Oslo Prison is Norway's oldest prison with its 156 years of operations (opened in 1851). Even so, "new" Oslo Prison was able to celebrate 10 years as an independent unit on 1st April 2007. We have experienced 10 years of streamlining initiatives, both professionally and structurally. This has been characterised by highs and lows, during which there has been noise and harmony - as with all restructuring processes. In the period until 2001, Oslo Prison was known as 'Oslo kretsfengsel' (Oslo District Prison). The change of name cam about as part of a comprehensive restructuring of not only the prison but also the entire Norwegian Correctional Services ('Kriminalomsorgen'), which in the same year established a new structure with new name descriptions for its various organizational units. I would like to use this opportunity to clarify some of the main elements of Oslo Prison's own restructuring process over the last 10 years.

Are Høidal, Director, explains to Knut Storberget, Norway's Minister of Justice,
how important it is to continue focusing on the work and resources of Oslo Prison.

Previous history
Oslo (District) Prison was de-merged to become an independent unit in the Eastern Norway Prison District on 1. April 1997. The structure before this date involved the prison being led by a District Director and three assistant directors with different professional areas of responsibility.  In addition to this top-level management tier the management team comprised 9 inspectors, 18 operative senior officers and a number of senior officers with different central staff functions. This proved confusing for everyone, with unclear and overlapping lines of responsibility. It was particularly confusing for those personnel charged with the important task of performing front-line tasks in the inmate departments - the prison officers.
In addition to Oslo Prison, the District Director also had responsibility for 10 other prisons, located in the counties of Østfold, Hedmark and Oppland to the south-east and north-east of Oslo.
On 1. April 1997, one of the assistant directors of the Eastern Norway Prison District was upgraded to the post of Director of Oslo Prison, reporting directly to the District Director.

During the whole 1990s period a comprehensive redevelopment process was taking place within the Norwegian Correctional Services, with a strong focus on developing and improving the various professions represented. This process culminated in a Government White Paper on Correctional Services, which was presented in 1998. The paper outlined new professional goals, new working methods, a new departmental structure and new management steering principles. This represented far-reaching changes for the entire department. Some even described it as being a paradigm shift.

URGENT NEED FOR AN EXTENSIVE RESTRUCTURING OF THE PRISON
In brief, the situation at Oslo (District) Prison on 1. April 1997 was:
• A prison lacking in professional content, with the exception of the department 'Stifinner`n' ("Pathfinders") (with 20 inmates)
• The Norwegian Correctional Services (KRUS) threatened to drop Oslo Prison as a training establishment for new recruits because recruits did not receive the necessary professional content as part of their education and training.
• A prison that received criticism from the European Council's Torture Monitoring Committee for the treatment of remand inmates for whom restrictions were imposed.
• An extremely unstructured prison, with considerable conflicts and a management team with differences in all directions.
The structure became clearer following the de-merger from the Eastern Norway Prison District on 1. April 1997, but a great deal of work still lay ahead of us, both professionally and management steering wise. 

Phase 1 of the restructuring (1997-1998): Professional Development
Since the prison lacked professional content, this had to be the first area for the introduction of a significant change process. During 1997 and 1998 the following professional initiatives were implemented:
• The role of Personal Officer was introduced in Department A (Department B was postponed due to significant opposition from the employees – ”this won't work here”)
• Programme activities were initiated for inmates: 'New Start', 'Anger Management' and other programmes
• The Contract Department 'Stifinner`n' (Pathfinders) was moved from Department A to Department C – a dedicated building
• The Motivation Department (a further contract department) was established on wing C-3 (Department A)
• The Mastering Department (a further contract department) was established on wing C-2 (Department A)
• 'MASH' (initiatives for inmates who isolated themselves while on long sentences) was established in Department B
In addition the prison received circular no. 6/97 from the Norwegian Justice Department which outlined conditions for the content of work for inmates on remand. A wide range of professional meetings and seminars were arranged during 1997 under the umbrella of 'Focus on Professions”'.
But – getting the new Personal Officer role to function properly and practising the intentions of circular 6/97 among prison officers took considerable time. At this time we experienced a great deal of scepticism and opposition.

Phase 2 of the restructuring (1999-2000): Evaluations, new strategy and new structure
External consultants joined us in 1999 to conduct an analysis of what was wrong. Some of the conclusions resulting from this analysis were:
• we strived with an old culture that simply disagreed with the new goal-oriented approach
• managers on all levels differed in their approaches in all directions
• there was a lack of holistic thinking in our establishment (too many island approaches)
• some very robust oppositional forces were mobilised ('it will all be over soon' thinking)
• the personnel manager job was very unclear
• a competence gap existed - new vs. older officers (A and B teams?)
• the new way of working was much more demanding – is this positive ?
After these analyses we certainly felt there was a need for some of our processes to start from scratch again.

Two large projects were established:
• Development of a new strategy – new professional foundation
• Development of a new organizational structure to match the recommendations of our consultants.

New Strategy
Our strategy process lasted for two years, during 1999 and 2000. A new strategic plan was presented at the annual goals seminar in January 2001. Trade unions participated throughout the entire process and the main conclusions were that Oslo Prison, in the years to come, should concentrate on improving the quality of the prison's different professional work areas. An important part of this task was to focus on inmates in remand custody (especially those who were particularly isolated), to also focus on inmates with psychiatric problems and significant behavioural deviations, and also on re-offenders, young inmates, foreigners as well as processes in connection with reception and evaluation of new inmates.

New Organizational Structure
Following the analyses mentioned earlier, we quickly arrived at a clear recommendation to re-organize the prison, such that the personnel manager post was better defined, i.e. so as to achieve more continuity in the relationship between prison officers and their immediate leaders (1st. officers). In 1997 and 1998 the operative 1st. officers had line responsibility. Since this group worked continuously according to a 24 hour shift system, the number of points of contact between them and with those they were supposed to lead were very few. At this time, many prison officers were not aware who their leaders were. The recommendations from the analyses were that it was necessary for the personnel manager to:

• be available (preferably daily, and not be subjected to shift work)
• be able to decide over their subordinates
• exercise responsibility for monitoring and developing each individual in his/her charge
• define clear goals, provide feedback and support individuals in their daily operations

It had to be perfectly clear who was leading who. This was not the case in 1998. Det måtte være helt klart hvem som ledet hvem. Noe som ikke var tilfellet i 1998.
Defining the new structure ran more or less concurrently with the process of developing our new strategic plan. Recommendations were presented at the same goals seminar in January 2001, and all parties ageed that the new structure was to be evaluated in Autumn 2001. The main content of the new structure was the new Department Manager role. The Prison Officers' immediate leader was to work during the daytime. Agreement with the trade unions was made on this point. But there were discussions on the extent of the responsibilities for the new departmental managers. The new structure was evaluated in Autumn 2001 in cooperation with the trade unions, and was subsequently fine-tuned.

Phase 3 of restructuring (2001-2002): Changed structure for the Norwegian Correctional Services and changed framework conditions
The phase Oslo Prison had just completed (the period from 1997 – 2001), led to a more visible structure with more well-defined areas of focus for professional development. The year 2001 started with a new structure for the Norwegian Correctional ('Kriminalomsorgen') involving regionalisation. In connection with this new departmental structure, it was experienced that there was a lack of good argumentation for the allocation of resources within the Correctional Services. The regionalisation programme initiated in January 2001, was a good opportunity to also develop a completely new budget allocation model. The regions in our Eastern Norway district were assigned tighter limits, while the north and west became "budget winners". The larger units were naturally those who had to bear the largest cuts.
The salary budget was previously compiled on the basis of how many job positions we had and the operating budget (goods and services) compiled on the basis of the number of inmates and the number of square metres building facilities. In the new model we departed from these criteria to now base allocations on objective measurable sizes. Our future steering was to be based on result based financing. Oslo Prison was insufficiently prepared for the new allocation model in 2001. Our organization was still too large and not sufficiently adapted to the new times (the new structure and framework conditions). The number of man-years was too high in relation to allocated resources. This led to a large budget deficit for the financial year 2001 (surplus operating costs amounting to NOK 6 million).

2002 – Adapting the organization to new resource conditions
To avoid a catastrophic budget situation, Oslo Prison had no option but introduce extensive cuts and saving measures. In Spring 2002, an all-parties working group was established and assigned the task of evaluating Oslo Prison's manpower situation, shift system and other resource deployment. This working group came about as a result of the recommendations for cuts and savings announced in the Director's policy note 1/02 - ”Adaptation of the organization to new conditions and allocations” (dated 4.2.2002). The working group was assisted by several subgroups. One subgroup focused on common services, one on night-shift manpower and another on management and staff functions. All these groups continued their work through the Spring until a long way into Autumn 2002. The Director introduced new information to this process with new recommendations for an adjusted organizational structure for Oslo Prison in policy note 2/02 (dated 17.9.2002).
The parties agreed to complete the task of adapting the organization volume-wise before embarking specifically on the organizational structure.  In the meantime we managed to achieve agreement on the main structure of the prison. The task ahead at this point was for the departmental managers, in cooperation with the unions, to work to achieve the correct dimensions for each unit. The starting premise was that there should be a downsizing of the organization by approximately 40 man-years, with main emphasis on prison administration and management.

The result of the downsizing exercise was:
o Administrative unit: From 52 man-years to 44 man-years
o Activity unit: From 22 to 24 (due to goals for increased activation)
o Department A: From 119 to 103
o Department B: From 152 to 140
o Department C: From 18 to 15

The figures on the left amount to 363 man-years, which was the figure Oslo Prison operated with at the time it focused on the number of job positions. The figure to the right gives 326 man-years, giving savings amounting to 37 man-years. The parties considered that this reduction was sufficient in relation to the adaptations needed with regard to accommodating the new budget limitations.

After this downsizing process, parties were now ready to negotiate the final details of the new organizational structure. In a meeting held on 10. April 2003, agreement was reached on the new organizational structure.
The result of our downsizing exercise was that the prison achieved financial balance already in 2002 and has been so ever since.

Phase 4 restructuring (2003-2006): The Process for Improved Management Steering of the Organization - Implementation of Balanced Scorecards as steering tool.
Through the new professional demands and the new budget allocation principles (where we based allocations on objective measurable sizes), Oslo Prison experienced that the existing steering systems were not good enough. We searched for a steering system that captured all elements of steering a business organization. Finally, we chose 'Balanced Scorecards'. The purpose of 'Balanced Scorecards' is that we focus and measure the most important (most critical) elements in order to develop Oslo Prison in line with the strategic goals for the Norwegian Correctional Services and our own organization. The traditional definition of 'Balanced Scorecards' is: ”a management tool for operating, adapting and developing an organization with special focus on linking strategies with operative initiatives” (translated from 'Statskonsult'). The steering information revealed by use of this system will form the basis for improved priorities throughout the year. Measurements show whether the organization is moving in the right direction within the different areas of focus and provide the basis for implementing corrective actions where necessary. One of the demands we imposed pon ourselves for choice of a new steering system was that it should be simple to administrate and easy to communicate. Our working experience of the system to date is that it meets all our demands and expectations.
During the last three years (2003-2006) we, the personnel of Oslo Prison, have used considerable time implementing Balanced Scorecards and quality assuring and quality developing what we implemented through strategic and organizational development at the beginning of this century. Our focus on Balanced Scorecards as the main tool for steering our organization has been a success and we have achieved a number of acknowledgements for this (including the Norwegian SSOE Prize for 2007). We have also received an international correctional services prize for our professional quality initiatives. Naturally we are all proud of this.

What about the Future ?
I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Oslo Prison is Norway's oldest prison. It is not a modern prison – far from it. We are still lacking in may areas in order to function according to modern principles for correctional services. Our most critical need is an activity programme for half of our inmates (approx. 200). Many of our inmates sit in their cells without meaningful activities for too long periods. This situation is VERY unfortunate and regrettable. We cannot continue with this. Therefore, we have presented recommendations to the Norwegian Justice Department, which involve a substantial upgrading of our building facilities. This will provide a far wider range of activities and more effective deployment of resources by bringing together common services in one location. The recommendations also provide for our own kitchen to avoid having to collect meals from Ullevål Hospital. Visitors to inmates (including solicitors) will also, through our proposals, experience improved visiting facilities during visits.
If Oslo Prison is to be a prison for the future, we are dependent on securing an understanding of our building upgrade needs and winning accept for our recommendations. Otherwise, I am unable to see an alternative solution other than a significant reduction in our capacity, or closure of the entire prison.

Oslo Prison, 20. April 2007
Are Høidal
Director