How Norway Is Teaching America to Make Its Prisons More Humane

The bedroom, off a light-filled corridor, is small but not cramped. It houses a single bed, a desk, wardrobe, TV and a small bathroom. The window looks out onto a grassy hill. Outside the door, there’s a kitchenette, where a bread knife hangs from a loop of string affixed to the wall. A long dining table is scrubbed clean, and a couple of shabby but comfortable-looking sofas have been arranged in front of a TV. The faint smell of stale cigarette smoke lingers in the air.  The space has all the appearance of a college dorm; only a cluster of uniformed officers in a glass-walled office at the end of the hallway gives it away.