Nearly 30 years after they killed their parents, Erik and Lyle Menendez have launched a beautification project in the California prison where they’re serving life sentences.
The idea was inspired by a Norwegian approach to incarceration that believes rehabilitation in humane prisons surrounded by nature leads to successful reintegration into society, even for those who have committed terrible crimes.
Norway has set up small prisons across the country, which allows people to serve their sentences close to home, said Kristian Mjåland, a Norwegian associate professor of sociology at the University of Agder in Kristiansand.
The entire country has about 3000 people in prison, he said, putting Norway’s per-capita incarceration rate at roughly one-tenth that of the United States.
Norway has some of the world’s lowest levels of recidivism.
Government statistics give the proportion of people re-convicted within two years of release in 2020 as 16 per cent, with the figure falling each year.
Meanwhile, a US Department of Justice survey carried out over a decade found that 66 per cent of people released from state prisons in 24 states were re-arrested within three years, and most of those were incarcerated again.
Mjåland said Norway’s incarceration system is based on the principles that people should be: “treated decently by well-trained and decent staff” and have “opportunities for meaningful activities during the day” — something he called the “principle of normality” — and that they should retain their basic rights.
Mjåland, whose research has focused on punishments and prisons, said that, for instance, prisoners in Norway retain the right to vote and access services such as libraries, health care and education delivered by the same providers working in the wider community.
Norway also operates open prisons, some on islands where there is a lot of farm work and contact with nature.
The most famous is on the island of Bastoey, “which is very beautifully located in the Oslo Fjord,” Mjåland said.
Even Anders Behring Breivik — who killed eight people in the 2011 bombing of a government building in Oslo, then gunned down 69 more at a holiday camp for left-leaning youth activists — has a dining room, fitness room and TV room with an Xbox.
The idea of creating normal, humane conditions for people in prison is starting to spread in the US as well.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, for instance, has in recent years been trying to apply certain elements of the Nordic approach, and unveiled a program it calls “Little Scandinavia” in a prison in Chester in 2022.
The Menendez brothers’ case was again in the public spotlight on Thursday when the Los Angeles County district lawyer recommended that their life-without-parole sentences be thrown out.
Prosecutors hope a judge will re-sentence them so they can be eligible for parole.
If the judge agrees, a parole board must then approve their release. The final decision rests with the California governor.
Their lawyer and the LA district attorney argued that they have served enough time, citing evidence that they suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their entertainment executive father.
They also say that the brothers, now in their 50s, are model prisoners who have committed themselves to rehabilitation and redemption.
Both point to the brothers’ years of efforts to improve the San Diego prison where they have lived for six years.
Before that, the two had been held in separate prisons since 1996.
In 2018, Lyle Menendez launched the beautification program, Green Space, at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.
His brother, Erik Menendez, is the lead painter for a massive mural that depicts San Diego landmarks.
“This project hopes to normalise the environment inside the prison to reflect the living environment outside the prison,” Pedro Calderón Michel, deputy press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
https://thewest.com.au/news/crime/menendez-brothers-built-a-green-space-in-prison-c-16533364
