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‘The Unfinished’

Reflections on the Norwegian Prison Movement

Institute for Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, Norway

At the end of the 1960s, a prisoners' movement critical of the prison system developed in the Scandinavian countries. Particularly strong in Norway, the key expression of this abolitionist movement was the notion of ‘the unfinished’. The political message of the Norwegian Prison Movement (KROM) is that the unfinished state of politics towards any desired socio-political development should be considered not as a flaw, but rather as a political possibility. The discussion among Norwegian criminologists and sociologists of law critical of the combination of treatment and criminal justice in the 1950s and 1960s was an indispensable condition for the development of a politics of abolition. This article sketches the central arguments of the discussion, and a connection is established between the abolitionist perspective and sociological theory.

Key Words: abolitionism • criminal policy • criminology • penal politics • prison movement • sociology of law

Acta Sociologica, Vol. 49, No. 2, 127-137 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0001699306064767


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