Scandinavian Prison Food: Storstrøm Prison, Denmark

Hello from Denmark!

As you may already know, I’m currently undertaking a 3-week research project with Food Behind Bars, sponsored by The Churchill Fellowship. I’m so grateful to be able to travel across Scandinavia, visiting prisons in Denmark, Sweden and Finland and observing each country’s approach towards food in prison. I’ve taken my 1-year old daughter and my partner along for the ride, so it’s a true family-affair! I’m fully immersing myself in the culture and hoping to find out exactly what makes the prison system in this part of the world so effective. This is a region renowned for its humane approach to incarceration, with one of the lowest reoffending rates in the world and in many cases, a prison population that’s actually in decline. 

This trip couldn’t have taken place at a more poignant time. Prisons have remained firmly in the spotlight since the escape of Daniel Khalife from HMP Wandsworth last month highlighted the inhumane conditions of so many of our country’s prisons. According to The Howard League, the prison population currently stands at 88,225 - the highest ever recorded. 64% of prisons are holding more people than they are designed for. We’ve run out of prison spaces - the government will begin renting spaces abroad and tomorrow, the Justice Secretary Alex Chalk is expected to announce a package of measures to ease overcrowding - but for how long? It’s becoming abundantly clear that our prison system is broken, and it’s going to take more than quick fixes to solve the crisis.

Which is why it felt surreal this week to be standing in Storstrøm Prison, about 113 km south of Copenhagen. Here I am sitting with a group of prisoners in one of the residential units of this high security prison, which is home to around 250 men. They’ve made me a huge chocolate cake - brought out on a silver platter, sliced up and shared amongst the prisoners, officers and myself. We all sit around in the open-plan kitchen/diner, eating cake, drinking coffee and talking about prison life. One of the men is busy prepping some fresh chicken to go into the oven for dinner. He’s bought it as part of his weekly shop from Storstrøm’s in-house grocery store, which stocks everything from pine nuts and pineapple to protein powder and locally reared meat. It’s the same produce they’d be able to buy on the outside - at exactly the same price.

Another man is showing me the baking books he’s taken out from the library today. “My three children and my wife are coming to visit for 2 days this weekend, and I want to make my kids some cakes”. He’ll be staying with them in one of the prison’s visitor apartments - a 2-bedroom fully furnished unit, packed with kids toys and a private garden. These types of weekend visits are allowed monthly, with 1.5 hour weekly visits in a private room allowed as well.

I’m more used to being on the wing of HMP Brixton, where 150 men jostle to collect their lunch, before heading back into their dark Victorian cell and eating their meal on their bed, next to their toilet. Here, the walls and floor are painted bright yellow and there’s a huge picture window overlooking the fields beyond the prison walls. We might be in prison, but we are still in Denmark, so the kitchen is straight from an IKEA catalogue - lots of stainless steel and handy storage solutions. Only 7 men live in this unit. They each have a small bathroom in their cell, a fridge and another big window - Storstrøm must be the only prison in the world with this much daylight.

My two days here have been transformative - full of joy, good food, lovely people and a level of positivity I’m not used to in a prison. I’ve been kindly hosted by Lasse, Storstrøm’s Catering Manager - a hugely talented and inspirational person who is leading a kitchen of 30 men and pioneering an approach to prison food that’s innovative and puts the power firmly in the prisoner’s hands. 

After cutting his teeth in some of London’s best restaurants from the age of 15, Lasse moved back to Denmark and quickly got sick of working 60 hour weeks in a relentless environment: “I knew if I ever ran my own kitchen, I wanted it to be different. I wanted to look after the people in it.” He’s been in charge at Storstrøm for 4 years and during that time, he’s created a nurturing kitchen where prisoners and staff work side-by-side and training is fundamental to everything they do. “I train each of them as high as my own skill level” Lasse says, and the day after my visit he’d organised a staff overnight trip to Copenhagen to visit the first ever prisoner who trained in his kitchen. He now works in one of the city’s top hotels, and the kitchen team were looking forward to eating his food and celebrating his success.

Over 80% of Denmark’s prisons are self-catered. One of the key principles governing the Danish prison service is an “Exercise of Responsibility” - prisons must do everything they can to develop prisoners’ “sense of responsibility, self-respect and self-confidence.” For  many of the men at Storstrøm, much like the majority of the country’s prisons, that means shopping, budgeting and cooking for themselves. During lunchtime with some of the men, I was quizzed about the concept of “kettle cooking”, explaining how prisoners in the UK use leftover chicken, a few spices, some plastic cutlery and a travel-sized kettle to exercise their own small shred of responsibility. Self-catering plays a fundamental role in rehabilitation - every single person I met at Storstrøm felt healthy and in control of their wellbeing. I told them that many people in the UK leave prison in a worse state than when they entered. They were unanimous that Storstrøm has the opposite effect.

So what about the remaining 20% of Danish prisoners who don’t have access to self-catering facilities? These are typically made up of those on remand, or in the highest security units - and this was around half of the population at Storstrøm. Lasse and his team produce hot and cold meals each day. These are given to some of the men at Storstrøm, as well as packaged up and distributed to other prisons in the area. Much like the British system, the Danish prison service works with one centralised supplier. But in stark contrast to our £2.70 per head, per day budget, Lasse has around 70 Danish Krone (just over £8) for three meals. The Danish government also has a rigorous approach to food procurement, with strict rules on organic farming, local produce and ethical production. Couple this with a requirement - by law - to list the exact nutritional breakdown of each meal to the exact gram, and you’ve got yourself a very different plate of food at the end of it.

All of the ingredients I saw during my two days in Storstrøm’s kitchen were fantastic quality - they tasted great, were grown or produced in Denmark and were fresh and seasonal. Lasse’s daily kitchen team includes a nutritionist, who was constantly consulting with the prison population and developing her dishes so that they were tasty, healthy and reflected (as much as possible) what the men wanted to eat. I helped prepare 90 portions of homemade Greek meatballs with a feta and veg couscous salad for Thursday’s lunch - popping a sticker on the box that clearly listed the percentage of fat, salt, protein, sugar and so on. The men praised this addition, saying it gave them control of their health and diet. 

The kitchen was a hive of activity and purpose. Watching Lasse lead his team reminded me of the power of the individual - some of the best prison kitchens I’ve been in in the UK were solely due to someone inspirational leading them, who cared deeply about each plate of food and the people making them. Storstrøm is no exception. Lasse is constantly pushing the boundaries and expanding the opportunities in the kitchen, so that the men have as many chances to cook and develop their skills as possible. I met an officer who catered his family party with food cooked by the prisoners - “They couldn’t believe it to begin with! But they ate it and all loved it.” Every few months, Lasse hosts ‘restaurant nights’ for over 120 staff and their families. The prisoners cook and serve everything, and Storstrøm’s male choir provides the music. They cater weddings and local functions - all of the additional income is piled back into Lasse’s food budget and put to good use. 

I ask him why other prisons in Denmark don’t do this: “I don’t have the freedom to do it, but I do it anyway. We have to make it happen ourselves.” It just shows what happens when somewhere as important as the prison kitchen is run by someone as passionate and enterprising as Lasse, and the results speak for themselves. Storstrøm might feel a million miles away from our crumbling, overcrowded prisons and the facilities and environment are worlds apart. But this philosophy is universal. How can we work with what we have to produce great food, cultivate a positive environment and train everyone to the highest standards? How can we empower, upskill and inspire? Although more resources, better equipment and greater freedom help, they aren’t the solution. The answer lies with something far more fundamental - it’s the people, the passion and making things happen, regardless of the challenges. Suddenly,  doesn’t feel as far away from HMP Brixton as it initially did. 

I am so grateful to every single individual I have met during my week in Denmark and thank you in particular to Lasse and the team at Storstrøm for an amazing two days. Tomorrow I head off to Sweden, where I’ll be spending time in 3 prisons across the country. I can’t wait to share more. 

Lucy x