Unlocked Graduates’ Inaugural Annual Lecture

“When you release someone in prison, you release your neighbour. Who do you want as your neighbour?” – Are Høidal.

On 3rd May 2023, Unlocked Graduates hosted an inaugural Annual Lecture at Goldsmiths’ Hall, with a focus on building a movement for change within the prison sector. We were honoured to welcome keynote speaker Are Høidal to share his experienced insights of prison system reform with guests from across the criminal justice sector.

Are Høidal is a leading figure within the Norwegian Correctional Service and holds a wealth of knowledge of criminal justice best practice, having worked in the service for 37 years. Are has held various senior positions at all levels of the service, including 11 years as governor of Oslo prison and 13 years as governor of Halden prison from 2009 to 2022.

Together with dedicated staff, Are established Halden prison as an example of best practice in the criminal justice community. He achieved substantial interest and respect from a wide range of stakeholders from governments, public service and academics, to media and non-profit organisations from around the world.

The inaugural Annual Lecture began with an opening speech from Unlocked Graduates participant Siobhan, who is a member our 2021 Cohort. Siobhan discussed her motivations to make an impact on our Leadership Development Programme:

“I joined Unlocked Graduates with the belief that being sentenced to prison was the punishment, and it was therefore not my job as an officer to further punish the people in our care. I know I am here to make a difference.

I am a strong believer in the humanisation of interactions in prison. Being fortunate enough to work on a psychologically-informed wing allows me to be the type of officer I always wanted to be from the very beginning of the programme.”

Siobhan also spoke about her experience on her two-week work placement at Stafford Creek Corrections Centre in Washington State, where she shadowed American officers under the Amend US initiative:

“Amend aims to bring some of the Norwegian principles of corrections to the United States. There is a lot to be learned internationally, and universally there are extraordinary people in the prison service. A prison cannot outperform its staff.”

We then heard from Richard Hughes from PA Consulting, a long-term partner of Unlocked Graduates who supported this year’s Annual Lecture:

“We’re proud to have supported Unlocked Graduates since the early stages of operation. This is our fifth year of hosting Unlocked participants for their two-week work placement. It has been both fascinating and inspiring to see what the Unlocked team have achieved. We’ve seen expansion, acceptance and a huge impact since working with Unlocked.

Through being exposed to your work, in the last year, over 50 of our colleagues at PA Consulting have visited prisons. They’ve been making a difference through CV workshops and skills sessions with prisoners.”

The keynote session was a conversation between Unlocked Graduates CEO and Founder Natasha Porter OBE and Are Høidal. The discussion ranged from Are’s initial work in the Norwegian prison service having received a degree in Law, to the writing of a white paper that established a movement for change and his experiences of leading as a Prison Governor:

“I became deputy governor in 1989 at a time when Norway had a very high recidivism rate. 

During my time working in prisons, the job of a prison officer went from being just an ordinary job, to being acknowledged as a ‘profession’, much like that of a nurse or police officer. 

We still have our difficulties, but we adopt a normality principle. This means that inmates don’t lose any additional rights, because we have already taken their freedom from them. Prisoners can do everything that the public can do, but from within the prison.”

Are discussed his experiences of prisons in the United States, the training required to be a good prison officer and his principles of how prisoner rehabilitation should take place:

“We are working with Amend in four states in America to help their prison officers. In 2017, I was in a prison in Pennsylvania doing a speech, and the following year they decided to make one unit in that prison based on Scandinavian prisons – now called little Scandinavia.

The unit has been operational for one year and has all of the same things that we have in our units in Norway. Officers at the prison applied to work on the unit after having visited some Norwegian prisons, and they’re now implementing principles that they’d witnessed in Norway on the unit. They are making good progression!

We’ve also learned and taken the dynamic security principle from England, meaning that officers are together with inmates and doing activities together throughout the day. It is important that prisoners have something positive to do every day. Activities and education completely transform the atmosphere in prisons.

When you release a someone in prison, you release your neighbour. Who do you want as your neighbour? Someone who is angry, because they have been treated badly, or someone who has had an education, who is rehabilitated and who has a job? It’s not expensive to treat people well, to talk in a nice way and to respect inmates, to treat them as humans. Most Norwegians support this way of work because they have seen change. They have seen the results.

The most important thing is the education of prison officers. In Norway, training is two years, and there is an option of receiving a bachelor’s degree. It is a very difficult job, which requires having a good education.”

Unlocked Graduates would like to say a huge thank you to all those who attended our inaugural Annual Lecture and engaged in conversations driving change in the sector. We would like to say a special thank you to our sponsors at PA Consulting, and we are eagerly looking forward to bringing everyone together again at next year’s lecture!