Austria: through the lens of the incarcerated

The lack of information leads to misjudgements of the prison system amongst the general public. As other democratic pillars are regularly controlled by the public eye and media, the judicial system is perceived as an objective institution in charge of implementing democratic values. This apparent objectivity, however, comes to question when looking into the significant East-West-disparity in Austrian court decisions. In 2019, custodial sentences were imposed three times more often in Eastern Vienna than in Western Innsbruck. Vice versa, Western courts are known to impose milder punishments: Innsbruck imposed four times more financial penalties than Viennese courts.

In some cases, misinformation leads to de-humanising incarcerated people. Seichter, the head-warden of Göllersdorf prison, recounts: “When we started campaigning for the vaccination in spring 2020, people outside kept asking me why inmates deserved to be vaccinated”.

Prisoners continue to be seen as non-citizens. It took Helmut Frodl, a prisoner and former journalist, to sue the State for incarcerated people to obtain voting rights in 2010. Still, a prisoner can have his right to vote suspended as a part of the sanction, through a court decision.

“People do not realise how fast it can happen for one to end up in prison”, says Haindl, a prison social worker. People committing non-violent offences often do not intend to harm others. Many come from low-income backgrounds and simply lack the coping mechanisms that would allow them to deal adequately with a crisis, she adds.

The responsibility of society is often overlooked when imposing prison sentences and generally in penitentiary discourses. Racial and class issues become apparent however when looking at the penal statistics – despite the lack of recent research in this field.

In 2012, the odds of being incarcerated after committing a crime were three times higher for foreigners than for Austrian nationals. Austrians count for 61% of people reported by the police, but they only make 35% of the prison population. Likewise, lower levels of education and unemployment increase a person’s risk of facing charges, as showed in a study by the Austrian Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology.

Even though public debate on prison is minimal, it is hard to ignore the shortcomings of the penitentiary system as soon as you talk to prison staff and to prisoners. Stories abound about illegitimate overcrowding, or about prisoners not being granted their daily hour outside due to staff shortcomings. The hardship imposed by the system sneaks its way into any discussions on every-day-life in prison.

Little by little, tales of absurd normality are told. The story about a migrant prisoner who agreed to get deported of his own free will and was transferred back into prison because of bureaucratic issues, after having lost all his money on deportation costs.

Another prisoner had no other possibility of following a training program than a carpentry apprenticeship, despite him being allergic to wood and therefore knowing he would never be able to work as a carpenter. He still counted as ‘successfully re-socialised’ in the statistics. The story about a prison chaplain who could not follow up on his appointments because of lack of available rooms, and repeatedly has to leave prisoners in uncertainty.

When Austrian prison staff raise criticism, it sometimes leads to a call for more staff and increased capacity. However, studies show that increasing prison capacity tends to an equivalent rise in prisoners’ numbers, therefore cancelling out the impact. The questions should rather be: how many people must be locked up in order to secure public safety? What kind of offences could be more efficiently addressed by other sentences than imprisonment? How are these decisions made?

Tsekas works with Neustart (‘new beginnings’), an NGO focused on re-socialisation and crime-prevention. He declares: “Re-socialisation measures are least successful when people have to go through the whole length of their prison sentence behind bars”. For that reason, and to tackle overcrowding, electronic surveillance has been introduced in 2010. Eleven years later, about 4% of the Austrian prison population was allowed to stay at home, with a bracelet around their ankle. The idea behind this concept is that people are not removed from their social and work environment.

The numbers speak for themselves: while the recidivism rate of the general prison population is 50%, the number is two thirds lower for people wearing an electronic bracelet.

Media and the public opinion often perceive electronic surveillance as light punishment. Too light, some might say. What goes unseen is that this sentence does not allow to maintain a normal life. People are only allowed to leave their homes for work purposes. Walks to the supermarket or to doctor’s appointments need to be pre-approved two weeks in advance by the prison facility. If you report to work five minutes late, your boss has to inform your warden. If you misbehave, you are sent back into prison. In this form of sentence, “the bulk of the punishment lies in permanent stress”, as Moser[^nam] recalls his time wearing the electronic bracelet.

To be eligible for electronic monitoring, one must benefit from a permanent living arrangement as well as a steady job. Since decisions lie mainly in the hands of head wardens, the facility you are imprisoned in plays an important role in your chance of being granted electronic surveillance. The modalities of the measure have not been reformed in the twelve years of its existence.

According to Neustart, the best way to avoid recidivism is to find solutions that do not put offenders behind bars. One of the alternatives is the so-called “extrajudicial offence resolution”. This process gathers victims and offenders around the table to negotiate a satisfying solution for both parties. The idea derives from the restorative justice movement, for which justice is supposed to be served through reconciliation and compensation, instead of punishment.

Informing about the prison system can play a role in improving prison conditions. This must go hand in hand with the idea of creating alternatives to build a constructive, safe and more equal society. Society is measured by the state of its weakest. Austrian prisons should not remind us of mid-19th-century-Russia in Tolstoi’s “Resurrection”.