Do Risk-Reducing Measures Only Reduce Risk? Prison Officer Work With Risk-Reducing Measures in the Imprisonment of a High-Risk Prisoner

In this chapter I discuss the implications of risk-reducing measures, recognising that some also increase risk despite best intentions. This discussion is based on the imprisonment of a high-security prisoner, Anders Behring Breivik, at Ila Prison and Detention Centre, reflecting on the two years he spent incarcerated there. I discuss two main risk-reducing measures in relation to Breivik’s imprisonment where he was met with ‘detailed security procedures’ carried out by the prison officers who were instructed that they should ‘not talk’ to him (or as less as possible). That this imprisonment led to such strict regulated security procedures including prison officer speaking as less as possible with Breivik is a radical departure in Norwegian prisons where communication and maintaining relationships with prisoners are essential duties of officers. Such practices reduced officers’ situational awareness and their ability to collect relevant information about the prisoner. The data reveal how reduced situational awareness results from the inability of officers to read signals from the prisoner verbally and nonverbally, which makes detecting prisoners positionality (i.e. if aggressive) preeminent.