The research report “The power relations between prisoners and the fear of violence in closed Prison” describes the fearful prisoners’ views on the exercise of power, the violence, and the threat of violence between prisoners especially in Helsinki Prison.

The research material included the accommodation cards used in prison, the risk and needs assessments made of the prisoners, the transfer applications written by the prisoners, and the disciplinary reports passed to the chief officer. In addition, interviews with the prisoners and the personnel and observations made inside the prison were used in the research. The varied material provided data on 142 fearful prisoners who were serving their sentences in Helsinki Prison between 17 April 2003 and 17 December 2004.

In Helsinki Prison, approximately every eighth prisoner requested to be placed in isolation at some stage of their sentences during the research period. The status and the amount of fearful prisoners vary between prisons. Factors effecting them include both the prisoners allocated in the prison and the facilities provided in the prison. An exceptionally large number of prisoners convicted of drug offences are allocated in Helsinki Prison and it reflects on the fearful prisoners’ state of affairs. In Helsinki Prison, a typical reason for isolation of ones own request is, one way or another, connected with either drug use or drug traffic.

About two-thirds of the fearful prisoners had clearly one main reason for wanting to be isolated, a one-third had several reasons. Prisoners requested to be placed in isolation due to accusations of being an informer, crimes they had committed, ethnic background, fear of gang members, and drug debts. A prisoner can also end up in a special ward because of the prison’s internal drug traffic, social difficulties, or mental problems. Prisoners isolated of their own will are typically useless or even harmful to the community of prisoners either in a moral or financial sense and, thus, other prisoners want to be separated from them by pressuring them to go to the least respected wards of the prison.

The pressure put on fearful prisoners is chiefly threatening, and, according to the research, physical violence between prisoners has not increased in Helsinki Prison in the last few years. Prisoners requesting to be isolated of their own will are controlled rather by fear than by physical violence. The transfers of fearful prisoners from wards to isolation or to other prisons indicate that threats have forced them to act the way the prisoners pressuring them have wished. In the everyday practices of prison, the conflicts and inequality between prisoners stand out concretely when prisoners are requesting to be placed in safer wards.

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