Prisonlike or prison-lite? Drug recovery units and penal hybridity in Norway

Much scholarship has been devoted to the question of whether therapeutic interventions in prisons constitute a more humane, supportive counterweight to more punitive aspects of punishment. An alternative view is that they represent an invasive, controlling and punitive force in their own right. This article explores how drug recovery units in Norwegian prisons are perceived as being safer, more therapeutically beneficial and more privileged environments than other prison units, yet simultaneously more challenging, punitive, and at times, more painful places to be. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and 55 interviews (33 prisoners and 22 staff members), the article uses the concepts of penal tightness, depth and weight to analyse how these units’ hybrid nature, as simultaneously treatment and punishment, contributes to a uniquely ‘tight’ form of imprisonment.