Re-Imagining Prisons — with AI, VR, and Digitalization.
Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador, interviews Ms Pia Puolakka, Project Manager of the Smart Prison Project, under the Criminal Sanctions Agency, within Finland’s Central Administration Unit.
Criminal Sanctions Agency: https://www.rikosseuraamus.fi/en/index/topical/pressreleasesandnews/Pressreleasesandnews2020/newkeravaopenprisonintroduces40additionalprisonerplacesandmodernpractices.html
Ira Pastor Comments
In 2018, according to the World Prison Population List, which gives details of the number of prisoners held in 223 prison systems in independent countries and dependent territories around the globe, there were close to 11 million people are held in penal institutions, either as pre-trial detainees/remand prisoners or having been convicted and sentenced. About 50% of them were represented by prison populations in the U.S., China, Brazil, Russia and India.
Interestingly, a few decades ago, going back to the 1960s, Finland had one of the highest rates of imprisonment in Europe, until researchers across the Nordic countries started investigating how much punishment helped in reducing crime, when they concluded it had minimal effect.
Over the following three decades, Finland remade its penal policy bit by bit, and by the end of this period of so called de-carceration,” Finland had one of the lowest rates of imprisonment on the continent, and they found that crime didn’t increase as a result.
What Finland found out that did work was a gradual reintroduction of prisoners into normal life.