108TH INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

SOME OLD AND SOME NEW EXPERIENCES: CRIMINALJUSTICE AND CORRECTIONS IN FINLAND
Matti Laine*
I. THE NORDIC MODEL?
First I would like to start from thequestion: “Is there a Nordic (Scandinavian)model in the field of criminal justice: thecase of Finland?” Sometimes we joke in
Finland about the question of Nordic cooperation. We say that Nordic co-operationmeans that Sweden makes all the mistakes
first and after five years, Finland follows.
A joke is a joke, but often things have gonein that order in the prison service. There
are, of course, certain reasons for that. Let
us not forget that the judicial system ofFinland remained basically Swedish
during the time when Finland was part of
the Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire.
But “Nordic” or “Scandinavian” does notmean similar concrete solutions to all
problems. Rather it means a similar wayof thinking. This commonly shared way of
thinking does not come from emptyness; itmust be regenerated all the time. We cansay that in criminal policy there are a lotof possibilities for this regeneration,
including the following:• Criminologists have regular meetings
and a permanent council for cooperation• Experts in criminal law have Nordic
meetings• Experts in criminal policy havemeetings• Experts in criminal statistics gather atseminars• General Directors of Prison
Administration meet annually• Prison governors and other leading* Principal Lecturer, The Prison Personnel Training
Centre, Finland.

•••prison officials hold traditionalseminars
Unions of prison officers have good cooperation and regular meetings
Researchers of prison matters meet ona regular basis
There is a Nordic exhange programme
for prison and probation officers

Much of this co-operation is taking place
annually, sometimes with even more
frequency. This is however, just the formal
framework of this co-operation, a lot of
meetings are informal; we just go and talk.
Personal contacts and relationships arevery important.
But Finland has not always been very
“Nordic” concerning criminal and penal
policy. For decades we were seen as deviantor the “black sheep” by other Nordic
countries. Our criminal justice system wasvery punitive, repressive and hardcompared to other Nordic countries. This
period lasted neary 70 years, from the endof last century to the early 1960’s of thiscentury. Why was that?
Researchers of this question haveprovided several answers. First we can saythat Finland was an agrarian society formuch longer than our western neighbours.
There is evidence that propety crimes areseen more seriously in agrarian societies
than in modern, urbanized communities.
Finland reformed the Penal Code in 1894
and this new Code saw theft as a crime
which must be punished severely,withimprisonment used more. This move wassoon seen in the prison figures. In the year
1893, 155 persons were put into prison

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because of theft, and after two years thefigure was 720. The crimes of theft had notincreased, but the penal policy hadchanged.
One explanation is our civil war in 1918
and its tragic aftermath. It created a very
bitter atmosphere and division in thesociety. In these circumstances, liberal and“soft” criminal policy was not seen possible,
as there was now a possible threat frominside. This situation continued after thesecond world war, but now the threat
experienced was coming from outside.
Societial demands and legislation stayedvery punitive until the late 1960’s.
We must remember that development
was not linear and one-sided all the time.
After the civil war of 1918, pardons wereused and a parole system was introduced
in normal criminal cases. Several reforms
in the prison service took place after the
war in the mid 1940’s. That was no
surprise; as some ministers and other highstate officials had experienced imprisonment
during the war.
In the beginning of the 1950’s, we had“a cold spell in spring”, as the penal policy
became more repressive. Different coercive
measures were used to cope with “the crime
problem”. Juvenile delinquency was seen
as a special problem (although juvenile
violence was at the lowest level ever in
Finnish history, before and after). Moralpanic was created.
The defining image of our repressive
system of criminal justice was the amountof prisoners. After the second world war we
had nearly 10 000 inmates daily and still,in the mid 1960’s, nearly 8000. As of April
16th, 1998 there were 2955 prisoners inFinland, which is 150 less than for thesame time last year. Our average daily
prison population is reducing and we havereached and gone under the level of272

prisoners in Denmark and Sweden. Thisdevelopment has nothing (or very little) to
do with the crime rates. The level ofimprisonment used is the political choiceof a society, not determined by necessity.
There are some other, often very
symbolic, images of this repressive modelin Finland. Prison rules were detailed andprisoners rights were very limited. I am nota very old man but I can remember
newspapers pictures of remand prisoners
carrying heavy hand and foot chains when
standing in front of court. These chainswere used in the late 1960’s. In 1969, thesecretary of the so called “November
Movement”, Reino Lehtiniemi, took thesechains (nealy 20 kilos) to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission in
Geneva, put them on the table and said:“These are still used in Finland”.
An other example was the excessive useof preventive detention. Hundreds of men,most of them petty property offenders, were
kept in so called “coercive institutions”(that meant under indeterminate
sentence). Some years ago there was aprogramme on Finnish TV about a man, athief, who had spent 26 years in prison,
mostly in “coercive institutions”. He hadstolen bicycles and other things.
Nowadays this preventive detention isused only for dangerous violent recidivists
who (in practice) do not have normal
possibilities for parole. At April 16th, 1998
there were 17 persons who have beendetained by the Prison Court to the“coercive institution”. The amount of“dangerous recidivists” has come downfrom nealy 500 to 17.
Strong criticism and discussion of thecriminal justice system started in the
1960’s in Finland. We had the “November
Movement” which lobbied for different
kinds of marginalized people. We had the

108TH INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
Prisoners Union ‘KRIM’ and critical
discussion against the coercive treatment
ideology (and treatment ideology in
general). The neoclassical winds were
blowing in criminal justice and a big partof this criticism was directed towards
prison conditions and administration.
Reform of the prison legislation was madein the middle of 1970’s. Slowly but steadilychanges started to happen. Former critics
and radicals got remarkable positions inthe state administration and universities.
If we simplify the picture a little bit,Finland, the Prodigal Son, returned to thewarm home of the Nordic family. The
Nordic model has sometimes been called“Nordic Minimalism”. What are the basic
features of this model? If I have understoodit correctly, the idea is to make the criminal
justice system as small as possible. Penal
policy, and especially prison sentence, is thelast way to tackle crime, the last resort.
Punishments are not always the best way
to prevent criminality (although sometimes
necessary). As somebody has put it: if in acertain area there is a problem of
dangerous alligators, we can of course try
to shoot them all, but it is sometimes wiser
just to drain the swamp.
There is also one very important idea inthat thinking: crime cannot be prevented
by any means. I think that is why we do
not usually speak about the “war against
crime” in Nordic countries. In a war,
usually all kinds of fighting methods areused. However there are, and must be,values that are above the task to prevent
crime, for example human rights
principles. Professor Raimo Lahti(University of Helsinki) has demanded(1990) that the penal system be bothrational as to its goals (utility) and rational
as to its values (justice, humanness).
The utility criterion means that criminal
justice measures shall be used for theprevention of unacceptable behaviour only
to the extent that proves necessary in a
cost-benefit comparison of criminal policy
measures. This criterion can also be usedin the prison service when consideringvarious proposals. We can for example,
make the prison like a bottle, where noone or nothing comes in or goes out. If thevarious social costs of this policy are higher
than the benefits, it may not be very wise
to do so.
However the criminal justice systemcannot be evaluated only on utilitarian
grounds. Criteriums of justice andhumanness must be taken into
consideration. The harmful effects of crimeand crime control must be distributed
justly between offender, victim and society.
The principles of equality, fairness andpredictability are basic elements of thecriminal justice systems. Thus when
imposing criminal justice measures wemust safeguard due process and also basic
human rights principles.
In Finland, as in all of the Nordic
countries, the prevailing view is thatpunishments primarily have, and should
have, a general preventive effect. One
component of prevention is generaldeterrence, which is related, inter alia, tothe certainty and severity of punishment.
Nordic criminal policy emphasizes
certainty, but not severity.
General prevention, however, also
involves the maintenance of standards ofmorality through the public disapprovalthat the punishment directs at thecriminalized behaviour. Individual
prevention is not considered the primary
goal of punishment. The coercive treatment
of offenders was found to be based onflawed arguments and raised problems
with due process and the control of
discretion.

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This insight does not preclude thedirection of rehabilitation efforts towards,
for example, prisoners serving theirsentence; as long as rehabilitative
considerations are not allowed todetermine the decision on whether or not
to place someone in prison, or how long tokeep him or her in that prison.
II. MODERN CORRECTIONAL
PHILOSOPHYThe Scandinavian or Nordic model has
also meant many practical changes ineveryday prison service andadministration. The basic approach is tokeep the prison system as small as possible,
with prison seen as the ‘last resort’ in crime
prevention. Especially when it comes tojuvenile delinquency, prison sentences havebeen seen as very harmful and we have
tried to avoid using them as far as possible.
Mr. William Rentzmann, who is the
Deputy Director General of the Danish
Department of Prisons and Probation hasvery neatly presented the threecornerstones of modern correctional
philosophy in Nordic countries. They arenormalization, openness and responsibility.
A. Normalization
The idea of Finnish prison legislation isthat prison sentence means only thedeprivation of liberty and no more (inpractice, of course it always means manyother things). So at least the idea is thatsuch things as coldness, darkness, hunger
or restricted diet, prohibition of cigarettes,
books, magazines, loss of civil rights etc.
are not necessary elements ofimprisonment. Everybody who has visited
the Central Prison of Helsinki can say thatthe inmates are not surely living a “normallife without liberty”, but at least
normalization is the direction where wewant to go. Mr. Rentzmann says that in
Denmark, normalization means first of all

274

that the norm is to place a person in an
open prison, i.e. a prison without walls andbars. Approximately two-thirds of Danish
state prisons are open prisons.
B. Openness
This principle is surely a kind ofparadox. The task of the prison is to close
people inside, away from normal life. At thesame time, we try to keep the prison as
open as possible. Openness means manykinds of things: open prisons; good
possibility for visits; uncontrolled conjugal
visits; basically no limitation or censorshipin correspondence; possibility to study andwork outside prison (so called ‘nightprison’); and prison leave.
We have good evidence from the westernsociology of prison and prison communities
that the more closed the prison is, the moreunsafe it is inside. “Hard against hard”, as
it is called, is the atmosphere often created.
The deprivation of safety is a crucial
problem in western prisons, and also in
Finland at the moment. In smaller, open
prisons the atmosphere and relations
between staff and inmates are different,
although the inmates may be the same asin other prisons.
C. Responsibility
For the last two hundreds years, thebasic problem of most western prisons has
been that the main thing they teachinmates is how to live in prisons, how tosurvive. These skills are not always thebest for living life in free world.
We know that this is often a typicalfeature of ‘total institutions’. When I wasin the military service, we were often
discussing what is the basic skill you learn
in the army. Very often the answer was:
how the avoid your responsibilities, how tolive lazy life.
When everything is done for you, whena special person opens the door in front of

108TH INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
and behind you, that does not strenghten
your sense of responsibility. Western
prisons can be like large hotels in anegative sense, and the effects can be seen.
When I was working about ten years ago
in the special after-care unit of paroledformer prisoners, it happened very oftenthat a newly released man couldn’t shutthe doors behind him.
Mr. Rentzmann sees it as possible andpositive that prisoners buy and cook theirown food, wash and repair their own
clothes and take responsibility for theirown treatment. We must not forget thatprofessional help can very often deepen theprocess of institutionalization or
prisonization.
One of the main ideas of the prison
legislation reform in Finland in the middleof 1970’s was that a prison sentence is always
harmful for the offender. Because of its total
and punitive character, it cannot rehabilitate
inmates and usually makes their situation
worse. That does not, however, mean thatthe harmful effects are always the same.
It is possible to influence these and so thetask was given to minimize the harmful
effects of imprisonment. Nobody believed
anymore in the coercive treatment ideology,
and so the main task was to shorten thelength of prison sentences.
Social services and participatory
activities are necessary in the process tominimize the harmful effects of a prison
sentence, but we must not expect too muchof them; they cannot abolish criminality
from the society.
Specialized professional skills arenecessary, but one mistake was made when
psychologists, social workers etc. came to
Finnish prisons. We divided the personnel
into two categories: into those who arealways giving ‘negative’ services (guarding,control, disciplinary measures) and into

those who are giving ‘positive’ services(personal help, listening, social services). I
am not sure if this can be wholly avoided,
but at least the canyon between thesegroups must not be so wide. That is why
the Japanese experience is so interestingfrom our point of view. I have read that inJapan not only psychologists andinstructors, but also uniform personnel
with rank, are involved in treatment forrehabilitating convicted inmates.
Correctional treatment officials take on
double duties.
So we in Finland have once again started
to follow other Nordic partners and set atask to broaden the scale of duties of basic
prison officers. Let us not forget that they
have one benefit: they often know theinmate best. A famous American
criminologists, Donald R. Cressey put
forward this demand in 1958:“What is needed is a correctional
technique which is explicitly based ona theory of behaviour and of
criminality and which can beroutinely administered by a rather
unskilled worker in the framework of
the eight-hour shift”.
We can draw some conclusions from theexperience of reform of the Finnish
criminal justice system:•

Nordic minimalism has worked rather
well in our circumstances. Defendingor protecting criminal policy seems to
be a better way than attacking criminal
policy (“war against crime”).

•

The sanction system must be
predictable, not too complicated.

•

If the prison sentence is the most severe
punishment, it is not wise to use it
extensively in petty offenses. There arealternatives: fines, suspended275

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 54
sentences, community sanctions.
•

Often a short prison sentence (together
with the criminal justice procedure)
fullfills the need for general prevention.

III. THE ROLE OF IMATE LABOUR
IN FINNISH CORRECTIONSWork has always been the heart of theprison. It is included in the definition of
the modern prison system as a correctional
method that will cure the criminal person.
In the beginning the function of inmate
labour was not to harden the sentence, but
to make it more lenient.
The predecessors of the modern western
prison were the so called workhouses,
which started in the sixteenth century, firstin England and in Holland. They gatheredvagrants, criminals and other deviant
persons to teach them how to work. In
Amsterdam there was one workhouse in thesixteenth century where they used to placea wicked inmate in a cell into where water
was flowing uninterruptedly. In the cell
there was a pump that had to be pumped
all the time if the inmate wanted to avoid
drowning.
Always when I relate this piece ofhistory, the listeners are laughing andsaying or thinking: “were it they uncivilized
at that time!”, but let us look a ourselvesin the mirror today. Do we still believe in
the idea that when a man is doing
something mechanically, this action willtransform him or her from an evil person
to a good one? That lazyness and idlenesswill make him or her worse? The positivist
thinking - to find a proper and simple
method to change and resocialize man - isvery deep in our tradition. Because man is
un-fortunately not so simple a creature, wemust look into that mirror every day whendeveloping our prison services andtreatment methods for offenders.

276

Inmate labour has also been in the very
centre of the Finnish prison service in thiscentury. We had in our legislation theprisoners’ work obligation which was more
extensive than in other western European
countries. Before the second world war, weconcentrated on farming and thereclaiming of swamp areas in the central
countryside prisons. After the war, weinvented a new type of institution, the open
labour colony. In the 1970’s a rather heavy
programme of building industrial
workshops and halls started.
As we know, the prison system is like a
big ship that turns very slowly, and thechanges in inmate labour have not adapted
well to the development of society ingeneral. When rapid industrialization wasgoing on in Finland, our prisoners were
keeping cattle or reclaiming swamps. When
we saw the first traces of the fall of the socalled ‘chimney industry’, we built moreroom for metalwork and carpentry
industries. Now, living in middle of theservice trade and information society, weare thinking of what to do. The obligationof work was replaced in 1995 by a morecomprehensive obligation to participate invarious activities arranged in theinstitutions.
Most often, when talking about Finnish
inmate labour, we mention the open labourcolonies, which were established in the
1940’s after the war. It has been said thatthese kinds of institutions are a specificFinnish invention. This view may bechallenged by prison historians, butnevertheless this tradition is interestingand important.
Sometimes the open labour colonies havebeen seen as a new kind of correctional toolin the rehabilitation of the inmates.
However the background of these
institutions was not so much correctional,
as economic. At the end of the 1940’s we108TH INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
had nearly 10,000 prisoners daily inprisons. Overcrowding was a big problem
and a large portion of the prisoners wereskillfull workers. The open labour colonies
were seen as a solution to make use of thispart of the prison population more
efficiently than was possible in closed
institutions.
This type of institution differed from thetraditional prisons in many ways:•

The typical features of the prison milieu
were abandoned: closed complex ofbuildings, walls, bars and steeldoors.

•

Traditional guards and guarding wereabandoned.

•

Detailed regulations for inmates’
everyday life were abandoned.

•

Prison clothing was abandoned.

•

The institution was in many ways more
open than the closed prison
and the most important difference:•

The inmates performed ordinary workfor the same wages available in the
open labour market. That means today
for example, that the prisoner in an
open institution or labour colony earns
ten times as much as a prisoner in aclosed prison.

What were the benefits of open labourcolonies? There was research into thisquestion in the late 1960’s (Paavo
Uusitalo). It was shown that there was no
significant difference in recividism between
similar groups in open colonies as in closed
prisons. So the labour colony was not amore rehabilitative option. It also seemedthat the open colonies had the same
deterrent effect than closed institutions (ifthere is a such effect in general). So thelabour colonies were cheaper, more open
and maybe more humane and moreproducitive.
We are now facing inevitable changes.
During the last 25 years we have more thanhalved our prison population. Many
workshops and industrial halls are nearly
empty of prisoners. The inmates who arecoming in are, in many cases, dropouts
from basic school. They don’t have any
vocational training or experience. Even the
traditional Finnish workman’s ethic may
be vanishing. With this labour force theprison industry cannot be very productive.
Are there any lessons to learn from theexperiences of the Finnish inmate labour?
I’ll try to make some generalizations. They
are of course my own points of view andnot official statements from our prison
administration. I will present these in four
principles.
A. The Principle of Meaning.
Work can be important, especiallybecause meaningful action has animportant role in personal development. I
have worked for several years in theaftercare and employment of released
prisoners and from that experience, I cansay that even rather routine paid work canhave an emancipatory role in a person’s life.
The work carried out can however also
be without any meaning: it can be pureforced labour. We must ask if some very
traditional and mechanic industrial workor maintenance duties in prisons have any
meaning, or to whom they have thismeaning.
Although prisoners’ skills andmotivation for work are nowadays oftenvery low, that doesn’t mean that paid work
does not have any meaning to them. Paid
work and occupational development are so
fundamental in the construction of oursociety that they cannot be replaced very

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quickly. Work is work and a hobby is hobby.
B. The Principle of Normality
This is the lesson that comes from theopen labour colonies and other open
institutions. We can get much closer tonormal life in prisons than we usually
think. We must take the principle ofnormality very seriously, not just as usual
rhetoric. Normality in work life means
normal work conditions, normal
leadership, normal products and services
and before all, normal wages. It also means
normal vocational training. Normality inworklife means today for example,
computers, teamwork and so on. Can it bereality in prisons too?
C. The Principle of Flexbility
When society is changing very rapidly
and unpredicably we shoud not create
systems that will last the next 100 years.
There can be a wide range of activities thatare offered to the inmates. I think thattraditional work can and must have arather strong role in the future. The systemof organizing the work must also be much
more flexible. Education and work canoccur alternately. The labour activities
must be founded on the development ofsociety, not from the history of corrections.
D. The Principle of Connection to
the Society.
As you might know there have beensome western sociologists who see the endof the labour society (Gorz, Illich). I am notgoing to challenge their arguments. At thesame time I am saying that it may not bevery wise to draw direct conclusions of theiranalysis to the employment of released
prisoners.
Although we are probably heading
towards a society of mass unemployment,
I don’t think it is good to start this “freeing
from paid work” with former prisoners. Heor she can be the person who needs

278

employment most. Probably we (the socalled ‘middle class’) are the persons who
can more easily start to live in “creative
idleness” than a former prisoner withvarious social and mental problems.
So I still believe in the idea of
employment in the after-care of a released
prisoner. Thus the activities organized
during the prison sentence must have a roleand connection to this after-care. We knowthat the prison is a social institution whichusually teaches strategies of survival thatare unusable in the society outside theprison walls. But it is not impossible tolearn useful skills and experiences inside
the prison. Let us think all the time whatkind of skills obligatory work teaches tothose persons who are forced to do it.
Finally, as a sociologist, I must remind
you all of one fact. Paid work is much moreessential to the maintaining of social orderin society than all the efforts we are making
in the whole criminal justice system.
IV. A NEW WAY OF
THINKNG:CRIME-BASEDPROGRAMS
I n 1 9 6 0 ’s a n d 1 9 7 0 ’s t h e r e w a s
widespread thinking both in the prison andprobation service in the Nordic andWestern Europe:the social circumstancesof the offender were in the center whencreating efforts to rehabilitate him or her.
That usually meant that jobs, housing andsocial relations were the most important,and sometimes the only things, to workwith in rehabilitation.
There was an active movement against
the coercive methods of treatment. Thisline of solution was not always wrong, but
the bettering of social circumstances did
not solve the problems of very many
offenders (some of them it did however).

108TH INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
Sometimes it was even said it was notnecessary to talk about the crime offence
at all. The offender has served his or her
sentence, we can forget the crime. This
concept of human mind was too simplistic,
and it was soon found that ware modes of
behaviour that were compulsive in nature,and they were not prevented by developing
only social services.
At the moment, the idea is to develop
offence and behaviour based programs, notfor all offenders, but for those who haveserious recidivism problems. One exampleof this kind of approach is The Cognitive
Skills Training Program (The Reasoning
and Rehabilitation) which has been boughtfrom the Canadian company (T3Associates, Fabiano & Porporino) byseveral Nordic Prison and Probation
services. This program started in autumn
1997 in six Finnish prisons and in two
regional offices of the Probation and AfterCare Association.
According to the Canadian instructors(Elisabeth A. Fabiano & Frank J.
Porporino) the basic idea in the program is
not to treat, reform or cure the criminals,
but to teach them. The offenders need tobe taught the basic cognitive demands
which, according the lecture of the
instructors, are as follows:•

TO REFLECT (the offenders usuallyjust react to the situation and thenforget the whole thing).

•

TO ANTICIPATE (the offenders do not
anticipate a situation, usually they
react harshly to the resultant
circumstances.

•

TO ADAPT (the offenders do not learn
enough from their experiences, theirthinking is too rigid)
The traditional western prison and otherinstitutions are usually not very well
prepared to teach these kinds of skills tothe offenders. The program focusesparticularly on six areas of deficit which
are the following:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Self control
Cognitive style
Interpersonal problem-solving
Social pespective taking
Values
Critical Reasoning

The program is implemented by thebasic prison officers who have been trainedby the Canadian experts. The program wasdesigned to be completed in thirty-fivesessions of two hours duration overapproximately 8 to 12 weeks.
Another example is to create programsfor sex offenders. A special committee in
Finland made a proposition to start thiskind of special program (a British model)
in one Finnish prison. The need for this israther limited because we have only about
50 sex offenders in our prison population.
Finland has the highest rate of violent
crime, especially homicide, in Western
Europe. So what is needed, is some special
program for violent offenders. We have a
lot of co-operation between different
authorities to prevent suicides in Finland,
but now we must find some ways to prevent
violence and homicides in our coutry.
A. What is the Result of
Rehabilitation?
When you look at the comparetive
research made of the possible results ofdifferent kinds of rehabilitative programs,
usually the basic criteria for success is therecidivism rate or the arrest rate. ºI thinkthat the recidivism rate or arrest rate are
not appropriate for this kind of program
evaluation. They do not always tell muchabout the possible changes that have279

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 54
happened during the training or
rehabilitation process.
Attitudes, values and skills can develop
although you are still committing somecrime (e.g. because of alcohol and drug
abuse). So there must be different stages
or a kind of hierarchy when thinking about
the results of the rehabilitation of inmatesand clients of the probation service. Thiscan be described in a following way, forexample:1. “Full Rehabilitation” : no recidivism, noserious crimes
2. The partial improvement of thesituation ; crimes are becoming morerare
3. The situation is not worsening ; somepositive things remain
4. Yo u a r e a b l e t o s l o w d o w n t h eworsening of the situation
5. Just easing the pain
After presenting this model we must
seriously ask if it is enough just to ease thepain of offenders and inmates? It might not
be so, but we must remember that demandsof absolute results may lead us tooversimplify the problem. The
rehabilitation of inmates is not an
industrial product, but a complicatedhuman process, where there is no clear
start point or end. Sometimes theserehabilitative programs can be seen likethe Red Cross action during the wars: it is
not ending the war but at least “easing thepain”.
B. Assessment Criteria for the
Rehabilitation and Treatment of
OffendersI have modified the work of some Finnish
substance abuse treatment researchers

280(Saarnio et al.) to create an assessment
criteria for, let us say, high quality
rehabilitation. These are the following
components:
1. ‘Matching’ as a general principle of theprobation services, institutions andprisons. The idea that we can find auniversal form of rehabilitation has
vanished. Some programs or methods ofrehabilitation work for one person, and not
another.
2. We must take into consideration both thecognitive styles of offenders and thecongnitive styles of staff members. We
must try to match these as much as
possible. (When there is only one therapist
and 200 clients, it is not always so easy).
3. Problems of congnitive damage andinjuries must be recognized. Many
offenders have even physical injuries anddamage because of alcohol and drug abuse
for instance.
4. The cultural matching of programs andoffenders. The elements of the programs
and methods must not be culturally
strange to the offenders.
5. The use of mini-intervetions is useful.
Even the giving of basic information about
crimes, drug abuse etc. can have at least
short term impact.
6. Teaching of social skills and self control
is necessary.
7. Teaching of stress management isnecessary.
8. The mechnism of everyday family life
must be taken into consideration.
9. Community Reinforcement Approach(CRA) means a combination of successfulprograms and working methods (family

108TH INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
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therapy, learning of social skills, getting ajob, group counselling etc.).
10. Systematic after-care and systematic
evaluation are necessary.
The corresponding lists and metaanalyses can be found very often incontemporary literature. At the same time
we can also try to make up lists which are
telling us what is not likely to work.
Programs that are less likely to succeed arethose which:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

rely solely on punishment
lack clearly stated aims
are open-ended
rest on medical or psychotherapeuticmodelsprovide few opportunities for active
participation
ignore or avoid program integrity
are not monitored and evaluated.

C. “Portia vs. Persephone”
Finally I would like to raise an importantand actual question and division, which wemust analyze more when developing ourcriminal justice systems and the treatment
of offenders. In their very interestingarticle (1998) two British scholars, Guy
Masters and David Smith use a division of
criminal justice systems into two different
models. The “Portia” model means abstract,
rational, rights based and in a way,
masculine criminal justice. Contrast to that
we can find the “Persephone” model, which
is more concrete, relational, expressive andfemine model of treatment of criminals.
In their analysis they use the theory andpractice of re-integrative shaming (John
Braithwaite) and also evidence andexperiences from Japanese criminal justiceand corrections to describe the“Persephone” thinking. In this connection
they quote Shitika (1972) who writes:“The Ministry of Justice, by directive,
requires guards to be thoroughlyfamiliar with the backgrounds of all
prisoners assigned to them...A
guard...is expected to know theinmate’s moods and to be in a position
to readily detect any symptoms ofworry, concern, or unusual behaviouron the part of the inmate. He is
expected to counsel the inmate whent h e s e a p p e a r. . . A l t h o u g h s o m eprisoners try to reject their guard
because of the authority that he
carries, the majority regard him as anolder brother or father figure, andreadily accept his guidance andadvice.”They also refer to the importance andtradition of apology in Japan and theydescribe how offenders are expected tomake amends informally to victims in
exchange for a letter of absolution which
is presented to the court. Well known is also
the communal role of the police in Japan.
We must admit that the “Portia” modelin the field of criminal justice has beenrather dominant during the recent decadesin Finland and also in some other Western
European countries. Our experience of thecoercive treatment ideology was so
negative that perhaps we went too far whenreturning to the Classical School. Now it
is time to think more about relational
justice and to learn from that rich traditionand experience of Asian countries, such as
Japan. As Masters and Smith finalize theirarticle:“...we believe that the different voiceof Persephone needs urgently to beheeded. The consequences of heeding
only Portia would be unbearable.”
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