Content area
Full Text
During its mid-term meeting in Oslo, Norway, the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Library Services to People with Special Needs (LSN) visited Bastoy Prison, a minimum security prison.
Norway has 43 prisons with 40 of them having libraries. The libraries serve 99 percent of the inmates who are not able to regularly visit libraries outside the prison. The maximum prison sentence in Norway is 21 years. When prisoners have completed all but about three years of their sentence, they are eligible to go to Bastoy Prison, the only prison in Norway that is on an island. The prison is a multi-building complex and a working farm and timber operation with horses, cows, chickens, and some tame fox. It has about 115 inmates who all work at various jobs on the island. Some have the privilege of leaving the island for jobs or school on the mainland, returning every night.
The LSN members reached the prison island via ferry. No photos are allowed of the prison or its inmates except...