A pilot initiative in Chester’s state prison modeled after the jail system in Scandinavian countries will be expanded to three other state prisons, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections announced last week.

Nicknamed “Little Scandinavia,” the pilot program at State Correctional Institution-Chester is made up of a 64-bed unit and has become one of the safest and most desirable units in the 1,100-bed medium-security Delaware County state prison, officials said. The program was created by researchers at Drexel University and the University of Oslo to test whether the Nordic restorative justice model would lead to lower recidivism rates when applied to a very different criminal justice system in the United States.

In Little Scandinavia, people incarcerated at SCI Chester are chosen by a lottery system and given single-person rooms, as opposed to the crowded multi-person cells that are common in prisons across the state and the U.S. They also order their own groceries each week, cook their own meals, and have common areas to encourage collaboration. This is modeled on the penal systems in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which are internationally known for their focus on rehabilitation and reintegration — and the Nordic countries’ low recidivism rates.

Anyone incarcerated at SCI Chester is eligible for the random lottery to participate in the Little Scandinavia program.

Department of Corrections Secretary Laurel Harry announced during a state House budget hearing Monday that due to the pilot program’s success in Chester, Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration is preparing to expand the program to three other state prisons “hopefully this year,” including in a maximum-security facility. The current pilot program and its research are mostly funded by private grants from philanthropists at Arnold Ventures. It costs the state approximately $310,000 to reconfigure the space to accommodate the single-person rooms, PennLive reported.

There has only been one physical altercation in the unit since it became fully operational in 2022 following the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is much lower than violence rates in the general prison population, Harry told members of the state House Appropriations Committee on Monday. The reported low violence rates are in line with other specialized Pennsylvania prison units, such as the DOC’s veterans service units, Harry added.

In addition to its benefits for inmate well-being and outcomes, the unit has become the most requested work station for corrections officers because of the positive relationships they are able to form with incarcerated people in a place where they do not have to act punitively in the same way as in a traditional unit. Some officers have traveled to Sweden or Norway to visit their corrections facilities and receive specialized training.

“They all talked about having a less-stressed environment working on this unit, a sense of purpose,” Harry added.

Researchers from Drexel and the University of Oslo are still finalizing their report on the pilot program’s first few years, but Harry described the results to this point as “very positive.”

Researchers will still need to answer whether the Nordic penal system can truly be applied to the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate, among other societal and institutional issues that do not exist abroad.

Nordic prisons are internationally recognized for their community-based prisons, where incarcerated people live more closely to the way they want to live outside of prison, including freedom to move about their units, wear their own clothes, and cook for themselves. The model is a stark contrast from the United States’ carceral system, where overpopulation, poor living conditions, and recidivism are common.

In Pennsylvania, there were more than 39,000 people incarcerated in state institutions as of January, according to DOC data. The recidivism rate for offenders has hovered around 64% for more than a decade, but declined slightly last year.

Rep. Ben Waxman (D., Philadelphia) has become one of the top advocates for the Little Scandinavia model to expand to other state prisons, after learning about it at an unrelated event at the state prison two years ago. A former spokesperson for progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, Waxman said he was struck by the program’s focus on rehabilitation so inmates could be successful once they finish their sentences.

“They’re going to be able to come out with the real skills they would need to go back to ordinary life,” Waxman said. “If you’re not rehabilitating people, if you’re not dealing with whatever led them to be in prison in the first place, you’re going to wind up with unsuccessful outcomes.”