What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about prison?

Solitary confinement, punishment, loneliness, and hopelessness are just a few words associated with it. In most parts of the world, a prison cell is the end of their life.

In the United States, people continue to fight for prison reform programs.

The criminal justice reform in the country aims to address structural issues in the justice system. Many are wrongfully accused and incarcerated, piling prisons with inmates. May organizations fight for these reforms against police brutality, racial criminalization, recidivism, and mass incarceration.

In Finland, they have open prisons that smart tech to aid their inmates with proper reform.

While most prisons confine convicts in solitary cells, most jails have dormitories where inmates come and go as they please – even driving their own cars. In this report, the news team follows the life of Matti, who was sentenced to life imprisonment because of murder.

He’s staying at the Laukaa Prison in Finland.

He studies tech and IT at a nearby university. His first course was on Artificial Intelligence or AI. Matti

The prison believes in giving inmates equal opportunities to prepare them to get back to society.

According to Smart Prison’s Project Manager Pia Puolakka:

“We have this kind of normality principle that prisoners should be treated equally, even though they are prisoners, but they should have access to same services and rights as other citizens.”

Finland’s justice and prison system had this principle way back nearly 70 years ago.

Today, the country has one of the most humane prison systems in the world. And with the advancement of technology, they incorporated that in their prisons, creating a “smart and digitized” environment for inmates.

One of the “smart” things they did was use Virtual Reality (VR) as the inmate’s escape.

Unlike Laukaa Prison, this one in Turku is a high-security closed prison. It has all the drab walls and fluorescent lighting, but using VR helped inmates like Mika take a glimpse of the outside world. He is walking into a 3D rendition of the forest.

Aside from this, he is also taught how to use the computer.

“We try to educate the prisoners to use digital services in a meaningful way so that it would really help them to rehabilitate and help them to take care of themselves and take care of their daily affairs. The kind of things the kind of skills that you need when you read the great back to society,” Pia added on the same report.

Another high-tech facility is getting ready to be opened. This one is for women inmates.

But while they have all these smart prisons, Finland didn’t get rid of the old facility. A facility built in the 19th century is reminiscent of an American jail – “cell blocks arranged in a radial floor plan prisoners living in solitary confinement.” They turned it into a museum as a reminder of how difficult prison life was before.

We’re glad Finland has turned their backs on that now.

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Source: Insider News YouTube Channel, Wikipedia|Criminal Justice Reform in the United States