The Menendez Brothers Case: Eric and Lyle Menendez built a green space in the prison. This is modeled after a Norwegian idea.

COPENHAGEN — Almost 30 years after they killed their parents, Eric and Lyle Menendez launched a project to improve the California prison where life sentences are being served.

Their project was inspired by the Norwegian approach to imprisonment, in which rehabilitation in humane prisons surrounded by nature leads to successful reintegration into society, even for those who have committed heinous crimes.

Norway is a long, narrow country in Northern Europe, stretching 1,100 miles from north to south. Small prisons have been set up across the country, allowing people to serve their sentences close to home, says Kristian Mjland, a Norwegian assistant professor of sociology at the University of Agder in Kristiansand.

There are about 3,000 people in prison nationwide, he said, making Norway’s per capita inmate rate about one-tenth that of the United States.

Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. The proportion of people re-sentenced within two years of release in 2020 was 16%, with the figure falling each year, according to government statistics. Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Justice survey conducted over more than a decade found that 66% of people released from state prisons in 24 states were rearrested within three years, and most were reincarcerated.

Mjland said the Norwegian prison system is based on the principles that people “should be treated by decently well-trained and decent staff” and that they should have “opportunities for meaningful activities during the day” – what he called the “normality principle – and that they should retain their fundamental rights.

Mjland, whose research has focused on punishment and prisons, said that prisoners in Norway, for example, retain the right to vote and access to services such as libraries, health care and education provided by the same service providers who work in the wider community.

Norway also has open prisons, some of them located on islands where there is a lot of agricultural work and contact with nature. The most famous of these is on the island of Bastoy, “which is very beautifully located in the Oslo fjord,” Mjland said.

Even Anders Behring Breivik, who killed eight people in the 2011 Oslo government building bombing and then shot dead 69 more at a holiday camp for left-wing youth activists, has a canteen, a gym and a TV room with an Xbox. The wall of his cell is decorated with a poster of the Eiffel Tower, and parrots share his space.

The idea of ​​​​creating normal, humane conditions for prisoners is beginning to spread in the United States.

For example, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has been trying to apply certain elements of the Scandinavian approach in recent years and introduced a program called “Little Scandinavia” at the Chester prison in 2022.

The Menendez brothers’ case returned to the public spotlight Thursday when the Los Angeles County district attorney recommended that their sentences of life in prison without parole be overturned. Prosecutors are hoping a judge will reconsider their sentence so they can be eligible for parole.

If the judge agrees, the parole board must approve their release. The final decision rests with the Governor of California.

Their lawyer and the Los Angeles district attorney argued that they had served enough time, citing evidence that they were physically and sexually abused by their father, an entertainment executive. They also say the brothers, now in their 50s, are model prisoners dedicated to rehabilitation and redemption.

Both point to the brothers’ years of efforts to improve the San Diego prison where they lived for six years. Before that, they had been kept in different prisons since 1996.

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In 2018, Lyle Menendez launched the Green Space beautification program at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. His brother, Erik Menendez, is the lead artist on a huge mural depicting San Diego landmarks.

“This project hopes to normalize the environment inside the prison to reflect the environment outside the prison,” Pedro Calderon Michel, deputy spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told the AP in an email Friday.

The Menendez brothers’ work continues, and their ultimate goal is to transform the prison yard “from an oppressive slab of concrete and gravel into a normalized campus parkland surrounded by majestic landscape murals,” according to the project’s website.

The final product will include outdoor classrooms, meeting spaces for rehabilitation groups and training areas for service dogs.

The prison system recently launched the “California Model” in hopes of implementing similar projects across the state to create “safer communities through rehabilitation, education and reentry,” Calderon Michel wrote.

The brothers’ lawyer, Mark Geragos, said he believes Lyle Menendez learned about the Norwegian model during university classes. Lyle Menendez is currently a master’s student studying urban planning and recidivism, and Geragos said his client hopes the improvements will make it easier for parolees to re-enter society.

“When you’re in a gray space that’s not very welcoming, it’s somewhat disorienting,” Geragos told The Associated Press on Friday. “And you also have the problem that the area is not something that is hospitable or helpful in terms of acclimatization and re-acclimatization into the community.”

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Dominique Moran, a professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said in her research she found that creating green spaces in prisons improved the well-being of both prisoners and prison staff.

“Green spaces in prisons reduce self-harm and violence, and reduce staff illness,” said Moran, author of The Geography of Prisons: Places and Practices of Custody.

Moran has studied prisons around the world and in an emailed statement said that in the Scandinavian approach, “people go to prison AS punishment, not FOR further punishment.”

“Deprivation of liberty is a punishment in itself,” she said. “There should be no further punishment due to the nature of the environment in which people are detained.”

Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland, and Dazio from Los Angeles. David Caton contributed from Berlin.