SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
U.S. officials are increasingly looking abroad to design better prisons. Several states now model some of their prison units to look and feel like those in Western Europe and Scandinavia. NPR criminal justice correspondent Meg Anderson went with a group of Americans to see what it takes for a U.S. prison to make that kind of change.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEYS TURNING IN LOCK)
MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: Inside a prison cell in Berlin, Germany, more than a dozen New Yorkers are poking around. They're looking for differences in this cell compared to ones in the U.S. One obvious one - the men held here at Tegel Prison have keys to their own cells.
MARTIN RIEMER: (Speaking German).
ANDERSON: Martin Riemer, the warden here, says that is so they can lock their door when they go to school or work, just like you might at home. The guards still have keys, but Riemer says this gesture offers a semblance of privacy. Another difference?
RIEMER: (Speaking German).
ANDERSON: "All the cells in Germany," Riemer says, "must have natural light and ventilation." This cell has a large window. It has bars, but it opens. A breeze is blowing in. Aisha Elliott, part of the tour group, notices another difference - the furniture.
AISHA ELLIOTT: There's just a lot of wood and movable objects, which I think makes it more bearable. Everything in New York is steel, metal, thin and painful.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.
ANDERSON: Elliott spent more than 20 years incarcerated in New York state prisons. Now she's a leader at the Women's Prison Association, an advocacy group. She's part of a tour organized by the Vera Institute, a criminal justice reform nonprofit. This group is here to learn how to improve New York City's troubled jail system.
LAUREN-BROOKE EISEN: In many other countries, when you are incarcerated, you don't lose your humanity the same way that you do necessarily in the United States.
ANDERSON: Lauren-Brooke Eisen studies prison reform at the Brennan Center for Justice. She says prison conditions in the U.S. are often inhumane and violent. German prisons aren't perfect, but they're regarded as an international model. Their prison system centers on protecting human dignity. Life inside prison, by law, has to resemble life outside prison as much as possible.
EISEN: What that might look like is someone wearing, you know, street clothes, not a prison uniform. It might look like cooking your own food.
ANDERSON: German prison staff go through years of training, and many have backgrounds in social work or law. All of this, Eisen says, creates a culture of rehabilitation. Now, in at least 10 U.S. states, prison units are modeled after European systems. Ryan Shanahan is the chief research officer at the Vera Institute and helped start their program called Restoring Promise, which has launched prison units in six states.
RYAN SHANAHAN: Any change that happens inside a prison, you have to ensure people are safe. But what does that mean? Traditionally, in U.S. prisons, safety is keys, locks, cameras, barbed wire fences.
ANDERSON: But, Shanahan says, helping prisoners build relationships can make an environment safer, too. In the Vera Institute's prison units, sometimes older prisoners act as mentors for young people in the program. Staff members engage with families on the outside. There are daily schedules that include discussion groups and activities.
SHANAHAN: Learning conflict resolution and being able to practice it. Learning to care for each other and be vulnerable and practice that so that you can care and be vulnerable when you go home.
ANDERSON: But these types of programs are still in only a small percentage of U.S. prisons. One barrier to launching more of them is the size of the U.S. prison system. Around 2 million people are behind bars in the U.S. at any moment - the most in the world. Another barrier is that these units often require more staff, and that costs money. But there is evidence to suggest the investment pays off. In a 2023 study of one of its units in South Carolina, Vera found prisoners were far less likely to commit violence. In Washington, a program modeled after Norwegian prisons also showed less violence from prisoners and that correctional staff were coming to work more consistently.
LENNY ALBRECHT: So we work here in the garden center.
ANDERSON: Back at Tegel Prison in Berlin, Lenny Albrecht (ph) is repotting plants in the prison greenhouse. It smells like fresh dirt and lemon basil.
ALBRECHT: And it's a very beautiful work.
ANDERSON: Albrecht has been a prisoner here for four years. He works as a landscaper, which he says takes a lot of trust. He can walk the grounds without an officer. Mostly, though, he likes the way the work makes him feel.
ALBRECHT: I feel more relaxed in my whole life because before I was very aggressive. And the work here make you, like, calm down and relax.
ANDERSON: Nearby, Elliott, the women's prison advocate, is taking in the freshness of the place, which she says communicates something essential. She says a person in prison might not feel good about where they are, but the goal should be to make them feel good about who they are or who they can become. Meg Anderson, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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