Ten million screw packs: Vehicle registration plates and traffic signs – Prison products can be seen in the everyday life in Finland

Work activities for prisoners are arranged in all Finnish prisons. Originally, working during the sentence term was a punishment but nowadays it is considered rehabilitation, which helps to practice, among other things, normal daily routines, responsibility, basic employment skills as well as professional skills. Based on the use of time, working is the most significant activity in the prisons even though its share of the prisoners’ activities has decreased continuously.

The prisoners are obliged to participate in work, training or rehabilitation programmes, such as substance abuse programmes. However, it is not always possible; for instance, prisoners serving a very short sentence or placed in tightly closed wards are often left outside the activities.

1000 at work

On average, a third of a total of 3 000 prisoners work daily. Approximately 450 of them work in the workshops and the rest in real estate maintenance and domestic care, in open prison workplaces, such as, Suomenlinna, Nuuksio, Olavinlinna and Aulanko, or in civilian workplaces.

The most common fields of work are carpentry, metalwork and agriculture. Prisons make, for example, garden furniture, barbecues, and traditional kitchen tables and benches, do various subcontract work for businesses, practice organic farming, rear native breeds of cattle, and grow summer flowers.

10 million screw packs

Packing and assembly work is also common. In Riihimäki Prison for example, the 10th millionth screw pack will be packed at the beginning of June. In addition, the tents of the Finnish Defence Forces are maintained in some prisons. In Hämeenlinna Prison, the prisoners wash the laundry of all prisons, which is over half a million kilogrammes annually, make prison clothes, bind books and make various handicrafts.

– Arranging work in a prison is like a jigsaw. We need different levels of work tasks because some prisoners have prior skills and work experience whereas a growing number of prisoners have none, says Senior Inspector Eila Lempiäinen, who is responsible for the prisoners’ work activities and their development in the Criminal Sanctions Agency.

For obvious reasons, work in the service sector is difficult to arrange in a prison, therefore the available fields of work are traditional. Nevertheless, we try to keep up with the development also in the traditional fields, such as bookbinding, which has become trendy again.

Expanding on-the-job training

At the moment, we need to, among others, develop the cooperation between the prisons and the labour force service centres so that we can guide those, who are at risk of dropping out of the labour market, towards employment.

In order to make the professional skills learned at work visible, the Finnish vocational education and training system offers excellent possibilities in the form of apprenticeship training and competence-based qualifications even in the prisons. In fact, a large proportion of the prisoners’ vocational education and training is carried out as part of the work activities. Our aim is to further expand the possibility of on-the-job training.

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In 2013, the annual income of prison production was about 8.5 million euros of which about 1.8 million euros were internal income. Some of the products, such as cell furniture and prisoner clothing, are made for prison use. With the income, it is possible to cover the direct production costs as well as the prisoners’ activity allowances and open prison wages.

The prison products can be bought from shops, which are run by either the Criminal Sanctions Agency or our cooperation partners. By selling products directly to the consumers, the prisons try to ensure the sufficiency of the job orders and even out the variation in the orders from businesses. Prison work requires contact with the consumers and businesses so that the level of work stays high.

Further information: Senior Inspector Eila Lempiäinen, tel. +358 29 56 88473 and Head of Communication Usko Määttä, tel. +358 29 56 88570 as well as www.vankilatuote.fi