Norway's Incredibly Luxurious Halden Prison: $1 Million of Art and Flat-Screen TVs in Every Cell
By Dan Nosowitz
When it opened on April 1, Halden Prison was built to hold 252 inmates, making it the second-largest prison in Norway. It's a gorgeous, ultra-modern structure right near the Swedish border, comprised of cells that are arranged in units of 10 to 12, much like a college dorm. Except these cells are actually better than most dorms, since every cell comes with a private bathroom and a flat-screen TV, as well as a view--the windows don't even have bars in them.
But what about facilities, you might ask? My college dorm had a foosball table, and a vending machine! This prison can't match that, right? Wrong. Halden has a gym, training room, chapel, library, family visiting unit, football (possibly soccer) field, a school, and, most unbelievably, a sound studio. But it's the design that's most strikingly different from American prisons. Halden doesn't shy away from bright, cheerful colors, and actually spent about $1 million to hire a graffiti artist named Dolk (sort of their version of Banksy) to paint beautiful murals all around the grounds.
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