(music) - Over the past decade, Connecticut has been able to cut its prison population in nearly half.

And criminal justice advocates say that number can be even lower if you think of corrections as rehabilitation.

It's not a new concept.

It's something they've been doing here in Norway for decades, and it's why the world and Connecticut policymakers look to the Norwegian way to see what best practices they can implement back home.

Over the next hour, we'll take you inside Norwegian prisons where you'll hear from inmates, wardens, and Connecticut policymakers about what they hope to bring back to Connecticut's Department of Corrections.

From Norway, I'm Walter Smith Randolph, and this is Cutline.

(ominous music) When we first met Christoffer Dahl, he was inside a tool shed, unsupervised with access to a hammer, a screwdriver, and a blade.

- We do maintenance, we do fixing cabinets, paint wall.

If they do something outside, we do gardening.

We do everything.

- [Walter] That everything includes making meals for each other with access to a stove, knives, and other utensils.

Dahl can also watch TV and workout with his floor mates.

- In here, we pretty much brothers.

We do some activities every Monday.

We work, we bake cake, make lunch every Friday for each other.

We do different things.

- [Walter] You might think this is a dorm, but it's actually a prison.

It's the Bergen Prison in Norway.

Dahl is 27-years-old, he's been here for 18 months and has three months to go.

His sentence was cut short by nine months for good behavior.

When we ask him why he's here... - Cocaine, crazy life, party, women, so you end up here.

- [Walter] And that's all we can tell you about Dahl's criminal history, because Norway has prisoner's rights and the public cannot access someone else's criminal history.

Around this unit, you'll see pictures of Dahl rock climbing on the outside.

It's one of his favorite activities.

And because of his good behavior, he's been taken on rock climbing trips in plain clothes and unshackled.

- I like to climbing, use my body (Dahl speaking foreign language) (interpreter speaks) and challenge myself.

- This is the Drug Abuse Unit here at the Bergen Men's Prison.

There's about 50 inmates who are housed here and inside you can see they each have their own individual cell.

There's a big bright window without any bars, and right on the other side is the prison wall.

Now, despite Christoffer being an avid climber, he says he's never thought about climbing that wall.

And the guards here say that's the point.

(Dahl speaking foreign language) (interpreter speaks) - Yeah, I ruin my own situation because if you behave, you can get early release.

You don't have to serve the whole sentence.

- [Walter] And prison officials here say you have to put everything in context.

The tools have to be left inside the shed and there are security measures, but they say they're preparing them for life outside of the prison walls.

- These are the tools that they will be surrounded with when they come outside, if he's going to continue the same line of work as now.

So, you know, the thinking behind this is that it's future oriented.

There comes the day when he will be released and our job is to prepare him for society.

If we put him in a box, in the cell 24 hours a day, maybe we give you one hour of airtime.

I mean, what would happen to his psychology?

It wouldn't be good.

So he would join society after his release with a hard-boiled mentality.

He's angry at the establishment, the authorities, the prison service.

He's angry at the people outside and that's no mentality to return to society.

So this is done through a rehabilitation context.

- [Walter] Dahl says he's relatively comfortable here and he likes the way he's treated.

He's undergoing drug treatment, which prisoners here have to volunteer for.

He's also talking to a psychiatrist.

- I never trust a psychiatrist outside.

- [Walter] Why do you trust people here?

- They're so open.

All the guards are open and so forthcoming.

Yeah, they're so forthcoming to everybody.

- [Walter] When it comes to American prisons, Dahl says his only knowledge of them are movies and it doesn't seem that great.

- It's crazy.

Because I think they just know (Dahl speaks foreign language) (interpreter speaks) how to treat people different.

They don't have respect for the inmates.

If the employees give respect, if they give me respect, I give them respect.

So it go both ways.

They help me then I can help them, to get better in the job.

- [Walter] For Per V åge, who was warden of this prison from 1992 until 2000, this thinking is exactly what the prison officials have been working towards.

- We have a basic value in the Scandinavian countries based on that everyone have to be integrated in the society.

So we never lose an inhabitant while he's executing a sentence.

So, we don't have this separation of the criminal out of society, whether he is also inside the society.

We also try to say that every person in Norway is a shareholder of every prison.

So the public, they own the prisons.

It's not private enterprise, it's not me as a warden when I was that, who owns the prison, but it's the public who owns the prison.

- [Walter] It's that type of thinking that peaks the interest of State Representative Robyn Porter.

- I mean, I have a passion for criminal justice and juvenile justice.

I sit on the Judiciary Committee at the General Assembly and I've done a lot of work to bring reform, specifically to prisons, juvenile and adult prison.

- [Walter] Porter says she wants to see more compassion in Connecticut prisons.

It's something she saw firsthand in Norway, which led to an emotional reaction.

- I was literally brought to tears because as a mother of someone who was formally incarcerated, I think about what our trajectory would've been as a family because we did that time with him as well.

And they integrate family, they integrate holidays, they allow children to come and visit.

I mean, the things that they have access to are totally like far from what we do in Connecticut.

And it's conducive to everything that we say we want them to be when they come home, right, productive citizens.

But we don't give them the tools, we don't give them the practice.

So that's what I find a little contradictory, back in Connecticut.

- [Walter] Porter and the rest of the group were brought here by the University of Connecticut's Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy.

Its director, Andrew Clark, has been researching the European way of corrections for years.

He says it's important to have these conversations and show people there's another way.

- I think there's a false narrative that's shared in the United States and maybe it's not false, but it's just not fully uncovered, is that Norway has not always been like this.

It was very punitive in the '80s.

In the '90s, they were facing prison overcrowding.

They had an inflection point as well, and they chose, guided by international standards and best practices to go the route that they're going.

So I think that's an important North Star for us to understand, like how can we change?

- [Walter] Clark says Connecticut has led the way in reducing its prison population.

He notes other states like California, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are trying to do the same.

But from the vantage point of correctional officer health.

- They recognize the high number of suicides, the high number of substance abuse issues when you're in an adversarial situation, when there's constant tension in your workforce.

What we've learned here is there's no tension in the workforce.

The inmates, the incarcerated individuals and staff actually do things together.

They see themselves in partnership, in creating better neighbors.

And so, you know, looking at it from that vantage point, I think is very important in terms of changing things here.

And there are states that are doing that and we can learn from what they've experienced.

- [Walter] Connecticut has made a number of changes to the prison system already.

Clark says that started with the passage of Public Act 04-234 back in 2004.

- The Justice Reinvestment Initiative essentially created a strategy or a framework for change.

It said, "Corrections is the most expensive thing that we do in the state.

If we can lower our corrections population and therefore its budget, by implementing best practices and achieving safety and then reinvesting in the communities where people most come from, then we will see a dramatic change in that curve downward, so that we will see our prison population decline."

And so there has been a series of legislation and initiatives over the years.

The creation of the Sentencing Commission, the undersecretary position in OPM for Criminal Justice Policy & Planning.

The Criminal Justice System is not technically a system in Connecticut.

It's a series of agencies that may or may not collaborate with each other.

And so that creation of that one position was extremely important for creating a system that was holding itself accountable to those standards.

- [Walter] But Clark and Porter hope this trip leads to more collaboration in Connecticut.

And Dahl's experience shows that collaboration could be extremely beneficial for everyone involved.

(gentle music) - [Bria] This is the Worth Unit at York Correctional Facility in Connecticut, the Department of Corrections only prison for women across the state.

- Comparatively in this Unit, the types of codes that have ever been called, I don't even think there has been one, comparative to like what goes on on the other side.

And I think it's because we're treated different.

We're given different coping skills, we're given different ways to deal with things that we're not given on the other side.

So I think like when you start treating people different and giving them different outlets, different avenues, educating them in a different way then they utilize those skills.

- [Bria] The other side, as they call it, is General Population or the majority of the incarcerated people in this facility are.

The whole prison has about 700 people, and this Unit had close to 20 during our visit, but it has space for up to 60 people.

Shannon Sampieri spent over 20 years in Gen Pop and has been in the Worth Unit for the last three years as a mentor.

In Worth, which stands for Women Overcoming Recidivism Through Hard Work, incarcerated women who have been at York for a while work with younger women to rehabilitate them.

Tori Berube came to the Unit as a mentee and is now a mentor.

Like Sampieri, she says, "The difference between Gen Pop and Worth is day and night."

- There's no door on my cube, they're cubes not cells.

I have a service dog that I train.

I order the supplies for the Unit and run cleaning.

I'm in college, I run groups and I interact with staff on the daily that I wouldn't normally do on the other side.

On the other side, I was a tier worker, so I'd come out and clean twice a day, but that's really it.

- [Bria] Warden Trina Sexton oversees York and went on the trip to Norway.

- Everything that we do here is meant to be gender responsive and trauma informed, but then you also have an age responsive component.

So, what we do here, the practices, the whole premise behind this Unit is meant to engage these women and alter the trajectory of their lives.

- This Unit, which opened in 2018, and a similar Unit for men that opened the year before, was inspired by German and Scandinavian prisons after state officials took a trip there several years ago.

The goal is to focus on counseling, education and mentorship.

To be placed in these Units, you have to apply.

But in Norway, all of their prisons have this unique focus.

Can you tell us a little bit about how the prisons in Norway compare to other prisons around the world?

- When it comes to the relation between the staff and the prisoners and in a way, the value of the prisoners as human beings, it's very much different.

So whether they come to prison with a sentence that should not be the ticket to look down on those people.

They have struggled in the society, done bad things.

They have been convicted by the court, and then they should be treated like human beings in our facilities.

- [Bria] Per V åge is a Director in Norway's Correctional Service.

A lawyer by training, he has worked as a prosecutor, judge, and prison governor.

He says, like many Scandinavian countries, Norway has taken a different approach to operating prisons.

- We should not take anything but the freedom away from them.

And taking freedom away is like, you can't visit your grandmother anymore or just in special occasion.

You can't stay with your children anymore, that's taking the freedom away.

You can't choose your jobs anymore, that's freedom taken away.

But you don't need to take away, for instance, the right to vote, the right to speak, the right of a religion, the right to read newspapers or to get healthcare.

- [Bria] The key in Norway is that the prison sentence is enough punishment.

Once inside, the goal is to rehabilitate people.

Elin Schie is the warden of the Østfold Prison in Norway.

She sees the effects of this type of freedom every day.

- They respond to the freedom inside.

They respond very well.

They respond not to be locked up all the time.

That's good for a human being, not to be locked up all the time.

And then they also want to give something back.

Then most of them behave really good because of we give them the chance.

- [Bria] So what would it take to treat incarcerated people in Connecticut like they do in Norway?

Eulalia Garcia, a District Administrator for Connecticut's Department of Correction, said it would take a cultural shift.

- It's not a DOC issue, right.

It's a systematic, it's a societal issue.

Our cultural norms are very different.

And so in order to make a change in the way that Norway has, it would take quite some time because that's something that our entire society would have to become accustomed to, a different way of life.

It's apples and oranges when you compare Norway and the United States, so.

Not saying that it couldn't happen, but it would definitely be a culture shift.

- [Bria] There's about 9,000 people incarcerated in Connecticut.

About half of the incarcerated population returns to jail or prison within three years after they're released.

In Norway, there's about 3,000 people incarcerated.

The country has about 2 million more people than Connecticut, and their recidivism rate is about 20%.

Half of incarcerated people in Norway are serving their sentences from home.

But experts say you can't make a direct comparison because there are many different factors.

- There is a responsibility for us to deliver them back in society better than when they came in.

- [Bria] The women in Connecticut's Worth Unit agree.

Tori Berube is finishing up her seven year sentence here at York.

She says her rehabilitation is key to helping her move forward.

- What would you say to people that might say, "Well, you should be punished.

Why do you have a tablet?

Why do you get a therapy dog?

Like, you know, you should just be locked up in a cell."

What would you say to those people?

- I would say, "What good is that going to do when I come back to society?

'Cause I'm here and I'm paying my debt to society, so I'm not going to be here forever.

So how do you want me to return, not being able to function?

Sitting in a cell for a few years, what's that going to do besides ruin my communication skills?

I'm not going to be sociable, you know, I'm not going to learn how to correct my behaviors that put me here in the first place."

- [Bria] Shannon Sampieri agrees, she's nearing the end of a 25 year sentence.

She's been incarcerated since she was 20-years-old.

- We are human beings that we shouldn't just be thrown away because we've made a mistake in life, especially if we've made a mistake very young.

Like people are able to change.

And when we do re-enter back into society, we want to be a part of society, to thrive and to do well and to help out just like everybody else.

Like we don't want to be stigmatized for the rest of our lives because of a mistake that we made.

- What would it take to get more of York to be like it is here in the Worth Unit?

- So, York is one of the facilities that has an extensive array of programs.

So I just want to be clear that it's not that the General Population doesn't receive services or anything on the other side, it's just different.

And I think one of the biggest changes that we can bring to the other side is focusing on the staff training in dealing with conflict resolution and the motivational interviewing components.

And that will help with daily interaction and with the General Population.

- So there's no plan or goal to kind of expand upon this Unit here?

- So we can have more in the Unit.

So there is a choice component to this.

So it's not that if you're between that age group, you move over.

No, there's an application process and one of the primary components of this Unit is the women's choice.

They have a choice to participate in this program and we do respect that choice.

- [Bria] Despite the small number of incarcerated people in the Worth Unit, those here say the impact is huge and Sampieri may be the prime example of what success in the Worth Unit looks like.

She's getting released in a few months and will be leaving with a college degree from Wesleyan and a job at an aerospace engineering company that she started while in prison.

She says she saved paychecks and she even has a 401(k).

- Yeah, it's just great to feel like I'm going to be able to accomplish something and do something.

And I just never thought of that prior to getting here.

(uplifting piano music) - This mural lines the gates of the Youth Facility here in Bergen, but it has a much deeper meaning.

And that's because Norwegians think about youth justice in a completely different way.

In Norway, you cannot be convicted of a crime until you are 15-years-old.

This facility can only house up to four juvenile offenders.

And as we were putting together this story, there were only three juvenile offenders involved in a criminal justice system in the entire country.

The director of this facility tells me youth justice is about education and making sure that their students are headed in the right direction.

- The living area.

The juveniles have to stay in their room during the night and a couple of hours in the middle of the day when the guards are changing and having a talk.

Otherwise, they have free access to the Unit and to the living room.

While they are in the correctional service and staying in this all place, we want to give them new knowledge about life, prevent them to do more crime and learn them new strategies to handle life.

- [Walter] And the best way to do that is by creating an environment where children can flourish.

This youth facility has all the works.

Wow!

- Occasionally music therapists coming in.

- [Walter] A music room, games and a study area.

The cost to build this was seven times the amount the men's facility costs, down the road.

And when it comes to paying for youth justice, Norway spares no expense.

The Norwegian government even pays for parents to come visit their children.

- We have to put investment into this young criminals while are young.

Then we can turn them around, give them a new approach to life.

But it's difficult.

The older they get, it's harder to turn them.

So if you're going to make investment in this young people, do it early and we can try stop them using drugs, take them to school, learn to approach a life in a new way.

- [Walter] For Iliana Pujols, the Norwegian way is the right way.

- They treat children like children, right.

And that's the problem that I think that we have here in Connecticut.

Is they see a child and they understand whatever they might do is child behavior.

And in order to correct that, you need to expose them to a different experience.

- [Walter] Pujols is now the Policy Director at the Connecticut Justice Alliance.

She's passionate about youth justice because she got involved with Connecticut's justice system at a young age.

- So I caught my first charge right before I turned 12-years-old.

It was an assault charge.

From then till I was 18, I was on probation.

I've had my fair share of experience with probation, alternative programs, alternative schools, house arrest, everything except for incarceration has pretty much crossed my path.

- [Walter] And now she works to ensure children don't have to deal with what she went through.

- We had the opportunity of meeting somebody who essentially ran like a Credible Messengers program in Norway and had told us that he was taking kids, kids who committed serious offenses and shifting how they used their adrenaline, right.

So instead of stealing a car, let's teach you how to jump out of a plane safely.

Let's teach you how to hike, let's take you on these experiences that you're still able to get that adrenaline rush, but it's not stealing a car and it's not going to commit a robbery.

And I think programs like that is exactly what we're missing here.

I came back sharing that idea with people that I knew and they'd be like, "Mmm, imagine taking a kid who stole a car and teaching them how to like legally jump out of a plane.

We would never do that."

- [Walter] Pujols says she was also blown away by how the Norwegian justice system treats solitary confinement.

- The fact that it looked like something out of like a modern Airbnb, just was fascinating to me.

The fact that they try not to use it more than minutes.

We have a huge solitary confinement issue in the state of Connecticut that people have been working on for years now.

So to see a model like that and then compare it to the solitary that we use, was just mind blowing for me.

- [Walter] For Brittany LaMarr who was previously incarcerated, seeing the solitary unit stirred up strong emotions.

- Yeah, I can usually like compartmentalize like the emotion part of this because, you know, I'm also in law school and my focus is on public policies, so I can, you know, I can pretty much regulate that side and try and keep this side, you know, regulated.

But you know, regardless of what country we're in, we're walking through living units where like human beings are locked inside rooms.

- [Walter] LaMarr now works for the Tow Youth Justice Institute at the University of New Haven.

Her passion comes from her own experience.

She says she's driven by pain and thinks about her experience giving birth behind bars.

- Yeah, it was also one of the most dehumanizing experiences of my life, right.

Because, you know, you're shackled on the way in.

I was shackled to the bed.

You wake up and there's a baby next to you and an officer and like, what is, you know, my life like, what am I supposed to do with this?

- [Walter] Connecticut banned the shackling of incarcerated women during labor back in 2018, but it's an experience LaMarr will never forget.

She says in addition to more investment into rehabilitation and training, the United States Justice System needs to treat people more humane, especially children.

- The people who are incarcerated are not seen as human beings.

They're not seen as like complex, developing individuals who come from histories of trauma or harmful lived experiences because also it's not often that we have, whether it's training that would allow them to see that.

Because the training itself is 10 weeks and extremely, you know, controversial because its focus is on security and on isolation practices and how manipulative and dangerous the population is versus here, like their training is very complex.

It's multidisciplinary, it's two years.

- I think the next steps are really just figuring out where to start.

We understand that we, the little group that went to Norway can't make a complete culture change, right.

We can't change the way that people think about people, the way that people think about justice.

So what are the actual tangible things that we can take a look at and actually implement, whether it's small things or large things.

And then also identifying like, who else do we have to send to Norway to convince that we need to implement these things and figure that out pretty soon because I think it's a good opportunity to grasp now that we have it, without letting years go by and continuing to figure out how to do that.

(gentle piano music) - Norway is known as a model for prison reform, but it's also a model for education within the prison system.

From prison officers to inmates, education is accessible and for some, it's required.

We're going to be looking at how the system works here and how it works at home in Connecticut.

- Sometimes people come to prison and it changes their life, you know, but... - [Bria] That's what happened for this incarcerated person.

He's currently serving a sentence at the Bergen Prison in Norway.

He asked that we not share his name.

- I got here, I start doing drugs at a young age, like 12-years-old.

And I start selling drugs and doing a lot of bad things, you know, like violence and stuff like that.

- [Bria] But now in his early twenties, he's getting a second chance.

He's able to finish up his high school education in prison and learn skills that will help him get a job on the outside.

- But it's definitely a factor that can help me move on with my life instead of making money legally and not illegal, you know.

- [Bria] Ali Ali Ahmaad teaches Industrial Technology at Bergen Prison.

He has a background in Mechanical Engineering.

He wants his class to feel like students, not inmates who are preparing for the workforce.

- When they go there, they already, "Oh, we have been seeing the roboting.

We can do this at school."

The education was good enough to start working.

This is a part you're able to use it to put it with a machine with bigger parts.

- [Bria] In Norway, Prison Educators work for the Local School District and not the Corrections Department.

It's called the Import Model.

- The thinking that the ordinary civil bodies responsible for healthcare, for example, the civil body responsible for education, yet they should also come into the prisons to deliver these services and not organized or under the administration of the Correctional Services.

- [Bria] Paal Breivik coordinates prison education in Norway.

- While every person in the Norwegian prison has the same rights to education as it sits in, without the prison walls.

We have up to 50% of the inmates going to school every day, within the prison walls.

Quite a lot of people, many finished off their education within the prison walls.

Many more people start on prison.

Maybe they would never have started their education within prison walls if they hadn't been imprisoned.

And they continue on their education when they are released.

- [Bria] While prisons in Norway see many incarcerated people enrolled in education today, it wasn't always that way.

- The movement started very early in '70s and very slowly and didn't start in every prison.

So we say that in 2007, then every prison in Norway got a school department and the final, you know, underlining of this principal.

Then you find it in the Education Act, which came in 2014 saying that same rights.

And the county has a responsibility to see that these rights are fulfilled within the prison walls.

- [Bria] Veron Walters-Beaulieu is the Acting Superintendent of the Connecticut Department of Corrections School District, Unified District #1.

- There are many districts in Connecticut and if you look at what students are receiving in the suburbs compared to what they may be receiving in an inner city, it may not be identical, but comparable.

So I think that's really difficult to judge, to see if what we're offering is what they would get outside, because I don't know what every school district offers.

I do know that we offer the best that we can and our programs are successful.

- [Bria] A data analysis we conducted found that in Connecticut there are far fewer incarcerated people enrolled in educational programs today than in the past.

And that drop is steeper than the decline in the state's prison population.

The number of people who earned their high school diploma while in prison in Connecticut is down by about 89%.

This downward shift started in 2016.

In an email DOC told us layoffs and safety measures put in place during the pandemic contributed to the decline.

Adding the, "school district has consistently made every effort to offer educational services to DOC's incarcerated population."

For people leaving prison in Connecticut, nonprofits like Community Partners In Action are there to help them transition into the workforce.

- One of the things that we're also seeing a lot more of is there's a lot of vocational training opportunities right now for our participants to re-skill and up-skill them for in-demand jobs, whether it's green energy or manufacturing, culinary.

But we're seeing more and more opportunities for the people that we've been serving for 150 years.

- [Bria] But funding is a challenge for the re-entry work Community Partners In Action does.

- We have the City of Hartford who has been an incredible strategic partner with us.

We have the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Without the City of Hartford and the Foundation, this center would not exist.

But, you know, the Foundation has already, you know, committed to over $1 million in funding to us, you know, for the next three years.

They've supported us since our inception in 2018.

I mean, how much longer, you know, can they do that, you know, without the public investment.

And so one of the things we're really hoping for is that with the closure of Willard Correctional Center that recently happened, which is I believe a cost savings to the state of over $6 million, that that is reinvested into the community, into centers like this one and across the state.

- [Bria] In Norwegian prisons, the standards for education extend beyond people that are incarcerated.

Prison guards also have access to comprehensive education.

In Connecticut the Prison Guard Training Program is 10 weeks, Norway has its own college for prison guards, the University College of Norwegian Correctional Service.

- Prison Officers Education is a two year paid program, which leads to the University College Degree of Correctional Studies.

And then they have a third year, which is voluntary.

If you want to have an academic degree, then you can build up out with a third year bachelor degree.

And also they're now working on the plan of having a master degree in Correctional Studies.

- [Bria] Kariane Westrheim researches Prison Guard Education alongside Helene Eide at the University of Bergen in Norway.

They say the curriculum is hands-on and offers a wide range of classes.

- Students are faced with what experience, knowledge, and also kind of a scientific knowledge that is needed from law, from psychology, from ethics or philosophy.

And this combination is needed to provide a high quality correctional service.

- [Bria] Westrheim and Eide conducted interviews with prison guards at four Norwegian prisons and were surprised by what they found.

- It really struck me how motivated, how genuine they were, how devoted they were, because some of them had started law studies, some of them had started as teachers, wanted to be teachers.

But then they said, "No, we'd rather wanted to work on the ground and we wanted to be close to people."

So, I was so astonished because it was so different what my present position, what I had thought their motivation were.

- [Bria] The guards here are more like social workers.

- Every single prison officer that I met have some kind of humanistic approach to the prisoners.

They care about them.

They are talking about them sometimes as family.

- [Bria] In Eide and Westrheim's research, they found that guards are an important part of helping incarcerated people change their lives in ways that prevent crimes from happening in the future.

- And all these different situations are as I perceive it, they are potential pedagogical moments that they could use to help prisoners to develop as whole persons.

- I think that what it comes down to is that you need to look at correctional services as a natural part of life.

So being incarcerated is also a part of life.

And if you have that baseline, it would make sense that people meeting you within correctional services are just as qualified as those meeting you outside correctional services.

- [Bria] Virginia Lewis of Community Partners In Action has hoped that Connecticut can make similar progress to Norway in the future.

- The fact that we're even talking about it right now, to me and we're concerned about it, that gives me hope.

It will definitely take a while.

We need to have the leadership.

I mean, the leadership of the state, leadership of the United States to actually start to initiate that kind of change.

It's not going to take an isolated piece, it has to come from way up the top.

- [Bria] It's the kind of change that has made all the difference in this incarcerated person's life.

Where would you be if you weren't here?

- Probably dead.

(somber music) - [Walter] For Barbara Fair, her family's involvement in the criminal justice system started early.

- It started with my brother at the age of 17.

I was a year younger than him.

He went to prison.

I didn't know anything about prisons before that, so I was terrified.

I didn't know what to do.

How can we help him?

How is this happening?

I was just completely stunned.

- [Walter] Fair is now the Lead Organizer for Stop Solitary Connecticut.

Her interest in that area of corrections came after her son was put into solitary.

- My son was in there a couple of months in and he was lucky because I fought from the day I went to visit him.

And they brought him out, all chained up like a wild animal and then they chained him to the phone where we were sitting at and it took everything, not to just break down and cry in front of him.

But I thought about what he must be feeling, being treated like that and then being brought to me like that.

And so from that day on, I just started fighting, calling organizations, legislators, anybody that I could to help me to get my son out of there.

That's what I missed, that smile.

- [Walter] While Barbara was able to fight back the tears that day, they came rushing back when she saw the solitary unit at the Halden Østfold Prison in Norway.

- That's where they crush minds in Connecticut.

This is crazy.

Yeah, even thinking about it now, I'm fighting tears because I think about my son at the age of 17, they put him in Northern, which was the Supermax that we eventually got shut down last year.

But I think about him being in that little tiny space, 'cause it was nothing like Norway.

There was no TV, music, window to look out, it's just this space and a really tight space.

And they put my son in there, 17 and I never got my son back.

It's been over 20 years and it's been 20 years of a lot of psych hospitalizations, drugs, it's been awful.

- [Walter] In Norway, solitary confinement is used on a limited basis.

Incarcerated people can be held here for as short as a few minutes, but days and months of solitary is unheard of.

- In the 22 years he's been working here, he can't remember somebody being in solitary confinement for more than a day.

- No.

- 22 years and never... - [Walter] Even in solitary, incarcerated individuals have access to music, TV and a window outside.

It's one of the many lessons Fair learned on the trip, that there is another way and that what she's been fighting for isn't that off base.

[Walter] Any lessons learned from Norway you think for, you know, for yourself or for the rest of the group?

Like what's your takeaway?

- My takeaway is just to see that it's possible.

That things that I have talked about doing don't seem so incredible anymore.

You know, 'cause when I foreseen some of this stuff that we could be doing differently, people look at you like you're crazy.

Like, "Yeah, okay."

But I went to Norway and they're doing it so it shows, it kind of validated me.

Yes, we can do better, but the key is you got to care about the people.

Norway cares about their people and we don't care too much about African people in this country.

Never did.

And so, until that changes, I can't see Norway happening here.

Not when the prison population across this nation is predominantly black people.

- [Walter] Iliana Pujols with the Connecticut Justice Alliance agrees.

For her, race is a big factor within the justice system.

Norwegians don't have the same issue.

While there is a native versus foreigner aspect in Norway, they don't have to account for multiple races.

- I think that's the biggest problem, right.

You take a look at Connecticut, for example, our population of black people, black youth specifically is like, what, 12%?

They fill up 43% of our youth facilities, right.

And even taking a look at that, you can't have a conversation with a legislator half the time about race because then they get defensive about you calling them racist or whatever it may be.

I just think when we talk about race, that conversation is so far gone for some people that there's no way to even grow them into the reality of like it's an actual issue in our justice system.

I do think that it's an impossible thing to address and then it's the challenge of how do you hold somebody accountable for being racist, right.

How do you prove racism unless they're explicitly racist.

And I think that's the biggest challenge with identifying how to eliminate it.

- [Walter] But Pujols says a great place to start is to take a look at the education of correction officers.

- The education requirement for somebody to serve as a correctional officer is like a three year commitment, two years education, one year on the job versus Connecticut where it's what, weeks?

I think we could start there.

And I think that helps sort out the kind of people that are staffing these kinds of places.

I think that's a big part of our incarceration system and the way that people get treated while they're incarcerated.

Staff contribute to how the person's day-to-day is, right.

Whether or not the person is being treated correctly.

And I'm speaking specifically to the people incarcerated, if they're being treated correctly, if they have somebody to talk to, the use of solitary confinement.

All of that is based on staff interactions.

And I think if we really start with a practical thing like that of how are we staffing facilities, how are we staffing programs?

If it comes with a three year commitment, I doubt you'll get as many bad apples as we have now.

- [Walter] Connecticut public made several interview requests to the Corrections Officers Union, AFSCME Local 1565 for an interview to get their take on what they need for change.

But our requests were denied.

Pujols says it will take a multi-pronged approach.

- How are we also going to solve the problem of the fact of how we use incarceration and why we use incarceration.

We can promote health and wellness for staff all we want.

We can set all these requirements for staff and also we have a mass incarceration issue.

And if we could reduce the number of people that we're funneling into systems, the reason why we're funneling people into systems and simultaneously address staff wellness, wellbeing, etc, I think that's the way to properly approach it, while making sure that we're addressing both sides of the issue.

- [Walter] Eulalia Garcia says the DOC is actually closer to making reforms than you might think.

- So we have a really good relationship with our politicians and we have very consistent conversations and open dialogue about just that, so.

I think we're already having those conversations.

They're already aware of the needs that we have and the resources that we require in order to enhance what we've already got going on.

It's not only Department of Correction, but also the Court Support Services Division, Department of Children and Families.

Our welfare system in general in working with the local state and federal police.

I mean we all work together to minimize the ability for the offenders to commit crimes and you know, enhance programming in the communities so that the recidivism rates are lower.

So we work on a daily basis with all of the stakeholders to try to keep that benchmark and keep it as low as possible and only incarcerate the individuals that absolutely have to be there.

- [Walter] Garcia also points out that Connecticut's prison population is at an all-time low.

While critics say that's due to COVID, Garcia says it's through a concerted effort.

- I think that, you know, as a whole, the criminal justice system has been incarcerating less individuals.

There's been a lot more investment in the community and our probation parole diversion programs.

So it's definitely been a team effort.

- [Walter] Both Fair and Pujols would like to see the prison population even lower than it currently is and so do many on the trip.

And while the different sides may not agree on the progress to get there, all sides have an optimistic outlook.

- Have hope that things can get better.

And I think anything is possible with the adequate amount of resources and funding.

- Just seeing how they think about people, how they treat people, the way that they envision their overall system as a tool for rehabilitation and not punishment.

It really made me just step back and understand how different that is from the system that we have here in the United States.

- Were there any lessons that you learned that you think?

- I learned I need to move (laughing).

I think some lessons that I learned was, and this might sound like cheesy, but I think anything is really possible.

I think it's different to see Norway's system on YouTube for a class assignment or whatever it may be.

But when you actually go in person and you see a system that's this effective, that's this small compared to our system, it really teaches you a valuable lesson of like, we could be doing so much more and it's really not impossible.

- Yeah, this is him with his sister.

We all miss that 'cause he doesn't, you know, come around a lot.

That's with his brother.

I guess I believe in the impossible.

'Cause you know, most, well a lot of people will say to me, "Why do you do this work?

You know, this is America, this is how it's always been, this is how it's always going to be."

I don't like that defeatist attitude.

I always like to be optimistic that, I guess because I want to believe everybody has a heart somewhere.

In the end I'm just hoping that we actually try to implement some of the stuff that we're seeing.

I mean, it's good to see it, but you know, the real thing is, let's put some action behind it.

Let's change America.

- While Connecticut and Norway are thousands of miles apart, those looking at the two criminal justice systems, say the Norwegian way isn't unattainable in the United States, but to move that needle, they need a culture change.

So more Americans think of corrections as rehabilitation.

In Norway, I'm Walter Smith Randolph.

Thanks for watching Cutline.

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