In Norway we finished working on all four sub-studies. Fieldwork started in Bergen Prison in 2016 and has since involved many other prisons and different locations in the community.
With a few exceptions all interviews and surveys are conducted in Norwegian, which has involved a large amount of translating and thinking through meanings of words, phrases and concepts. In order to ‘test’ the interview schedules and the survey, as well as enhance our comparative thinking, the whole team did a pilot study in Bergen prison, Norway in November 2016, involving the administration and discussion of surveys, and some interviews.
We have been back and forth many times and have conducted over 150 interviews and well over 300 surveys in eight different prisons and in the community.
The Comparative Penology Group is led by Dr Ben Crewe and his research team who, since 2016, have been working on a five-year project titled: 'Penal policymaking and the prisoner experience: a comparative analysis'.
