Menendez brothers case: Erik and Lyle Menendez built green space in prison. This is modeled on the Norwegian idea

COPENHAGEN — Nearly 30 years after killing their parents, Erik and Lyle Menendez began a beautification project at the California prison where they were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Their project was inspired by Norway’s approach to incarceration, which believes that rehabilitation in humane prisons surrounded by nature leads to successful reintegration into society, even for those who have committed terrible crimes.

Norway is a long, narrow country in northern Europe, stretching 1,100 miles (1,750 kilometers) from north to south. Kristian Mjland, a Norwegian associate professor of sociology at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, said he has set up small prisons across the country, allowing people to serve their sentences close to their homes.

He noted that Norway’s per capita incarceration rate is roughly one-tenth that of the United States, noting that there are approximately 3,000 people in prison in the entire country.

Norway has some of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. Government statistics put the rate of re-convictions within two years of release at 16% in 2020, with the figure falling each year. Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Justice study conducted over a decade ago found that 66% of people released from state prisons in 24 states were rearrested within three years, and most of them were reincarcerated.

Mjland said Norway’s incarceration system is based on the principles that people should be “treated properly by well-trained and decent staff” and “should have opportunities for meaningful activities during the day” (something he called the “normality principle”). must protect their fundamental rights.

Mjland, whose research focuses on punishments and prisons, said prisoners in Norway, for example, have the right to vote and access services such as libraries, health care and education offered by the same providers working in the broader community.

Norway also operates open prisons, some on islands where there is a lot of agricultural work and contact with nature. The most famous is on the island of Bastoey, which “is in a very beautiful location in the Oslo Fjord,” Mjland said.

Even Anders Behring Breivik, who killed eight people in a bomb attack on a government building in Oslo in 2011 and then shot and killed 69 more people at a holiday camp for left-wing youth activists, has a dining room, a fitness room and a TV room with an Xbox. His cell wall is decorated with an Eiffel Tower poster, and the lovebirds share his space.

The idea of ​​creating normal, humane conditions for people in prison is also starting to spread in the United States.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, for example, has been trying to implement certain elements of the Scandinavian approach in recent years and in 2022 unveiled a program it calls “Little Scandinavia” at a prison in Chester.

The Menendez brothers’ case came back into the public spotlight Thursday when the Los Angeles County district attorney recommended reducing their sentences to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors hope the judge gets upset with them so they can be eligible for parole.

If the judge agrees, the parole board must approve their release. The final decision rests with the governor of California.

Their lawyers and the Los Angeles district attorney argued that they had served sufficient punishment, citing evidence that they were physically and sexually abused by their entertainment executive father. They also say the brothers, now in their 50s, are model prisoners committed to rehabilitation and redemption.

Both highlight the brothers’ years-long efforts to improve the San Diego prison where they lived for six years. Before that, the two had been held in separate prisons since 1996.

Lyle Menendez launched Green Space, a beautification program at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in 2018. His brother, Erik Menendez, is the lead artist on a massive mural depicting San Diego landmarks.

“This project hopes to normalize the environment inside the prison to reflect the living environment outside of prison,” Pedro Calderon Michel, deputy press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in an email to the AP on Friday. he said.

According to the project’s website, the Menendez brothers’ work is ongoing, with the ultimate goal of transforming the prison yard from “an oppressive slab of concrete and gravel into a normalized park-like campus environment surrounded by a majestic landscape mural.”

The final product will include outdoor classrooms, rehabilitation group meeting spaces and training areas for service dogs.

Calderon Michel wrote that the prison system recently launched the “California Model” in hopes of bringing similar projects statewide to build “safer communities through rehabilitation, education and reentry.”

The brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, said he believes Lyle Menendez learned about the Norwegian model during college classes. Lyle Menendez is currently enrolled in a master’s program where he studies urban planning and regeneration, and Geragos said his client hopes the beautification will make it easier for parolees to reintegrate into society.

“When you’re in a gray area where it’s not very welcoming, it’s confusing to a degree,” Geragos told The Associated Press on Friday. “There is also the issue that the land is not a welcoming or useful thing in terms of acclimation and re-acclimation to the community.”

Dominique Moran, a professor at the University of Birmingham in England, said his research found that creating green space in prisons improved the well-being of prisoners and prison staff.

“Green spaces in prisons reduce self-harm and violence and also reduce staff illness,” said Moran, author of “Prison Geography: Incarceration Spaces and Practices.”

Moran has studied prisons around the world and said in an emailed statement that, according to the Scandinavian approach, “people go to prison as punishment, not for further punishment.”

“Deprivation of liberty is itself a punishment,” he said. “Given the nature of the environment in which people are being held, further punishment should not be imposed.”

Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland, and Dazio from Los Angeles. David Keyton contributed from Berlin.

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