The Menendez brothers built a green space in the prison. It is modeled on this Norwegian idea

COPENHAGEN — Nearly 30 years after killing their parents, Erik and Lyle Menendez launched a beautification project at the California prison where they are serving life sentences.

Their project was inspired by the Norwegian approach to incarceration, which assumes that rehabilitation in humane prisons surrounded by nature leads to successful reintegration into society, even for those who have committed terrible crimes.

Norway is a long, narrow country in Northern Europe, stretching 1,100 miles (1,750 kilometers) from north to south. It has set up small prisons across the country that allow people to serve their sentences close to home, said Kristian Mjåland, a Norwegian associate professor of sociology at the University of Agder in Kristiansand.

About 3,000 people are incarcerated nationwide, he said, making Norway’s per capita incarceration rate about one-tenth that of the United States.

Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. Government statistics put the proportion of people resentenced within two years of their release in 2020 at 16%, with the number falling each year. Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Justice survey conducted over a decade found that 66% of people released from state prisons in 24 states were rearrested within three years, and most of them were reincarcerated.

Mjåland said Norway’s detention 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” – what he called the “principle of normality” – and that they should retain their basic rights.

Mjåland, whose research focuses on punishments and prisons, said that in Norway, for example, prisoners retain the right to vote and access to services such as libraries, health care and education, which are provided by the same providers operating in the broader community.

Norway also operates open prisons, some on islands where there is a lot of agricultural work and contact with nature. The most famous is on the island of Bastoey, “which is beautifully situated in the Oslo Fjord,” said Mjåland.

Even Anders Behring Breivik – who killed eight people in the 2011 bombing of a government building in Oslo and then shot 69 others at a holiday camp for left-wing youth activists – has a dining room, a gym and a TV room with an Xbox. His cell wall is decorated with a poster of the Eiffel Tower and parakeets share his space.

The idea of ​​creating normal, humane conditions for people in prison is also spreading in the USA.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, for example, has sought to adopt certain elements of the Nordic approach in recent years, introducing a program it calls “Little Scandinavia” at a prison in Chester in 2022.

The Menendez brothers’ case was once again in the public spotlight Thursday when the Los Angeles district attorney recommended that their sentences of life without parole be overturned. Prosecutors hope a judge will sentence them so they will be eligible for parole.

If the judge agrees, a parole board must approve her release. The final decision rests with the Governor of California.

Their lawyer and the L.A. district attorney argued that they had served enough time, citing evidence that they were physically and sexually abused by their father, an entertainment executive. They also say the brothers, now in their 50s, are model prisoners committed to rehabilitation and redemption.

Both point to the brothers’ years-long efforts to improve the San Diego prison where they have lived for six years. The two had previously been held in separate prisons since 1996.

In 2018, Lyle Menendez started the Green Space beautification program at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. His brother Erik Menendez is the lead painter of a huge mural depicting San Diego landmarks.

“This project aims to normalize 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, told the AP in an email Friday.

The Menendez brothers’ work continues, with the ultimate goal of transforming the prison yard “from an oppressive concrete and gravel slab into a normalized park-like campus environment surrounded by a majestic landscape mural,” according to the project’s website.

The final product will include outdoor classrooms, meeting rooms for rehabilitation groups and training areas for service dogs.

The prison system recently launched the “California Model” in hopes of implementing similar projects across the state to build “safer communities through rehabilitation, education and reintegration,” Calderón Michel wrote.

The brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, said he believes Lyle Menendez learned about the Norwegian model while attending university. Lyle Menendez is currently enrolled in a master’s degree program studying urban planning and recidivism, and Geragos said his client hopes the facelift will make it easier for people on parole to reintegrate into society.

“When you’re in a gray area that’s not very welcoming, it’s confusing to a certain extent,” Geragos told The Associated Press on Friday. “And you also have the problem that the area is neither inviting nor helpful for settling in and reintegrating into a community.”

Dominique Moran, a professor at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said she found in her research that introducing green spaces in prisons increased the well-being of prisoners and prison staff.

“Green spaces in prisons reduce self-harm and violence and also reduce staff illness,” said Moran, author of “Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration.”

Moran has studied prisons around the world and said in an emailed statement that in the Scandinavian approach, “people go to prison AS punishment, not FOR further punishment.”

“The deprivation of liberty is itself the punishment,” she said. “There should be no further punishment due to the nature of the environment in which people are held.”

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Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland and Dazio from Los Angeles. David Keyton contributed from Berlin.