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Smart Prison - Out of Shadows

Tuesday 7/22/25 - Pia Puolakka

Smart Prison – Out of Shadows

The term Smart Prison was introduced in the research literature first in the 2010s to describe prisons that provide digital services to prisoners via different type of software and devices. Nowadays, the term ‘smart prison” means different things in different countries and jurisdictions. There are different versions of smart prisons in Europe, Scandinavia, US and Asia etc. In many countries it means providing prisoners personal access to various digital services. In some other countries, it refers to innovative technology used in offender management, security technique, resource management etc., often referring to the use of AI in these systems too. Some might also see it as a process: how digitalization makes processes, and work flows faster and more efficient.

Besides its obvious purpose of execution of sentences and securing no crimes can be done from inside prison, the most important purpose of prison is to rehabilitate prisoners. According to global studies, a prisoner is most often a young single male with a traumatic childhood background. He is lowly educated and most often unemployed. Psychiatric diagnoses like substance abuse, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), ADHD (attention deficit – hyperactivity disorder) and personality disorders are common. Immigrants are overrepresented in prisons in many countries. Prisoners' basic skills of surviving in a modern complex society are diminished. Ideally, life should not only be about surviving but finding your path and purpose. I think all of us have the right to find our own unique path beyond mere surviving.

What has this to do with smart prisons? In my view, at the very least, smart prison should first give prisoners the modern digital tools to pursue their life goals besides face-to-face support offered in prisons. This means digital services for rehabilitation, education, skills learning, knowledge building, and social support inside prison, and the possibility to use these services from outside prison too (in a limited/secure way). However, my complete Smart Prison concept is holistic:

• Providing digital tools to prisoners to pursue their crime-free goals.
• Providing prisoners with digital access to rehabilitation, education, skills learning, knowledge building, and social support to reintegrate them back to society.
• Supporting prisoners to learn digital skills needed in a digitalized society.
• Supporting staff workflows and processes via digitalizing relevant and appropriate offender management, security technique and other resource management processes.
• Digitalization changing the overall prison culture and ways of working.
• Artificial Intelligence included in supporting these purposes in the future.
• Finding a good balance between digitalization and face-to-face work and processes.

I would say Smart Prison is about digital prison reform. Reform as ’the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, reduce recidivism or implement alternatives to incarceration’ covers all relevant aspects of a rehabilitative prison. When all aspects related to the definition of reform are genuinely supported by digital means too, we have a complete Smart Prison.

None of us in the outside society, would anymore argue that we can build up our necessary life skills and knowledge or attain our goals without digitalization, digital tools and skills. None of us could hardly study or work without these tools either. How can we think prisoners wouldn’t need the same digital tools, access, possibilities and opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration? Thinking digital services are something extra for prisoners, is an outdated and old-fashioned view, and not even evidence-based. A variety of research exists that prove the benefits of providing prisoners with digital services.

When I got my first permanent prison psychologist post in the Sukeva Prison in North-East Finland, nobody seemed to know where this 1100 inhabitants’ village was. It remained in the shadows. After a couple of years, I got a chance to work in the Helsinki Prison in the capital of Finland, Helsinki. I was hesitating to leave Sukeva, which had become my secure base with support from both staff and prisoners. Then one life prisoner told me “Leave, don’t remain in the shadows, you are not meant for that.” So, I left. And the prisoner was right: in general, prisons remain in the margins of society, in the shadows.

My goal is to make effective, ethical and evidence-based Smart Prisons which lead to the next prison reform, ang bring the prisons out of the shadows.

By the way, Sukeva is here: Google Earth. And also in the picture.

Pia P.