the hard one because we can't trust you and we don't want you to have any weapons or you we don't want you acting with violence against us and we don't want to take you out of the cell more than we need to. The soft cells don't have any toilets we're actually taking mouth from them to the toilet instead. Yeah um and that's uh it may sound super cheesy but that's actually a plan as well because we want the social interaction we know that people tend to get a bit pardon my English but by sitting too long in in isolation and even the smallest social interaction of going to the to to the shower going to the promenade or going to to the to to the did I say shower toilet yeah shower yeah exactly um but those kind of those kind of social interactions they can actually do something they can do something positive for you so the personnel is uh is always really good with just how are you how you doing how you feeling those kind of things when we're walking from the room to the shower or to the toilet just to kind of get someone to perhaps say something or open up a little bit or create some sort of bond where they can actually say that I don't feel good because that's like that's like the key sentence you know you pick that up and you're okay we'll sit down and we'll talk.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

I mean these guys must be starved for conversation do they end up forming really strong bonds with you and your and your some of them do.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Some inmates are way too comfortable in isolation. I'd say the autistic red flag the autistic kind usually likes isolation they don't have to we don't force anyone else into their room it's very square the environment you know you know exactly what to do and when to do it. There's not much social interaction which some some like if you have Asperger's syndrome or that kind of like that kind of autistic uh personality you tend to like it. So they they actually they usually work like clock. The only the only problems is when you break the the routine because then they're gonna be like oh I'm not used to this one but it's it's pretty much chaos out in in the wards where there's a lot of inmates and everyone's just kind of doing their own thing or there's always gonna be a few who don't don't go following the the rules on the so they they like it at us. They don't particularly want to speak with us but we have some who bonds bond really good who's always happy to see the isolation unit personnel when we're out on uh on just perhaps out on a on an alarm or that kind of or perhaps we're just working at a different unit that day they're like oh hello hi hi hi usually I have like I usually have pretty good uh bonds with with the inmates and I always try to like wave say hello and just try uh try to ask how you doing how's everything it's usually a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Is a high percentage of people that end up in the isolation unit kind of psychologically impaired which is to say has some type of psychosis has very significantly on the spectrum or do you or do you just get some very well put together people that are just violent to their core who end up there anyway?

SPEAKER_00 30:00

The second uh the second uh alternative not so much not so much um the first one yeah I I'd say I'd say it's a lot of people who has a lot of um psychologic psychological issue issues who come to us we have we have a psych ward in cumla prison but especially that part when you can't handle it when you can't hold it together anymore there is there's pretty much no other place to put them than the isolation unit. We usually we usually say that well when when they're too mentally unstable or they're too ill to be at the psych ward they usually come to isolation which is also a pretty good thing because most most of these people which is lumping everyone together and being a real stereotypical so but aside from that fact most of them they feel pretty good about having a a pretty linear day. They know exactly what to do there's not too much input especially if you're in a psychosis just having no TV and not having a lot of things around and having your your breakfast in time on time and having your lunch on time and knowing that this this and this is something that's gonna be happening well it's not gonna cure like going into a psychosis but it's it's not going to make it worse either it's it's the it's the it's the stimuli which which doesn't appear in the way that it does in a normal world with lots of lots of inmates and lots of actions and things happening altogether.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

How often do people with psychosis actually become re rehabilitated?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Sometimes it bre uh sometimes it breaks as long as they sleep. I I'd say the sleep factor is the is the probably the number one we always know we well we we kind of always know when they come to us and they say that they haven't slept for like one or two days you kind of know oh okay and then they started to behave like frantically or or like aggressively or just uh not normal you kind of know this is a risk factor they could possibly be going into psychosis. So if we can just make them get some sleep and also hopefully eat some food because that's also one of the first things that we met that we noticed that okay they're not sleeping they're not eating usually they're not taking the medicine as well also they're on antidepressants and stuff. Most most inmates inmates have some sort of medicine um and this this kind of client usually have several so when you see when you see all these put together then you kind of know if I if we can't get him to sleep if we can't get him to eat food drink water or have take his medicine it's probably not gonna be because get better even though we deprive them from stimuli by putting them in a in a in a really in a really isolated in a really empty cell. Sometimes we need to go to uh external health external like a hospital. Yeah like a hospital in order for them to actually get injections just to just to break it. Then they then they come back to us and we have them in isolation for observations for a couple of days and hopefully the the medicine which they were actually forced to take they break it and they turn out into completely other human beings. Really I thought I thought that I'd seen psychosis before I arrived at isolation but there's so very clear case of I of uh psychosis that we have I hadn't seen before. You know just it's it's a term which you use recklessly sometimes where where you're like oh he he's not behaving oh he's uh he's hyper or he's uh he's perhaps a bit aggressive oh maybe he's a psych psychotic but in the isolation you really see someone you can see second by second the decline which you go into and you kinda realize okay we we need to we need to try to stop it right now before this person try to hurt us or hurt himself and sometimes you just realize it's gone too far and now it's it's more of a matter of okay how soon can we get him to a hospital to break this because this isn't this is not gonna end good. Is it uh heartbreaking to witness that it's heartbreaking when you speak with him after it when they're they're out of it because usually they're they're on their way into this this mode when they enter isolation and then you don't you don't have like you don't have to to put this into perspective you you can't see the person he was before you just see this person who's uh who's aggressive who's who's spouting off nonsense thing who's not a who doesn't know what time it is what day it is or where it is and then you then you speak with him after it because that's usually they're all always stuck with us until they've they've gotten out of it and then it's heartbreaking because then you realize you're actually a sane person. Right. You're actually you're actually a normal something just went wrong in your head right there. And that kind of that kind of feeling can can be heartbreaking and they they usually don't they're not that aware sometimes they they're ashamed of it. Sometimes they don't remember it and they're ashamed that they can't remember things. Sometimes they're just angry because they don't understand why they're isolated anymore. And we always have to have to have some sort of understanding for the feelings that come with it because that's not the person that that you were actually like in an in an argument or perhaps even wrestling with a couple of days before that's a new person you can't can't put you can't hold that person accountable for that kind of behavior. Of course it's it's it's still gonna be it's still gonna be noted it's gonna be perhaps report about it but you can't say that don't you ever do that again because you know okay but this is a different person. It's not gonna be he's not gonna be doing that that type of behavior right now. He he's he's sane now. So it's it's kinda hard.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

So even if an inmate of yours was uh you know murdered several people in cold blood there's still the capacity for sympathy because you just see that they were a totally different person. Can't even remember it. And maybe is quite a nice guy when they're all put together.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

I think uh you can ask uh you can probably ask a hundred prison officers that question and they're gonna give you slightly different answers some some ver some varying uh towards the uh towards the more negative and some towards the more positive but I always have the uh the capacity for some su some type of sympathy. There are there are people who get less from me and there are people who get more and sometimes you have that kind of case where someone in a psychosis kills someone without actually understanding it and it's going in and out of psychosis well I'm gonna have more sympathy for that person towards someone who then towards someone who uh who uh in cold blood shot someone because of a a gang war and who knew exactly what he was doing but there's always factors in in gang war even in gang wars well you have these like 17 year old kids who's who start start seven 17 they're they're gonna they're getting younger younger the 14 years old don't don't end up in cumla prison though but but the really young ones who do they're just being manipulated into doing something they maybe regret. Yeah there's a lot of attitude sometimes they're they try to behave like they're the shit but they're still kids and I was a kid once as well I didn't think many decisions through um and especially when you're when you're put in a spot where you don't have that many situations but didn't uh that when you're put in a spot where you don't have that many opportunities well I'm not gonna say it's right it's most definitely wrong but you have to understand there are there are there's always room for sympathy.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

How do you and your team sort of deal with your own mental health having to ingest this high you know not stress but yeah to be constantly around a very high strung environment of surveillance of you know making sure they're okay but maybe as well maybe not liking them but still having to make sure they're okay you know is this is is it a thing that enters into your into your work or you guys rise above it?

SPEAKER_00 38:19

I think that we rise above it but it's it's one of those things where the most extreme of incidents always occur at us or always occur at the isolation. We get the inmates who who try to throw feces or urines or cut themselves in order to try to smear blood at us while screaming that they have uh diseases blood bound diseases uh and try to to spit in not only like on us but try to actually hit our mouth or eyes or just in order to well just in order to hurt us and you can't deny that it's something very human to to get angry about that both both angry and sad but angry is the m the most common feeling. We try to work as much as we can with taking small small uh breaks just go together as a group we talk about what happened we talk about how we felt about what happened and then we remind ourselves that okay but we're professionals we need to be able to do this job and then we get back to it. Sometimes when you have the same individual who does this more than once a day who like systematically every time we open the door they try to to hurt us or do something even worse against us it's a very demanding job at those opportunities at those um sections of time when we have someone because this is not all the time but sometimes you have the bad luck of having someone for a for a a couple of months who behaves this way and well you you always see the personnel when they go home that they have a little bit of a ship on their shoulders um and it's uh it's hard for them to they they just kinda slowly slowly grow worse and worse and worse. So we we have this uh we have this system where if it's unsustainable we we speak with other isolation units in Sweden and we ask them okay can we can we switch? This is not something it's it's always a consequence for inmates when you switch prisons for them so we don't try to do it very often but for the very worst where we can't we can't deal with daily threats or violence then we we switch inmates just in order to make sure that the problem goes around everywhere as well. We try to take our our proportion or we we try to as few times as possible we try to say no but we try to always say okay we can help but sometimes we need to realize that okay we can't solve this and everyone's just growing more and more worn out so we need we need to send this inmate away usually you switch your bad seed for a bad seed as well so we get some but it's someone else and it perhaps it's it's someone who just wants to hurt us with violence instead of throwing feces at us.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

What happens to that particularly bad inmate who's just got venom in their veins will not be rehabilitated will lash out at every single opportunity they can do they just bounce around prisons until they die well they do bounce around prisons.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

When you get a report a prison sentence is actually well you you get sentenced to like one year but two thirds you're gonna be uh be in the prison and then you have one third in in free warden in in like um in probation but if you do misbehave throughout your first eight months you can always have an evaluation at the end and they can say okay but you did bad this is this is not good so we're gonna take two months from your time on the outside and we're gonna extend your prison sentence instead so they get ten months it's it's kind of a system to make sure that inmates try to work try to to function in prisons. There's always a carrot they can for but they can also like the individuals that I was talking about they can also get um get reported to the police you know you can you can file a uh file a report to the police about like violence against a a prison officer so they can get another sentence and just stay inside the the the prison system or they they actually they they're released but then they have to go to court and then they're sentenced again and then go back to prison. So this kind of people you tend to see they most often they they get released after a while and then they come back pretty soon. Yeah. Because of things they did on on in their previous prison sentence.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

When you say release release to the public or into that rehip okay and then they're just straight back in prison from something they've already done not even a new crime. That seems weird.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah it's it's a bit weird I think sometimes the the legal system just they can't process the the the the the police reports fast enough sometimes when it's a month uh to go well if if they hit a personnel then obviously we're gonna file a report to the police but it's it's it's a really short period of time for the police to actually make an investigation and send it to to to a things red and for the things that to actually go to but we're sentencing you.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

A the idea that a lot of people listening to this myself included will have about what prisons are pretty much informed by US TV shows, US media versus the reality of what it looks like in Sweden.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Yeah so the idea of a prison is actually it's this not the case in isolation but the idea of of a prison sentence in Sweden is that it's supposed to be as similar to a day on the outside as possible. We're talking about individuals who they're probably not the ones who set the clock every morning. So we try to we try to infuse a bit of order in their pretty chaotic lives uh yeah uh so we wake them up at a set time in the morning they get up they only have about depending on the say on the ward but they have around 30 minutes Or something to to eat breakfast, then you have to go to work. They have to go to some kind of work or some kind of product for like meaningful.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

What are they doing for work?

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Some work in our in our woodworks where they build uh furniture. But we actually produce furniture for for the prison system in Sweden. So they build uh they build like um the beds, they build uh the shelves, they build well everything they can actually put in an inmates' room. We have the possible possibility to actually build it. Same with we have metalworks as well. We're trying to get back an education where they can st they can start to learn to weld as well. Some some wards don't have um the possibility to go to work, but they they can go to programs, uh rehabilitation programs, some can some can go to sections where they work with uh something we call it's other structure um like a job. It's basically it's a job where or just something to do. I'll put it there, it's it's something to do. Sometimes they just make sure that uh uh they can uh get a like a uh oi. Sometimes we get orders where okay, we need you to have five thousand bags of this particular screw with this particular particular screw, and you need to put them in the bag and uh shut them tight and uh and order them to us, like like businesses getting us to to to have this. And this these are the kind of jobs who normally wouldn't be like high wager uh high wage um jobs, so they ask us to to have inmates do it instead.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

But something as meaning menial as that. Yeah, except it's a provide is it a superficial satisfaction that is providing, or do you find a lot of inmates genuinely like this helps them towards rehabilitation? Counting screws.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

That kind of work, no. But it does actually well, it pays a little bit of their bill. It is work, they're they're doing something. I'd say most most of our inmates, they actually they they appreciate the work, like in the woodworks, the mill works, those kind of jobs, because there's a lot more space there, they have something to do. Pretty much everyone that I speak with and says the same thing. Time flies when you're working. And in in in a pr in a prison, what you want is to have time fly. You don't you don't want to be like, okay, that's one more minute, yeah, just 16 more years.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

So it's uh 8 p.m. on a Wednesday. We've just eaten dinner. I'm a regular inmate, I'm not a violent danger to anyone. What do I do from 8 p.m. to lights out? Is it watching a movie every night? Can I hang out with my mates and play cards?

SPEAKER_00 46:39

You know 8 p.m. Then you're already locked in.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

But then like when you fall asleep, they just line in bed watching TV.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Yeah. Uh so I'd say most of them back and have dinner around uh 5, 5 30 p.m. And then after that they have uh they have a time on their board where they can just uh walk around, they can speak with each other, they can maybe look at TV together, um maybe play cards, that kind of thing. They also get um beslute uh like they get informed if they have a a write-up or if they've done something wrong or if they if they're getting letters or that kind of stuff. So each evening the personnel is always is always informing them of documents and showing them letters and that kind of that kind of thing, up until it's uh it's time to get locked up. 7 30 p.m. is when everyone's supposed to be locked up, and we start a little bit earlier with just making sure that locking up each and every door.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

Physical keys or digital keys?

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Most are physical keys. Okay. Still. We're working on getting there.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

We tried a d a number of different solutions trying to make it more digital, but uh it's still physical keys that's uh I watched a movie with Daniel Radcliffe set in apartheid South Africa where he escaped prison by manufacturing keys in the woodworking.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

I think we've had some inmates way like many years ago who did the same thing. We have pretty much a a small museum at Cumla Prison in a personnel board, uh where where only personnel of course have access, where we have like old chanks and old old equipment where that uh the inmates used in order to try to escape or try to try to misbehave. Guns made out of soap. Yeah, they so they well they they can't have guns and they can't get them in. So but they can still they can try to have blocks of uh of soap which they put together and try to fuse them and then they try to to colour them black. Oh, so it just looks exactly. But when someone puts that in your back and you can't see it, sure, and they say I have a gun, the personnel is gonna be like, shit, he has a gun. Has there ever been a successful prison escape in Cumla? It has been. But we've had I can't remember. We celebrate we didn't celebrate, it was more of a uh going out. Like we haven't had anyone run from Cumla for uh escape from Cumla for like what's 20 or 30 years. Any attempts? I'd say most of the escape the the attempts to escape nowadays, they're they're usually associated with transports to and from prisons. Because when you go to Cumla and you look at it, you realize there is first of all there's a fence with barbed wire and electricity, and then you have the wall, and then you usually have walls within the walls as well, like six, seven, eight meters high, like really high walls which you can't get over. You don't have the it isn't like in the in the American movies where you can kind of jump from roof to roof uh it doesn't work that way in cumulative. Dig a hole into the phones. Exactly. So I think most people just give up before they even start attempting or planning that that kind of action. But just going and uh going to and going from uh a prison. Well, you go by car and that's where you don't have the barbed wire in a car. So I think m most of them usually um they they not they let go of the the idea that they're gonna be escaping from Kumla.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Do you know where Sweden ranks globally in terms of the effectiveness of its prison system? No idea. What would your what would your gut say, having spoken to maybe comrades who do similar work in other countries?

SPEAKER_00 50:24

I'd say I'd say we'll probably they would probably rank equal to the other Nordic countries. That's the that's the countries which I think that we can actually start to compare ourselves with. Usually everyone's always want to compare uh Swedish and uh and the US uh uh prison systems. But it's it's not just prison systems, it's it's the society in general which is so different between the US and and Sweden. So it's kind of hard to compare the prison systems.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Does that come down to the gang influence that you're suggesting?

SPEAKER_00 50:56

No, not not exclusively, but but gang influence has a it has an influence on it. But I'd I'd say Sweden invests a lot in treatment programs. And treatment programs, they're good if you want to if you want to change, but it's hard to force change on someone. Yeah. You have to make them realize uh that they need to or want to change. And as long as you can't if you can't make someone realize that there's there's a win, there's a gain from from changing their their their their life pattern, they're not gonna do it. Which is kinda hard. It's kinda hard to apply the criminal rehabilit rehabilitation programs to everyone as a as a consequence because sometimes there's gonna be people who's gonna be participating in order to try to get an advantage, but they're not ready to to actually change.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

I watched a documentary on it and it felt like there was more of an emphasis on rehabilitation within the Nordic prisons versus sheer punishment in many other prisons.

SPEAKER_00 51:59

Yeah, that that's an outspoken um principle. That's basically it's it's called criminal warden. Like it's it's supposed to have um rehabilitation in inside it. Sometimes they have a so short of a sentence that we don't have the time for it. But that's that's basically the the principle that we want them to not go back to this pattern of life, and that's that's super hard. It also has I I mean this very core idea influences everything, influences the fact that uh Kim Nord Warren has has uh historically had a lot of prison officers on quite a few inmates, or because we actually want to speak with the inmates, which is like, oh well, of course we should speak with the inmate. That sounds ridiculous not to. Uh, but if you compare to ex for example, the US, where they have a lot less officers and a lot more inmates, well, it's because it's more of a containment than it's a rehabilitation. I'm not saying that they don't do rehabilitation, of course, but it's it's gonna be it's it's really the core principle of Sweden that we will try to to change them. And this is also something which is being affected by the fact that okay, but we're still lowering the the quota of guards to inmates right now because of economic factors and because we need to grow as fast as we can. So it's affecting the core principles of how we're supposed to work. And this is something that I can that I can speak with a lot of prison officers about because they're they're a little bit afraid, they've always been proud of what they do and how they work, and now they see okay, it's changing, and we're not gonna be able to maintain this for a lot longer if it changes too much. Um and that's that's a question I don't know how to answer because I also see it's changing, I see less and less social interactions. I don't want that between gods and yeah, I don't want that to happen, but I don't I don't see how we avoid it.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

Yeah. Do you ever have a guy who comes in that is very intellectually curious and uses his time up to become some type of academic or philosopher king, like someone who really shines because of all of this free time that they've been given and removal from all the negative influences they had had beforehand?

SPEAKER_00 54:20

I'd say most of the times it's the people who spend a lot of years in the in the prisons. Um they I wouldn't say they tend, but it's not unusual for them to actually start to know the law and the routines and everything in order to know the system so that they can actually work by the system. Sometimes we we're a little bit sloppy, call them rezzavrista, we we call them like they want to try to break the system. Sometimes they just really truly want what's theirs, their their right inside of the system. So they tend that they really learn it, they learn it quite a lot. Sometimes they're even like an attorney for the other the other clients, the other inmates on their ward. So so sometimes they have a problem, and this particular individual comes up. I'll be representing him, and you're you're an inmate.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

Stop it. Is there a truth to institutionalization? People get to the point where they can't return to the real world. Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

I'd say the the most one one of the um like examples that I have in the back of my head is is uh a person who well he'd been probably in prison 18, 19 years, and he always reacted so so funny when I brought out if someone called me on my cell phone and he always looked at it like and I always seen he'd seen the evolution of uh of cell phones in prison, but he he had never actually used one, so he always thought like when they actually erased the buttons from it, and he just couldn't real he couldn't like phantom how it worked. So he was always mesmerized when you grabbed your phone and you you so you answered a call or he he just saw it and he he wanted so much to play with it. He re you could see it on him he and he knew that okay if I try to take this uh this cell phone from from the boss, it's not gonna turn out well. This is gonna be really bad for me, and I couldn't give it to him because I can't show it. But you realise, okay, he he's not gonna know your phones, he's not gonna have it in Sweden we have mobile bank in order to to confirm your identity. He's not gonna be he's not gonna understand the way the society works, and sometimes they're also you can see it in them that they're afraid because they don't know what they're going to get, but they do know what they have. And I think that's just something that they do know they know their friends, they don't have anyone on the outside anymore, probably a lot don't really have the family support that that other people have. So when the day come they they actually get we have we have a we have a calling for it. It's it's basically a disease that you get when it starts to get your time to to be let out of prison. People they they s tend to start doing irrational things or even even trying to go into isolation because they have so many thoughts on their own that they can't handle the fact that there are people around them. So they try to get isolated the last weeks. Uh they try to do something stupid to get out isolated just because they have so many things to process and so much anxiety of just getting out.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

That's quite quite devastating to think about.

SPEAKER_00 57:27

Oh yeah. Yeah. We always try to have we always try to have like meetings with each and every one of the inmates. But they're they're meeting which is mainly to make sure that they understand they have to go to free ordin, they have to have like uh follow-up visits to to the probation service as well. To uh there are some things that you have to do, they have to go get an ID as as fast as possible. You can uh you can uh engage with uh with uh some formal powers about trying to find a job afterwards. There's there's some some some programs for that for former inmates, like uh having uh contact with sociologists in order to just have some a roof over your head and maybe some some money so that you don't starve from day one. But these things are they're very formal and they're just basically they're the basics. You can't teach anyone about what's happened with the cars and trains and airplanes and buildings and and like the the civil life for the past 20 years. That's that's not gonna that's just gonna scare them.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

So you find a lot of guys will intentionally commit more crimes just to be returned to that environment?

SPEAKER_00 58:36

You sometimes you see them come back. Um I'd say some of them are relieved to come back as well.

SPEAKER_01 58:41

So you're you're at Cumla, you have you have it's one of the highest security prisons, you have violent offenders mostly. Do you find that the majority of the inmates are actually violent when when you meet them, or is it the case that it was just an instance of violence that put them in there? But inherently they aren't very violent people.

SPEAKER_00 58:59

That's a great question. Because that's something that that I reacted on when I actually started working in a prison. You kind of you kind of when when you think about it, you you think that everybody's gonna be Hannibal Electric. And then you get there and you you can have really good discussions with most of them. I'd say most of them are like like ordinary humans on the outside. They tend to they want to discuss things. Probably a lot of the inmates that I work with, uh they have a smaller the amount of stress or the amount of uh of friction in a conversation needed to to bring them together, annoyed uh or or a little bit aggressive, just it requires less for them to to to go gro grow aggravated. But you can always start at base level, you can always have a conversation and then you just have to as a as a professional, as a as uh uh a prison officer or as a boss or whatever, you just have to uh let go of ego and then you can pretty much have a conversation with anyone. Um you just have to as long as you don't start to like blow up your own ego or start to to to act like I'm the boss or you're gonna follow what I say, and just instead say, okay, this is just the way it works. Uh I don't I don't want to have to do anything bad. So I'd like it for you not to force me by not behaving or following the rules. Just as long as you have a normal conversation with them, it's usually not that bad. The isolation chambers, uh, the isolation unit is is a little bit different. Usually we get the ones who have a particularly uh high risk of uh of uh becoming aggressive in their tone, but that also puts uh a bigger pressure on us for to be able to handle that kind of clients. So we can't we can't jump into a fight with with clients. Usually if uh if an if a discussion goes bad and they start to go aggressive, we usually s just shut the door. If we go back like 15 years, I'd say if someone someone started to become aggressive and and hide their voice towards us in, for example, the isolation chamber. I shouldn't say isolation chamber, that sounds really bad. You'd open the door and you'd say, Oh, you can't behave this way. But that's also that's kind of like inviting to okay, this could be a uh situation. Um and we've noticed that okay, they they're starting to grow aggressive, they're starting to shout things at us. We can either try to grab this problem right now, or we can just shut the door, we can give them time, we can come back, we always have to handle the problem, but we just don't have to do it right at the moment that they're pissed off. If we go back 30 minutes later and they're still pissed off and they're still posing a threat to us, then we have to handle it, then we have to go in there and say, Okay, but you have to follow our orders. But if we go back 30 minutes later, usually they're not pissed off anymore. Yeah, they're just frustrated, and then we can start a base level again with the talk, and then we can see, okay, can we can we reach some other conclusion instead of just going to oh I'm gonna knock you out? That's a bad idea. How often have you had to physically defend yourself? How often has an inmate put the hands on you? I don't think an inmate has ever put their hand on me, um, which forced me to to defend myself. I've had a couple of times where they they swung for the fences swing for the fences um and and try to knock my head off. But usually um if you're not in in in like the the danger zone where where they can actually hit you. Yeah, um, you can get out of the way. And you can also most of the time you can you can realize that this is about to go south, I need to get out of here, I need to end this uh this this conversation. And the times that they've tried to take a swing at me usually is the one who's in psychosis because then it's kind of hard to read them, and you don't realize he's gonna try to hit me before he does, and then you just need to be quick. We all we always have when I when I go to an inmate's room, I always have the personnel with me and I always say to them that I'm going to focus on the conversation, I'm going to adapt my my body language as well, I'm going to lower my guard. I think it's important for them to to realize that I'm not I'm not standing in a ready position. I'm I'm gonna try to adapt as well as I can. So I'm putting the the responsibility of my safety in my in my uh prison officer's hands. So they know that okay, Pete's gonna be he's gonna be really busy with this discussion. If I see this inmate moving in on him uh and trying to be violent, I have the I have the I can take the initial initiative, I can I can shut down the the conversation because we can always save it afterwards, even if it's a misunderstanding, even if the inmate wasn't aggressive, we can always like okay, he did he he shut this door really quickly because he thought that we were gonna be violent towards me. Were you gonna be violent towards me? Sometimes they say, Yeah, I I was gonna punch you in the face, but most of the time they say, No, I would never do that, blah blah blah. And then we'll just okay, well, well, we'll continue. Give me 10-15 minutes, we'll come back and we'll continue to talk. And so that's that's a that's a that's a good that's a good principle for me when I work, because I really want to focus on I worked 15 years and basically never had to. I've been in situations where I had to put someone down, but it hasn't been because they wanted to wanted to wrestle with me most of the time. It's been because we had to force them to do something that they didn't want to do and they refused. So we had to forcibly move them or or or or put them down.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:32

Yeah, it's I'm surprised to hear that just because, especially with the people you're dealing with, they're already the most disbehaved out of some of the worst defending prisoners in Sweden. So you guys must have a really good toolkit for de-escalation purely through verbal communication.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:50

It's uh I think that we've we've grown pretty good at what we do. I think also that it's a it's a great it matters great how you express yourself, but also the signals that you show with your body as well. Uh if you're uh if you're uh well if you're a well-trained man, for example, uh like if you're a bodybuilder, that kind of uh um that kind of person.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:14

Yeah, full of tattoos.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:15

Full of tattoos, yeah. The inmates are gonna be they're gonna be looking at you and they're gonna be like, okay. Um they're not gonna have the same the same view on if you're uh a smaller guy or perhaps a girl, they can still they can still wanna attack you, of course, but it's not something I think they're a little bit more provoked when uh when a young dude with muscles tells them something versus when uh when a when a young female or older female tells them something. Do you have female members of staff that manage male prisoners? Pretty much half of my staff is uh female.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:51

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

And for some reason I just thought it would have been all male. We used to have we used to have more fiscal confrontations and we used to have more males, but it's worked out pretty. good with the females that I have because they're they're both trained in how we well if we have a physical concentration they actually they've done the the the exercise as well they know how to act but just the fact that they do know how to to um to deal with those situations also makes them they have a self-confidence and they can also have a really good conversation and they can be soft in their to in their approach with the inmates um but also tell inmates that okay now you're passing the boundaries sometimes th when you're being too too gentle in the tone it's mistaken for a weakness and it's it it's important to to be soft to be gentle but also as soon as someone tries to take advantage of it you just okay but here's the line I'm being good with you right now but we're not gonna cross this I'm a professional you need to realize that if you do something there's gonna be consequences but as long as we have this understanding we can we can speak and we can actually like ask uh tell each other like how are you is everything okay do you have any problems do you want to speak with me about so I think I think we used to say that females are they're good at speaking emotions and men are good at them enforcing the rules I think that's bollocks um uh they're they're really good at handling physical confrontations but they're also good at at handling the the emotional talks and the guys that I have in my ward as well they're also really good at speaking about emotions they have to be otherwise they can't work at the isolation unit they have to be able to say that sounds really shitty I'm sorry um like sometimes you just have to acknowledge that it's it's really bad in isolation and you just have to give them space for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:46

Other people feel heard yeah and not judged yeah yeah it's interesting there's this famous prison experiment where a number of university graduates were paired off into prisoners and guards and it ended up being this total power manipulation control. And I think it's since been kind of debunked a little bit but still you know there is a really interesting philosophical question at the bottom of it. And you yourself as a prison guard with all of your staff as well being prison guards do you weed out for this sort of power hungry people in the process or can you not really understand until they get there or is it even just bullshit and your types of jobs it's not power hungry people that are even seeking them out in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:28

One of the worst things that can happen is that you get at someone who's pretty much power hungry who just wants to who just wants to win the win the argument instead of winning the situation. So sometimes people just want to win an argument. They don't care about the consequences of the strategic values they just I'm right because I'm personnel and you're wrong because you're an inmate I have the power yeah don't so I'm gonna be right all the time which I sometimes hear and I I react to because you have to be able in in this kind of work you have to be able to say I'm wrong and you also have to be able to say I'm sorry not only to your colleagues but sometimes even to inmates and this is something which is really hard for a lot of prison officers sometimes the inmates don't really deserve to hear I'm sorry because they never ever say it themselves but sometimes we have to do it because sometimes we are wrong and sometimes we just have to de-escalate the situation as well. So I'd say the people who just wanna what just want to win just want to have power power over someone else they're really dangerous and we try to exclude them as well as much as possible. We try to weed them out. I'd say regarding the experiment I'm really glad that you brought up that it's kind of been been debunked afterwards but I think that I don't know if I think I don't think that people search to towards a criminal warden because they want to have power over other people. And they usually say it to me and oh you only work here because you want to want to dictate what other people should do or don't I'd rather say it's the opposite nowadays. Really?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:02

Yeah I think that it's uh it's about just trying trying to help for a lot of people do you do this job out of a sense of service or did you fall into this line of work because of your military experience some serendipitous opportunity and that you just happen to be good at it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:17

Yeah um so I started with just being I didn't have any inspiration or any desire to actually to start start a job by helping others. I I was an old military uh an old soldier uh and I just needed a job and not a lot of people not a lot of when you say that I'm really capable at shooting things and blowing things up people employers they don't line up uh Kim Know Warden lined up and they said okay but you can also get up in time and you we can also trust you. Those are key uh key values yes sir I'll I'll do it okay well come in on Monday and we'll have a talk so I kinda went on okay I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure no one escapes I'm gonna lock them up I'm gonna give them food and then just after working pretty much a couple of months I realized that okay but a core value to this is actually speaking with humans. So I need to get better at speaking with humans. And we have some courses in Kim Nodwarden where where you get better at that but you also have to practice it. So that's basically what I did as much as possible. I just try to practice I try to go into into their wards I I'd be there I try to speak with them as much as possible. Try to joke with them in the beginning when you're new it's kind of you you kind of have to find your own way you look at other people and you realize how they speak with inmates and then you try to simulate you try you try to copy okay he's doing that and she's doing that I wonder if I can do that and you try the same sometimes it works and most of the times it doesn't because you have to be yourself if you want to reach another person. And then after a while after after years you realize what you can do and what you can't do by exploring like okay where's the where's the the limitation where's the boundaries for me and for me it's been it's been a a journey where as I've gotten older and perceived less of a threat there see I'm getting saggy along the sides and I'm not I'm not I'm not quite in the physical shape that I used to be so I'm not not that much of a threat anymore and I can also I can I can laugh and I can say oh the the good old days and they'll they'll listen a little bit more to me. But I think mainly I've just I've been able to just let go of all the idea of me being better or me being right just have having a a conversation where I can say huh I didn't think about that to an inmate. I think that's made me better at conversing with them. In the end of the day I'm always gonna be the one who rules my award the isolation units so I'm always gonna be the one who can say yes or no this is right this is wrong I set the rules but I don't need to set a rule in a in a conversation and I I don't need to threaten anyone I don't I don't need to say you better do this or I'm gonna do that. They know that they know that they're speaking with the boss so it's better that I have a soft approach um as as much as possible and just try to have conversations and then if they can't abide by the rules my personnel is is going to be forced to intervene but would try to solve everything by discussing them first.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

Do you think leadership is uh something people learn over time or inherently some people are just born better leaders?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:36

I'd say some people are born with a slight degree of being able to be better leaders but I'm 100% convinced that you you're grow this uh skill over time as long as you try to always refine it you have you have to you have to practice it over and over and over again for me it's it's it's really easy basically all my leadership skills I've taken from from the armed forces from the from the military and I know that my personnel my prison officers they like me I like no I love them they're they're like they're a really great group I didn't even wage to say that they love me in in a good way but it's lead from the front just don't lock yourself don't be a boss be a leader so you have to be in there also never never tell anyone to do something unless you're you're yourself is willing to do it. Don't put someone in a situation which you wouldn't put yourself so you have to be able to you have to be willing to do everything that you you said you tell your staff to do. If you're not willing to do it then you shouldn't ask someone else to me that's like a reflection of leadership like okay and that also that also means that I sometimes have to go out into the war I have to go and confront the clients and I have to sometimes do all the things with the the clients who behave the worst just to show them that okay I I'm not just talking I'll do this with you. You're gonna do it most of the time but you have to know that at the end of the day I'm willing to do the same thing that I tell you to do. And that's to me that's important. That defines you not not as a boss but as a leader um and if you want to be a good boss you have to be a good leader as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:13

And the respect is earned not given.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:15

Absolutely but you know you have to also know as a as a boss in uh in criminal warden you have to realize that you are the first person that they should be able to remove and things would not nothing would change. You have to realize that you are the less the the person as soon as you think that you're the most essential person you haven't got you haven't gotten it. You don't realize where you're working because if you take one of my prison officers away they're not gonna be able to make it in time they're gonna have they're gonna be stressed out they're gonna be there there's gonna be uh frustration and we're not gonna be able to maintain the same security if you take my my my my person who helps me with a lot of decisions like the the the formal stuff right um writing a lot of documents and and helps me with that kind of stuff well if you take her away then I'm gonna be the section is gonna be suffering because she makes a lot of works which I don't have to do. But if you take me away everyone's gonna be able they're gonna they're gonna be able to work for a long long time. So you have to realize that as a boss you are the least essential they're the most essential and your job is to give them the tools to do their job well.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:26

Nothing else. I I really like that idea that an expression of really good leadership would be the fact that you're as well the least important cog because everyone below you is so empowered to do their jobs. And also as their leader you have full trust in them to fully do their jobs give them that responsibility and so forth. I don't think I've ever heard that before but you know would make a nice little chapter in one of these self-help leadership for sure. Uh returning to the prisons what is the influence that gangs have in cumla specifically but then as well broader Swedish prisons and then this also follows on to sort of what the ethnic divide looks like in these prisons.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:05

In the term gang I'm going to also include like postal varieties sometimes you have postal code gangs which we loosely use the term where where someone's from a from a specific postal uh area in Sweden and sometimes they're like well I'm 167 blah blah and on on the other street you have 168 blah blah and there are two different gangs there's a lot of loose fractions nowadays there it's not uh the higher higher hierarchy from from uh from the classic gangs which used to run the criminal activities in Sweden. So I'm gonna include them as well and say that well they're they're a pain in the ass placing prisoners in Sweden because you don't want uh the opposing factors to to be placed in the same uh in the same order you want them to to be in in separate and nowadays it's not it's not as clear who's friends with who sometimes they can be in the same same gang but it can still be enemies in fractions of the gang which makes it really hard for us because they usually know who they can't sit with and who they can't spend time with.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:14

Better than you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:15

Yeah but they don't want to they don't want to tell us because it's seen as something bad to speak with with prison officers about these kind of problems so usually usually we don't get the information all of the time perhaps know 70% of all the information but we miss 30% of the information which the inmates know themselves and we put them together and then we have a fight. And the problem with a fight is well we have to we have to solve the fight and we have to have to move them from there and usually we have a couple of fighters who end up in the isolation unit and we have to find new places for them as well so there's always this this enormous work which is put into just trying to find new places for them because one of the one of the core essential principles of isolation is that they're supposed to be isolated as short amount of time as possible. We should send them out as fast as we can but that means that we have to have a a good place for them to go into and we have to make sure that we've done everything that we can in order to to ensure that they're not gonna be in a fight. Is it usually the same prison just a different ward or you're often sending them to other prisons where they have to go through the same problem there as well to discover which of their gang affiliates are they I think uh cumla has a lot of different wards so we can actually differentiate pretty good so we usually give uh several tries before we say okay now it's impossible we can't we can't solve this and a ward is like standalone self-containing has its own kitchen oh yeah has its own rec rooms has its own jobs so one ward might never interact with another ward. Exactly um and that that's how you differentiate which is also they they usually have a common walking grounds promenade platzer uh so sometimes they they'll they'll share that space but they'll never in any other places that they'll never be together it's a that part of the job is really hard right now because we have so many inmates and we have so few places but they still fight between each other and the problem is just finding a good location for them to to be placed in which forces in isolation units to try to work hard to to speak with inmates and ask them and try to get them to say something about okay but where where do you think that you could sit which it sounds a lot like me saying they get to choose where they sit it's it's not that they get everything that you ask for but we really want to know okay we don't want a murder in here so I I need you to tell me is it gonna be a murder if I put you in that section right now? And also I have to take into account account the fact that maybe it's trying to manipulate me into going as to a specific section so he's gonna try to lure me in the right direction of oh I can't be there I can't be there but maybe that place because I know someone over there and I also had some I also been totally set up for where a ward actually told me that this this guy is I wasn't a boss at at uh isolation back then they told me that this guy should come here we all like him and that guy that client that inmate he said oh that sounds really good and he actually got some information he was sitting in isolation unit so he's like I'm happy yeah that sounds great got there and instead got the shit cake caked out of him because they lured him there instead and they they totally set everyone up.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:34

Because he was just the opposite gang member it it's kind of hard that that part do you have a good sense you and the and the and your and your colleagues do you have a good sense for what the sort of gang setup looks like or is it so fractured? Because the sense one gets from consuming you know Swedish media. Yeah Diamond Salihu has been a guest on the show writes a lot about uh gang violence happening in the suburbs of Stockholm is that it's really really really fractured. Yeah there aren't three or four big gangs which people are affiliated with but like five ten man gangs yeah who are still willing to murder their opposition.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:10

I'd say I used to have a better sense of it. Now it's gotten a like a lot more complicated I'd say previously like five ten years ago it was the South of Sweden which I had a problem with because there wasn't any used to have something called Falange Co M Falange. So pretty much two two different uh two different parts which uh which had a rivalry down in Malma in the south of Sweden and after that everyone just kind of turned on each other. You couldn't find like a a particular gang because everyone was pretty much just an in the individual with individual friends. So I never really understood south of Sweden probably it's gonna be some some policeman who's like I know everything but back then I didn't understand what was going on down there. But Gottebori, Stockholm and and the rest of Sweden I had a pretty good sense of who's friends with who. Nowadays Stockholm and Göteborg is Göteborg is a little bit easier than Stockholm but Stockholm is still especially with a lot of new gangs splitting into fractions having uh fight inside among themselves sometimes you actually find an inmate within a fraction and you find someone from that fraction and put them together and they still fight because well we didn't like each other to start with okay that's mission impossible I can't solve this how how do how do those gangs fracture from ethnic lines or are they all mixed and I'd say most are mixed. It's it's hard if you if you try to think like that I'd say most of the times it's uh it's a bit older people perhaps uh fromce Russian owned country or perhaps an Arab country who just wants someone to speak with someone older who just wants to have someone to have a conversation with because sometimes they're from well or an African country where they don't have anyone to speak with and they're a bit isolated even if you put them in a in a in a in a in a war with others. But in the gangs I'd say it's so it's so mixed up that that's not the ethnic heritage isn't that much of a factor. Is there a white supremacist gang? There is I don't think they're that strong anymore. We used to have more of it. We used to have more of it like just 10 years ago guys with naughty tattoos on stuff. Nowadays we don't have that much of of uh that population when you when you can't place them in the same ward anymore they tend to run into troubles if they have like naughty tattoos we've had that problem before with with that with that kind of tattoos and they it doesn't turn out well on a lot of the wards. It's not a great idea. When speaking amongst um impromptu violence in a ward how often is death the outcome versus just a severe beating very seldom normally it's severe beating we've had some very close calls where where we've at one time we had to uh fly with a helicopter from from hospital in Orebru to Uppsala because I think there was a swirling inside of the head so there's been some really close calls but normally it's just a grave beating.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:14

And just reminding you I'm editing it but Arne would kill me if I didn't ask this. Oh yeah. How much truth is there to the sort of sexual violence that occurs in an all-male prison?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:25

I'd say it differs a bit from from the perceived views of the US uh prison systems. I've encountered cases of it but it's it's very rare it's very rare the the idea that they uh start turning into fancing men just because it there's a lot of men around them I'd say that's that's pretty much false.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:46

Is that because Sweden has so many conjugal visits allows for conjugal visits?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:50

Could be could be or it's just media that makes you think that I think it's media that makes you think if you prison break uh the the characters in there well no that's not that's not Swedish uh Swedish prisons at all okay okay and um is there an informal hierarchy among the inmates like a very observable power difference? Some some wards have uh have a very clearer power structure than others. I've I've ever been boss over wards where an individual has very clearly been the leader in the ward I'd say most of the times you can be a negative leader and most of the times the the the leaders are negative.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:31

Because they sow more conflict than they do.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:34

Sometimes they're they're actually they're pretty neutral leaders it's it's pretty much like the other like other parts of the society that at the very least you know who's in charge. You can always pluck the the negative leader away but you have to realize that there's always going to be a power structure so there's always going to be turmoil and fighting over who's in charge in the wars. I'd say it's it's not always a good thing to remove them from power. You have to individually look at at that individual and see okay what's gonna happen can I predict and is it worth it?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:12

How bad of a leader is this individual and how much has he actually cost uh cost mayhem on the on the ward and removing him from power means putting him in another ward yeah exactly what gives them this informal leadership is it some type of rep they carry from their crime what they've done on the outside or are they just the biggest toughest guy in there? Like what gives them that informal power?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:34

I've seen examples of both uh your uh your examples I've seen uh inmates who pretty much weigh like 130 140 kilos and pretty ripped as well who just goes into and can pretty much do anything no one no one's gonna no one's gonna do anything and I've also seen uh crimes if you've committed like a murder against opposing uh opposing gangs that kind of that kind of crimes can sometimes give them respect on the inside and sometimes Just age, just having been in prison for a long time, having lost some knowledge, and also having like an almost a father figure effect on the rest of them that can also empower someone to be uh to be a leader in in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:15

Does that father figure effect is it more prominent now since a higher majority of the new inmates are in their late teens, early twenties?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:24

I'd say the opposite. I say the teens that we get nowadays have less respect for the elders. So I think a lot of the people who used to be in charge aren't in charge anymore because there's a lack of respect there. No one's no one's being given anything. It's basically the same as we were talking about before. You have to earn something. So when you're new in a prison, it used to be that okay, I I'm the newest one. I'm gonna do what they tell me to do. I'm gonna do nowadays. People can come in and pretty much like, yeah, I don't care about anything. Even the hierarchy, sometimes they get beat up, and sometimes you just have a fight where someone else is like, Oh, he's standing up towards them. I'm gonna join him and we're gonna have a we're gonna take power over this uh over this place instead.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:07

How often are you are you confronted with physical violence on the ward? Is this a weekly occurrence, daily?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:12

Say at the very least, a weekly occurrence. In the isolation unit, it's it's a bit more extreme when we have violence. In in the wards, like in the normal wards where where they they're not isolated, I'd say perhaps on a weekly basic. Normally a ward can have four different sections, uh, or two different sections or three different sections. You you have at least once a week or once every two weeks some type of threat or violence in them during these weeks. But they're they're usually among the inmates themselves. Sometimes it's it turns against the personnel as well, but uh usually it's between between themselves. And I'd say more often than not, it's not discovered until afterwards, if discovered at all. Because sometimes they'll sneak into the room and they'll sell things. They they they don't always try to hit towards the head, sometimes they hit towards the body in order to like like okay, you've done something wrong, but you can stay, but you have to know that there's a consequence for your actions. So I don't think that we discover everything. We try to discover everything, we try to go through the ward several occasions a day. We try to always search for does anyone have any new damage, anything? But if you have bruises under, let's say, on your stomach, we're not gonna go and pull up the t-shirt on everyone and look for the stomach for bruises every day. Um so it's kind of hard to know how many people are actually being threatened and how many are be are being um exposed to violence in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:43

How often are you confronted with people that self-harm or become suicidal?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:49

On the on the prison as a whole, I'd say probably once a week or once every two weeks. Most of the time threats to self-harm or suicide. But sometimes they they also either cut themselves or uh or uh try to hang themselves. So it's not it's not very uncommon.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:11

What can what can be done to or like is there a solution to that? Or is this just an impossible problem to solve, even the fact that you're in a room with a bunch of other guys, maybe you don't know anyone and they're threatening you, yeah, and you don't have much going on for you outside of the prison. Like, is it a solvable problem or just something you have to endure and try and you know react to when it happens?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:34

Every time that uh that an inmate uh uh comes to comes to Kumla prison, we have to we have to follow a procedure where we ask a bunch of questions and we we check if there's any uh thoughts of self-harm and suicide. There there's also regulations on uh doing this on a on a regular basis when there's uh for example a new verdict, something which will cause them to stay longer in prison, or if they say that okay, I'm feeling bad, then we're forced to actually just look at it and say, okay, uh we'll we'll ask some questions, we'll see how you're doing. So it's it's something that since it's a it's a it's a rising uh problem, it's something that we're working with pretty hard. But I on the same time I think it we're never gonna be we're never gonna be able to to completely solve the problem because they're not gonna they're not gonna be they're not gonna feel the greatest when when they're in in prison. A lot of people have a lot of problems on the outside, which they don't find a solution for in prison, and so they kinda they kinda lose their their drive to continue to live.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:46

The alternative same is better.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:47

Yeah. It's always every time that we're we're confronted with someone who's uh who's uh committed suicide, it's it's really hard on the staff as well. Usually I've learned throughout the years that it's not the ones that you think is gonna do it. You're always surprised by who's uh who's trying or who's committing a suicide. Sometimes it's more of a cry for help for people who try. You can sometimes spot it, they do it when they know that someone's gonna be walking in, they kind of plan for it so that someone will actually in the last second get step into the room and like, oh shit, something's happening. But then you have the people who actually go through it with all of it. We actually have we have education where we have to we have we have to observe patterns, especially if someone's feeling bad, but also if someone's feeling bad and suddenly starts feeling good, because usually that's that's an indicator of I'm feeling bad because I have a lot of bad things going through my mind. But then when you finally make the decision that I'm going to end this, then you don't have to think about all then, then you're pretty good, actually, because you know it's gonna end. I made up my mind, so you have to try to observe that, but that's also how it's kind of how you see that because we we're basically telling personnel you have to perceive the fact that they're feeling bad as a possible threat for self-harm or suicide, but also when they're feeling good, you have to say see that at which makes it really hard. So the personnel the personnel is really good at it, but it's kind of an impossible job as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:19

Do you feel a sense of responsibility therefore to really know your inmates so you become better at identifying those swings?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:28

In a lot of ways, not just that way, um, but in a lot of ways. That's that's one part reason. I don't want anyone going through self-harm or suicide or going to a psychosis, or even just feeling mistreated. So there is a great responsibility of trying to know all the inmates. My big problem is well you have I have at the very max around 40 inmates, then I have uh personnel, a staff which is somewhere between 30 to 35 personnel, and also obligations of other kinds, which I have to do as a boss. So I can't know all the inmates intimately. I have to try to to send a lot of that responsibility to the personnel as well, but it always stings a little bit when something happens, which you kind of feel like they told me about this, but I I didn't I didn't understand how serious it was, and never had that that doubt or that kind of responsibility with a suicide, for an example, thank God, where I've felt that oh if I acted this way, if I like acted that way, I would have made a difference. But beat things sometimes when inmates said, okay, I can't go to this section, but we forced him to go to that section anyways, uh, because we couldn't perceive a threat. Yeah, but he perceived the threat and he was beaten and he's now in the hospital because of it, or um or when they're when they're gradually declining and I can't solve the problem of them of ending their decline of mental health. Sometimes you you tend to you take it home and you kinda you kind of wonder what could I be done differently. It's I don't think it's you have to always wonder what you could have run done differently, otherwise you're not gonna learn from your mistakes, and that's not gonna make you better. You have to try to see every failure as a possibility to grow, otherwise it's just a failure, and then you're just gonna start to bury yourself in guilt. So you have to try to okay, I have to try to get better from this. What can I do to improve? What can I do to make sure this doesn't happen? And realize that it's going to happen, but I'm gonna do the best I can to develop skills to make sure it doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:34

Are you guys measured on that? Do you know between the different prisons of Sweden, you know, what type of rates of inmates being beaten, self-harming, rehabilitated? These like metrics that you guys are uh ever your performance is based on? There's probably someone who knows this.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:50

It's not something that anyone uh has given to me, unfortunately. Um, but uh there's probably someone doing some some kind of uh evaluation.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:57

And is there a hierarchy of crime on the ward? So for instance, if someone has come in and they've raped someone or they are a pedophile, are they treated unanimously worsely, or is this also a concoction of the media's interpretation of what prison is like?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:12

Sexual crimes, uh especially uh especially rape and uh pedophiles, they're placed in uh in different sections, so they're not sitting uh at in 99% of the cases they're not sitting with other inmates. That's just because they generally get beaten up if they're placed together.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:31

How do the other inmates find that out?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:33

Well, most of them have some some kind of well, they can always write a letter out to the outside. Sometimes they have someone they can call on the outside who they can well the the c not all calls are uh Yeah, exactly. So sometimes they can actually ask, okay, this name has come here. Can you look really quick what it's because they don't have the internet, but the people they call out to usually have.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:57

They don't have the internet in the prison. Well, sure. What was the thought behind that?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:01

Well, we don't want them to continue continue committing crimes, for example. So there's there's cybercrimes, for example, but there's also the possibility to communicate with someone and say, Oh, you have to do this, you you should do that. Um I want you to hurt this one. So we want to have a control over the communication going out from prisons. We don't uh we don't want them to continue being like a gang boss.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:25

Can they watch the news?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:26

Yes, that's actually stipulated in in our uh rules. They have to be able to maintain like news or to get news from what's happening on the outside.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:36

So do you have do you find that now there's two major wars going on, the Swedish Democrats coming into popularity in Sweden? Do you find consistency among the political views and their opinions of wars and stuff like that? Or are they just as well distributed as they are on the outside of the prison?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:52

Trying to think about that question. It's really varied. Say it's really varied. I don't I don't think that I've seen any common uh common ground amongst the inmates. They're really they're really mixed and uh spread uh and uh what about religious fundamentalism?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:08

What do you do about that? Do you have do you allow for someone to pray, you know? Yeah, just I'm just imagining, inside of a prison where you might have violent people who maybe are quite racist or bigoted, and then um, you know, religious extremists who as well are quite bigoted and racist. Yeah. You know, like do you allow the full practice of religion is uh yeah, we allow the full practice of the religion.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:35

So everyone's allowed to to practice the religion. What we do instead is that not everyone can uh can lead a prayer, can lead that type of meeting. Uh we have uh both Christian and uh and and Muslim leaders uh who actually come to to Kumala Prison who goes out to the wards and who are able to to organise the this kind of uh like a group prayer, but we don't want we don't want anyone coming coming in and dictating how someone's supposed to to practice their religion. So because you can uh you you can be a Christian and there can there's there's always always the possibility that someone else is gonna be saying you should practice Christianity this way. And that's the same with Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism and everything. So uh so they can always they can always practice it on their own. We always try to have the grace of respect for when someone's praying, but they can't just organize freely, like group prayers or that kind of activity. That's something which we still govern.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:38

In your in your 15 years experience when you started, there was maybe more of a sense of honor amongst the respect of the informal hierarchy within the prison system, and now you've observed that that's kind of going away because there's a lot more young people coming in that don't give a fuck about those informal hierarchies. Yeah. How how have you observed that is changing the entire prison experience for everyone in there?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:01

Well, first of all, the respect towards female uh free female prison officers has gone down quite a bit. Used to be older female prison officers, you know, they were treated like like mothers in some sort of way. They could they could actually they could go in and say, Oh boys, you can't do this. And the younger ones, then they'd be like, Oh, I'm sorry, I I didn't mean to do that. They try to do that now. It's gonna be a lot of a lot of bad words coming from inside the ward. Um so you can see you can see that the elder prison officers, they and they do get a totally different amount of respect. Still some who who who uh who respect them, but not in the same way as before. You can also see that being a boss inside of uh a criminal warden is is changing also. There's a lot of less respect. There's a lot of people who a lot of uh clients who who don't respect that authority as well. It used to be that they'd all want to participate in meetings with the boss, and they used to want to show a good side of themselves, and sometimes nowadays it's like I I don't even want to kid to speak with him. I don't care. Uh I I couldn't care less if I spoke with the boss.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:11

And what informs that? Is that just um immaturity expressing itself or or complete attitude change?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:17

I'd say the notion that or the the the view that nothing that the boss says is gonna make a difference to them. I think that's uh usually when I speak with them after they've said that they don't want to speak with me, that's usually the first thing they say. Uh it's not gonna change nothing, you're not gonna do anything for me, you're not gonna change anything. Um, and then you start speaking with them. And usually if you just have a good talk, they'll be like, This was kind of nice. You didn't tell me what I should and shouldn't do all the time. You were just having a good uh good talk, and that you inform me of okay, this is what I expect from you, which is quite different from you're bad, you should do better with this. I think the the the most major change that we've seen with with the honor among thieves is that there is pretty much no honor among thieves in inside the wards anymore. Even if you're even if you're the good kind of guy who's done nothing wrong in the ward and tried didn't even go out and speak with personnel, like you just did your time, you're never safe anymore. It used to be like some wars were okay, we don't want to have any problems, so we'll just try to everyone agree that let's let's try to solve things together. Those wars are very rare nowadays. Nowadays there's always a couple or or even more persons who are always disturbing the peace, and there's there's there's very seldom a quiet, uh a calm ward where people can just do their time, get the time to get the days to pass on.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:43

So that's another compounding factor decreasing budgets, increasing population, but then as well a more difficult to manage group of inmates. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:52

So it's a hard hard problem you're facing. Like we have a lot of talk inside of Kim Nall Warden about these problems, pretty much just the factors that you uh spoke about and how to solve them, because there's a lot of alarming reports about the the the threats going up, the violence going up, the personnel getting uh feeling uh burned out a lot more, also, and also previously we've had pretty low wages given the the tasks that we're supposed to be doing. So there's a lot of alarming reports, especially now that we we have to exponentially grow as well, which is which is something to struggle with the following years. This this quite it's quite easy to to fall into some sort of despair, um, and want to go back to the good old days or um were a bit easier. I still remember part of those days where it wasn't the same pressure, it wasn't the same stress amongst prison officers. I don't want to sound too much of a of a boss's boss or that's just like a henchman who says the same thing. I also see this as kind of a challenge. The alternative is me just rolling over and saying this is horrible and it's not gonna work, and I'm I'm just gonna go into a despair mode and I can't do anything. And I don't want to have that sense of approach. I of course I can do something, it's gonna it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better. And we'll see how it gets worse, but nothing's gonna get better by me just saying this is awful. Nothing we can do about it. We have to acknowledge acknowledge the problem, we have to like be real about it, but then again, we can't just see the worst part, we can actually see some of the good parts as well. There's a lot of prison officers uh talking with within the prison walls uh about how laws should be different and how how sometimes it feels like the legal system right now isn't working, and T of Twilight changed it to well, I I'm not qualified to say for the better or worse, but it changed it. So a lot of people who said we should be harder on criminals, well, they should actually be saying no. They actually did something which affirmed my my point of view, but it puts me in a worse spot in the job. So it's you know sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:05

Is there an appetite among the Swedish taxpayer and the Swedish political parties to allocate more resources towards the prison systems?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:12

They started doing it like a couple of years ago. So I'd say that the Swedish uh the Swedish prison system, especially pr the prison officers who work with uh with inmates on a daily basis, they've been getting too low wages for too long. But when uh when they started to uh uh to uh put more funds for the police, they also realized that we have to put more funds for for the Sweden prison Swedish prison officers also. Just a couple of years ago, they started raising the wages pretty drastically. Yeah, we haven't seen those races for a long, long time in in Kriminal Warden. So nowadays it's not it's not a super well-paid job, but it's a lot better paid than it used to be, which also attracts more people. People think of it, it's too bad that pay wages pretty much always have a correlation to how people view respect the occup the the right the status of the job. Exactly. But I think that it's it's higher, it's it's higher now the status than it was before.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:12

So this is an extremely expensive country, yeah. You know, so if you're comfortable saying entry-level prison guard, what is their sec monthly allow uh income?

SPEAKER_00 1:47:22

I'd say somewhere between oh this is broad. I'd say nowadays, today I'd say it's somewhere around 21 29 to 31,000 Swedish crowns. Okay, which is two, two and a half thousand USD per month. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:37

Which is still a low wage.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:40

Yeah, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:41

It's still low. If you'd asked me for just ask me like two years ago, I'd say somewhere around 26,000. Right, right. So there it's been a dramatic increase. One of the things that uh that I also it's not uh there's uh there's um there's a little extra payment when you you work uh uncomfortable hours, that that kind of but they're they're still very low, those those compensations. But we have a pretty good schedule. We have the the the possibility to adapt and to perform the schedule itself. So the personnel gets to to plan their their their months ahead and they get to everyone gets to put in okay, I I want to w work these days this week. Sometimes we have to correct a little bit, make sure that the schedule works all together, but they have a good possibility to actually decide when when they work and which hours they work, and they also have pretty much have an abundance of possibility to work overtime if they want to, uh because there's always work to do. Um so I'd say somewhere around 30,000 possibility definitely to with it with just a one one or two overtime uh sessions to go 40 or above.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:54

Pete, we got a couple more if you're still with me. Go. We haven't spoken anything about drugs or contraband.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:00

So how prevalent one is are you discovering contraband amongst the inmates? And how prevalent is drug addiction?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:07

Drug addiction, very prevalent, but we don't have that much drugs inside, which makes it hard for them. So a lot of a lot of substance uh abusers who uh who get into prison but have a hard time getting their hands on uh narcotics. How we always have the it's there's always a demand for drugs inside of prison. No, most of the time it's actually hush. Uh hush that's usually but uh given that it's very hard to get it in, a lot of a lot of the inmates instead, pretty much everyone has medication. So there's a lot of internal market of trying to okay, but if I give you my medicine, you can have my medicine and maybe we'll have a kick out of it, and that kind of thing. That's pre very prevalent.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:51

So a lot of experimentation with just whatever drugs are available. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:55

Most of the drugs are pretty mild. They're they're they're not elixir they're they're not a A really strong variation. There are, of course, those who get really strong medication as well, but all medication are supposed to be taken when personnel is looking at the inmate. And especially the strong uh kinds. Perhaps you sometimes you maybe you crush them in in order to make sure that they can't give it to someone else. Sometimes they're uh diluted into water in just to see them drink it instead. Because a pill is it's there's always the possibility of even if you're taking it from the personnel, they can put it under the thung and tongue and they they can.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:35

Yeah, right. What what about other types of contraband? What what are things you're discovering that would be surprising?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:41

Tiny USB drives used to be very prevalent with uh tiny cell phones, like pretty much somewhere around two by four centimeters, you know. The the the like the ridiculously small kind porn that's basically like a magazine. Yeah, not the uh not the magazine, but just they always they try to smuggle in. We don't have that we shouldn't have any device where they can actually play a computer file, but that's usually what the USB drives have. The tiny USB drives, which they probably smuggle in through through our security in a very dark corner of the body, but they're usually containing porn. That that's usually one of the that's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:21

Yeah, you would imagine it'd be something that is useful in some way, but simply just that. Why don't you make porn available?

SPEAKER_00 1:51:28

There are porno magazines which they can have. They can't they can't put up we still have we have both male and female officers which uh which work there, so you shouldn't have to go into someone's room and there's a there's a full full frontal, full nudity shot of someone the second that you enter the room. So there are some uh restrictions on what type of porn ma magazine that you can have inside, but you can have can have adult magazines in your room as long as you don't put them up and as long as they're they fall, you can't have any violence, you can't have anything that like would would be uh problematic for their their rehabilitation, but they can have it inside, but you can't have like and so these guys smuggling in the tiny phones, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:13

They're still operating whatever criminal activities at that point.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:17

They're trying to just uh have another way of of getting in tough contact with with someone. Sometimes it's just their fiance, sometimes it's their gang, sometimes it's someone else, just having the possibility to always have access to to to call them from the inside. That's the kind of uh that's the kind of leaders that we we really try to suppress so that you shouldn't be able to continue to commit crimes from or to lead a criminal network from inside of Swedish prisons that kind of defeats the purpose of having someone incarcerated.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:50

Yeah. There's a movie called Shot Caller where a white-collar guy commits manslaughter, ends up in a really violent prison ward at a max security prison, and because of the necessity to sort of you know play the game and stay alive, he ends up getting dragged down and deep into the underworld of it, becomes you know, whatever the the shot caller himself. Is I'm not gonna ask you if there's like any trick to that, but have you ever seen something dramatic like that happen?

SPEAKER_00 1:53:16

I've seen I've seen some some individuals who did one crime, which uh was a really serious crime, end up in uh in Cumla prison, where you kind of like, okay, he's not gonna be one of our issues. He's probably gonna do just his time. And then you can see their transformation into going like he's starting to behave like the other inmates. This is kind of weird, where you see uh a transformation because they they need to adapt, or or they could possibly not adapt, but instead become abused by the others. That's that's something which happens every now and then. There are some who don't adapt, who needs to perhaps sometimes they're left alone, sometimes they need to be put in special wars just to make sure that okay, you you can't function with the other guys because they're probably just gonna use you, and then you have that that very few percentage who turn criminal, like lifestyle criminal.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:07

And is that is that because they discovered some ambition and skill they had to navigate this world, or the forces of the prison move them towards that behaviour?

SPEAKER_00 1:54:17

I'd like to say pass on that question, but but i if if I were to just kind of get out give out a suggestion, I'd say that probably I'd say the camaraderie sometimes could actually do it. Just the fact that you're you're placed with a a bunch of other guys and they're they're suddenly someone that takes care of you and you can start to trust them a little bit, and then you have to do things in order to kind of give them something back. I'd say the gang part of it is a main factor in it if if I were to hypothesize How does having zero freedom, how can you see it affect someone's worldview? Well the first thing they can see is just anxiety. Turn they turn anxious at the very start before they adapt to it. When they adapt to it, be it starts a long progress of well in in the end you have institutionalization. Um I think in the end it's that's gonna be the extreme at the end of it. But I think I think a lot of it is uh an initial anxiety, and then they adapt, and if they can't adapt long term, they're gonna go into mental unhealth, possibly isolation and and possibly psychosis. Well, you see it has a real hard effect on a lot of people. And I think when you when you don't work inside prison, you don't you realize what it what it does to you when you take someone's freedom away. I understand that there's a lot of drive for harder punishments and harder treatments on criminal, but they don't they usually don't need more than having their freedom taken away from them because that's that's quite a severe punishment in its own. They they don't need me to to say that they're bad, and they don't mean need me to take every every good thing away from every carrot away from them. It's quite bad in itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:15

So you exp you you notice in them this increased level of anxiety generally. Yeah. Are there any marked behavioral changes you notice? Just because as I was thinking of, you know, talking to you who lives in this world, it's like, you know, what when you have constant surveillance and and zero freedom, not the ability to just go for a walk on your own accord. How would that then change you, potentially permanently or even just temporarily? What type of behaviors do you exhibit?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:43

There never this uh a red flag is someone who is perfectly relaxed because you can't be perfectly relaxed in a prison nowadays. You you can't because you're always wondering what the other inmates are doing, and if you're breaking perhaps a rule on on the ward as well. You there there's always you always go around being nervous, growing more and more anxious. So the the big red flag is someone who comes in, just sits down the sofa and looks super relaxed, because then you know, oh, he's he's he's uh he's a lifetime criminal, or uh there's something wrong with this dude because this is not the normal behavior.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:21

Regarding because you're working in the in the isolation unit, and as we established at the beginning of the conversation, a lot of people that end up there are more prone to some type of psychosis or psychopathy. Yeah. But just generally among the inmates, is there something that separates them from the obviously there's a lot of things that separate them from just the rest of the people that you might hang out in your civilian life with. But but is there is there is there something identifiable within somebody who's committed such a violent crime and been caught? Do you know what I'm trying to ask there? Yeah, just something intrinsically like something which it's for instance, do you in your civilian life come across people and you think, fuck, you remind me of these inmates?

SPEAKER_00 1:58:04

Definitely. Oh so there's a lot there's a there's actually a lot of people, including the pris per prison officer sometimes, where they'd be like, Oh, you there's not there's not a lot of layers which separates you from the inmates. I think I think that's something I can sometimes perceive in myself as well. Just this there's a very thin line which made me take the way the path that I took in life, which could have taken me the other way. And sometimes I I see the problems that the inmates have, and I realize that if I hadn't dealt with my problems that I had, things would have could have gone another way. And sometimes it starts with sometimes you have inmates getting sentenced to eight months, four months, which is of course serious crimes, and they have to atone for them, but but it's it's not it could be a a fight gone wrong after after a after a pub run. Yeah, after 20 days, yeah, and you you have you have no uh sense of morality or consequences, and then you end up in a prison, and as we said, sometimes you have to abide by the pr prison systems, then you get out of the prison with prison friends who you still have some type of contact with, or in at the very worst example, you start doing crime with and you realize that things are going to spiral from here on. So I don't think that there is actually that much of a difference at all. I think it's it's more about the the actions that we take and sometimes how things turn out. I'd probably if the police had caught me in in a f one of my fights, which I had like every 18-year-old, no, not every, but most 18-year-old drink a couple of beers too much and end up in a fight at some time in their life. And if that had would have gone bad and the police would have seen me, then things might uh might have been really different. So I I usually I usually don't think that there's that much. I also think that that point of view is really great for actually having a good conversation with inmates. Because you don't see it look at it as them and us, you just say we. Yeah. Um it's it's not any more difficult than that.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:13

There's a great line from the wire, if you ever watched it, bubbles. Yeah, because the there's a thin line between heaven and here. Yeah. And I always I can find I find that is so applicable to so many things. This con he doesn't use it with the context of what you just said, but it really does similarly apply. Yeah. Because absolutely, you know, it's like one or two random moments which you just got unlucky with and the entire trajectory of the future is taken.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:39

But then the complexity is you're on a prison ward with genuine psychos who cold heartedly will kill someone and you're treated the same as them. Yeah. Fuck me. I'd be happy to have someone like you, you know, or someone on your staff to be able to actually identify with. You can recognize, hey, this isn't a this isn't a guy evil to his bones. Yeah. He just did a couple of dumb things. All right. So before I got some fun questions, ones we were talking about last night. Yeah. Uh, but before I go to them, is there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't address?

SPEAKER_00 2:01:08

No, I I don't think I thought about what I wanted to speak about. I I thought I'd I just arrive here and I'll answer the questions that someone else is gonna pose to me.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:18

Okay, nice. Well, then in that case, do inmates move slower because they have so much time?

SPEAKER_00 2:01:23

I'd say most of them have some some some some kind of ADHD problem. A lot of them have both attention or uh or a hyper uh disability, which they move faster and they just run up and down the ward.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:40

How would Arne survive if he was thrown into a ward?

SPEAKER_00 2:01:43

Arne's one of those people I'd think I'd look at him and say, You could be an inmate any day on the week. Arne would adapt. I think they would love him, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:52

Nice. Anne was the guest, uh, I think episode 50 or something, and he is your old friend military days. Yeah, and that's actually how I got to meet you, and then as well, Christopher and Rhino, former current Swedish police, but former guests on the police as well. So Aner is Arne is like this incubator, interesting people in Sweden.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:12

Oh yeah, but I I think let's hope it doesn't commit a crime to go into prison, but but I I'd be happy to have him at Kumla Prison.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:19

Based on the conversation last night, he'd also love to be there. Yeah. Um, and what's the most ridiculous thing that an inmate has ever asked for?

SPEAKER_00 2:02:27

That's uh really the most ridiculous thing. I've been asked if I could sing a lullaby for them before they went to sleep, but I don't think it was really serious. But that was quite quite uh quite a story. Otherwise, I've helped inmates wash themselves and I helped them wash themselves after doing number two because he was too old to actually take care of himself. Those are pretty, pretty weird moments in your uh prison officer lifestyle. But um, if you don't do it, there's gonna be someone who can't take care of himself and you can't take a shower or can't do number two, so it's just accepted.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:02

I mean, that's kind of sad to see a guy so old who can't even take care of himself.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:06

It wasn't just age gone down, he has he hadn't taken care of his body and he'd been doing too many substances.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:14

There's a distinction between male prisons, female prisons, you know, the severity of your crime, etc. Yeah. Do you think there should also be further distinctions? Like the young guys shouldn't necessarily all be thrown into a general population, or the old guys should be separated. This comes down to the problem of the economics of it all. Yeah. But ideally, would you like to see more distinctions between the wards?

SPEAKER_00 2:03:34

Ideally, I would. We've tried a lot with of youth wards. They tend to be really messy. I mean more misdemeanor, but I still think that it's sometimes it's it's no, not sometimes, it's always really bad when you just throw someone who's really young of age together with with the more hardened criminals.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:53

So I'd I'd like to see more distinction, but I think we're going the other uh the other um and this is a point we haven't touched on, but one of the most devastating problems with Swedish crime at the moment is the fact that kids, 14-year-olds, are being told to kill someone for payment of like a kebab, you know, just ridiculous stuff, and they are ending up in juvenile centres. Yeah um what similarities are there between the Kumla high-max security prisons and these juvenile centres? Are there any similarities? You know, is the rehabilit rehabilitation process more effective for really young people?

SPEAKER_00 2:04:27

My extremely personal views is that there's great differences, but I sometimes suffer with the personnel of these institutions because I don't think that they have the same support in their law in how to handle these uh these young, let's not call them criminals, but these kids uh who've done something bad. Yeah, because they don't they don't have the possibility to do a lot of the things that we can actually do, like body searches, that kind of stuff. There's big differences in the law, which makes it really hard to actually run those places. I think the the guys who actually do a good job in those places, they should actually be they're heroes. They're they're doing something really great with extremely low resources, and they basically everyone is saying you're doing a gr a bad job, you're failing. So every time that someone's trying their best with very little support, and everyone's just kind of like like kicking them when they're down. Well, you should actually raise them up.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:26

Last silly question top bunk or bottom bunk?

SPEAKER_00 2:05:29

Bottom bunk. And why did you agree to do this interview? First of all, I like Arna. But second of all, um think it's I think it's important that people realize the the ways and the views of of uh Swedish um prison and probation services, um, and to realise that we're a very we're a very square um government, we're a very square uh line of work where we we say we don't allow for a lot of things, but within that square we have a lot of heart and we try to do the best with what we got, and we even though we sometimes have to discipline the inmates by, for example, isolating them, not not as a punishment, but we have to we have to take action against some of their behavior, we still don't try to punish them. We we try to actually do it with as much of a heart and as much compassion as we possibly can. My personnel and my colleagues in Cumla Prison are just doing one heck of a job, and it's important that people understand and appreciate it as well. My work is not that important, but if they see a prison officer, they should probably say, Well, hats off to you, sir.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:46

Well, the the heart and compassion I think has certainly shone through throughout this interview. So thanks so much for agreeing to it, giving me so much of your time and being so open with your responses as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:56

Thank you for having me. That's it.