Bastøy Prison is a minimum security prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

 located on Bastøy Island, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, about 75 kilometers (46 mi) south of Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

. The facility is located on a 2.6 square kilometer (1 sq mi) island and hosts 115 inmate

Incarceration

Incarceration is the detention of a person in prison, typically as punishment for a crime .People are most commonly incarcerated upon suspicion or conviction of committing a crime, and different jurisdictions have differing laws governing the function of incarceration within a larger system of...

s. Øyvind Alnæs, governor of the prison, leads a staff of 69 prison employees. Of this staff, only five employees remain on the island overnight. The facility is about a one hour commuting distance from Oslo.

Once a prison colony for young boys

Juvenile delinquency

Juvenile delinquency is participation in illegal behavior by minors who fall under a statutory age limit. Most legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles, such as juvenile detention centers. There are a multitude of different theories on the causes of crime, most if not...

, the facility now is trying to become "the first ecological prison in the world." Inmates are housed in wooden cottages and work the prison farm. During their free time, inmates have access to horseback riding, fishing

Fishing

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

, tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

, and cross-country skiing

Cross-country skiing

Cross-country skiing is a winter sport in which participants propel themselves across snow-covered terrain using skis and poles...

.

The prison colony was featured in the DVD extras for Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...

's 2007 documentary Sicko

Sicko

Sicko is a 2007 documentary film by American filmmaker Michael Moore. The film investigates health care in the United States, focusing on its health insurance and the pharmaceutical industry. The movie compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S...

. In 2010, both a documentary about the island by Michel Kapteijns was released and a Norwegian film directed by Marius Holst.

External links

• Bastoy Prison website http://www.statsbygg.no/prosjekter/prosjektkatalog/585_bastoy/html/foto/f_01.html
• Bastoy Prison Photos http://www.jus.uio.no/ikrs/ekskursjon/fengslet/talking_about_pictures.html
• Deutsche Welle article