Thomas Ugelvik
Biographic Data
| ID | 221950 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Ugelvik |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Ugelvik |
| SIGNATURE | UGELVIK T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6743-5637 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 171 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Labelling the Void
Parole is worse than doing time’
Norway uses indefinite post-conviction detention, or forvaring, as its most severe penal sanction. This article will be the first to describe how people who have served a forvaring sentence experience conditional release on parole. We develop an analytical framework that builds on the ‘pains of imprisonment’ literature and Sexton's work on penal consciousness. Based on interviews with eight people who have been released from forvaring under the s…
The kindness of strangers
This article explores the significance of new relationships between former offenders who have made changes to their lives and the people they meet as part of their desistance journeys. Many studies of individual desistance processes have focused on the experience of stigma and exclusion, but the related concept of trust rarely appears in the literature. What does it mean for ongoing desistance and identity reconstruction processes when strangers …
The Transformative Power of Trust
While prisons are often described as places of pain, despair and hopelessness, studies show that some prisoners under certain conditions report positive life changes happening in prison. This paper explores the connections between trust and desistance processes, specifically between the experience of being trusted and ‘tertiary desistance’. I argue that trust can be an engine of positive change in prison and that the experience of being trusted m…
Straff, risiko og omdømme
Kriminalomsorgen har ansvar for å gjennomføre straffene som domstolene foreskriver, med unntak av de rene pengestraffene. I denne artikkelen utsetter vi kriminalomsorgens ferske virksomhetsstrategi for kritisk nærlesning. Utgangspunktet vårt er spenningen som oppstår når en offentlig etat som er relativt usynlig, går aktivt ut og forsøker å formidle sine målsetninger og selvforståelse. Vi sammenlikner strategiteksten med to slike tekster kriminal…
They Tell Me I’m Dangerous’
Ambidextrous states can grasp citizens with both the welfare/support-oriented left hand and the punishment/control-oriented right hand. When people go to prison in such contexts, they may simultaneously face punishment and welfare interventions. Based on interviews with six women serving prison sentences in Norway for violence against their own children, this article discusses certain aspects of the prison experience in welfare-state prisons. The…
The pains of detainment
In most jurisdictions, immigration detention centres are seen as an important part of the immigration control system. Research suggests that stressful waiting and the experience of uncertainty are common at such institutions. However, few empirical studies show how detainees manage these matters. In this article, we draw on fieldwork conducted at the only detention centre in Norway. Detainees described their situation as frustrating and emotional…
The Pains of Crimmigration Imprisonment
In the second part of his article on Scandinavian exceptionalism, John Pratt identified certain developments that might undermine the exceptional status of Scandinavian prisons and penal culture. A major problem looming on the horizon, according to Pratt, was the effects of globalization on Scandinavian societies. Since then, scholars have claimed that a bifurcation is emerging in the Norwegian correctional system, with humane and inclusive punis…
Introduction
Imagine a prison. What does it look like? Who live inside? How are they treated? Ask these questions of children, and they will tend to give you a pretty straightforward answer based on what they have learned from adults and quite often what they have seen in movies, TV series and on the Internet: “The windows are very small and it’s dark,” “you wear a blue uniform—or orange,” “the guards are strict because you are criminal” and so on. Many learn…
Punishment and Welfare in Scandinavia
Analytically, one could argue that the literature on Scandinavian or Nordic exceptionalism has been characterised by a logic of juxtaposition where specific prisons in specific countries have been used as stand-ins for two ideal types: (1) Punitive penal state prisons, with high prison population rates and punitive and coercive regimes that lack any proper focus on rehabilitation; (2) Egalitarian welfare state prisons, where punishment is humane,…
The Limits of the Welfare State? Foreign National Prisoners in the Norwegian Crimmigration Prison
The publication of the annual State Budget is always a significant political event in Norway, and the 2013 budget (released on 8 October 2012) was no exception. One of the major new developments made public that day was the fact that Kongsvinger prison, until then an unremarkable medium-sized prison with both high-security and low-security wings serving the larger Kongsvinger area, would soon reopen as Norway’s first all-foreign prison. About a m…
Scandinavian Penal History, Culture and Prison Practice
This book draws on historical and cross-disciplinary studies to critically examine penal practices in Scandinavia. The Nordic countries are often hailed by international observers as 'model societies
A Difference That Makes a Difference? Reflexivity and Researcher Effects in an All-Foreign Prison
Today, researchers are expected to spend considerable energy describing and discussing their own social positions and personas in the field for at least two reasons: First, researchers always observe the field from a specific point of view. Their perspective is structured by their own social position and biography and is thus unique. Second, the people in the field react differently to the presence of different researchers. The field persona of t…
The past, present, and future of narrative criminology
Techniques of legitimation
In many countries, immigrating detention is a controversial issue. Immigration detention centres are frequently seen as concrete symbols of the most problematic side of state immigration control. Immigration detention is often seen as illegitimate by external (immigration law activists) and internal (detainees) critics. Detention centres, in short, frequently operate with a significant legitimacy deficit. This deficit creates problems for detenti…
Why do offenders tape their crimes? Crime and punishment in the age of the selfie
New technologies have changed the way we produce and relate to images. Three socio-cultural trends and associated offender motivations stand out when understanding why offenders record their crimes. First, some pictures and films are inspired by the rise of amateur and rape pornography and recorded to produce and enjoy such images. Second, recordings are done to further humiliate the victim in a new online culture of humiliation. Third, as part o…
Power and Resistance in Prison
This book explores how prisoners turn themselves into active opponents of the prison regime, and thus reclaim their freedom and manhood. Using extensive ethnographic fieldwork from Norway's largest pr
Paternal pains of imprisonment
According to official statistics, about half of the male prisoners in Norwegian prisons are fathers. At the same time, just over three prisoners in 10 are foreign nationals. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Norwegian remand prison, this article will discuss some of the problems imprisoned ethnic minority fathers are facing, and detail some of the solutions they employ. I will focus particularly on two narrative problem-solving strategies. One…
Prison Ethnography as Lived Experience
This article reflects on my own experiences as a prison researcher and my position within the cultural web of the prison society. From the first minute of the first day of fieldwork, I entered into perpetual negotiations about my position in the prison and my proper place in the ever-present struggle between (various factions of) prisoners and officers. Entering a prison as a researcher is both scary and exciting. How would I be greeted? Would I …
Enforcing the Convict Code
Prisoners and their victims
Denial of the victim' is one of the five classic techniques described by Sykes and Matza in their seminal work on techniques of neutralization. Based on ethnographic field work in a Norwegian remand prison, this article explores this particular technique as it is employed by prisoners in their narratives about how they came to be imprisoned. I will argue that this particular technique of neutralization, understood by Sykes and Matza as part of th…
Penal Exceptionalism
1. Introduction: exceptional prisons, exceptional societies? Jane Dullum and Thomas Ugelvik Part I: Exceptions or not? 2. Scandinavian exceptionalism in penal matters - reality or wishful thinking? Thomas Mathiesen 3. A critical look at Scandinavian exceptionalism: welfare state theories, penal populism, and prison conditions in Denmark and Scandinavia, Peter Scharff Smith 4. Media, crime and Nordic exceptionalism: the limits of convergence, Davi…
The hidden food
How can prisoners’ blatant aversion for the official prison food be understood? And what can we make of the various covert practices of illegal or semi-legal alternative food making that goes on behind closed cell doors? Are prisoners picky and difficult people, or is the food truly as horrible as they claim? Or could this best be understood on levels other than that of individual taste? The article will argue that prisoners experience the offici…
Opp mot toppen, ned langs elven
One is talking more and more openly about a crisis of education. School systems are old-fashioned, teaching technology is obsolete, education expensive and insufficiently effective. In 1993 European Union defined in Mastricht the basis of economy politics, but also general principals for its members' educational politics. Educational systems of European Union countries are still rather different. Similarities are visible in primary education and …
The hidden food
How can prisoners’ blatant aversion for the official prison food be understood? And what can we make of the various covert practices of illegal or semi-legal alternative food making that goes on behind closed cell doors? Are prisoners picky and difficult people, or is the food truly as horrible as they claim? Or could this best be understood on levels other than that of individual taste? The article will argue that prisoners experience the offici…
Techniques of legitimation
In many countries, immigrating detention is a controversial issue. Immigration detention centres are frequently seen as concrete symbols of the most problematic side of state immigration control. Immigration detention is often seen as illegitimate by external (immigration law activists) and internal (detainees) critics. Detention centres, in short, frequently operate with a significant legitimacy deficit. This deficit creates problems for detenti…
Prison Ethnography as Lived Experience
This article reflects on my own experiences as a prison researcher and my position within the cultural web of the prison society. From the first minute of the first day of fieldwork, I entered into perpetual negotiations about my position in the prison and my proper place in the ever-present struggle between (various factions of) prisoners and officers. Entering a prison as a researcher is both scary and exciting. How would I be greeted? Would I …
Prisoners and their victims
Denial of the victim' is one of the five classic techniques described by Sykes and Matza in their seminal work on techniques of neutralization. Based on ethnographic field work in a Norwegian remand prison, this article explores this particular technique as it is employed by prisoners in their narratives about how they came to be imprisoned. I will argue that this particular technique of neutralization, understood by Sykes and Matza as part of th…
Scandinavian Penal History, Culture and Prison Practice
This book draws on historical and cross-disciplinary studies to critically examine penal practices in Scandinavia. The Nordic countries are often hailed by international observers as 'model societies
The Pains of Crimmigration Imprisonment
In the second part of his article on Scandinavian exceptionalism, John Pratt identified certain developments that might undermine the exceptional status of Scandinavian prisons and penal culture. A major problem looming on the horizon, according to Pratt, was the effects of globalization on Scandinavian societies. Since then, scholars have claimed that a bifurcation is emerging in the Norwegian correctional system, with humane and inclusive punis…
Paternal pains of imprisonment
According to official statistics, about half of the male prisoners in Norwegian prisons are fathers. At the same time, just over three prisoners in 10 are foreign nationals. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Norwegian remand prison, this article will discuss some of the problems imprisoned ethnic minority fathers are facing, and detail some of the solutions they employ. I will focus particularly on two narrative problem-solving strategies. One…
A Difference That Makes a Difference? Reflexivity and Researcher Effects in an All-Foreign Prison
Today, researchers are expected to spend considerable energy describing and discussing their own social positions and personas in the field for at least two reasons: First, researchers always observe the field from a specific point of view. Their perspective is structured by their own social position and biography and is thus unique. Second, the people in the field react differently to the presence of different researchers. The field persona of t…
The pains of detainment
In most jurisdictions, immigration detention centres are seen as an important part of the immigration control system. Research suggests that stressful waiting and the experience of uncertainty are common at such institutions. However, few empirical studies show how detainees manage these matters. In this article, we draw on fieldwork conducted at the only detention centre in Norway. Detainees described their situation as frustrating and emotional…
The kindness of strangers
This article explores the significance of new relationships between former offenders who have made changes to their lives and the people they meet as part of their desistance journeys. Many studies of individual desistance processes have focused on the experience of stigma and exclusion, but the related concept of trust rarely appears in the literature. What does it mean for ongoing desistance and identity reconstruction processes when strangers …
The Transformative Power of Trust
While prisons are often described as places of pain, despair and hopelessness, studies show that some prisoners under certain conditions report positive life changes happening in prison. This paper explores the connections between trust and desistance processes, specifically between the experience of being trusted and ‘tertiary desistance’. I argue that trust can be an engine of positive change in prison and that the experience of being trusted m…
They Tell Me I’m Dangerous’
Ambidextrous states can grasp citizens with both the welfare/support-oriented left hand and the punishment/control-oriented right hand. When people go to prison in such contexts, they may simultaneously face punishment and welfare interventions. Based on interviews with six women serving prison sentences in Norway for violence against their own children, this article discusses certain aspects of the prison experience in welfare-state prisons. The…
Why do offenders tape their crimes? Crime and punishment in the age of the selfie
New technologies have changed the way we produce and relate to images. Three socio-cultural trends and associated offender motivations stand out when understanding why offenders record their crimes. First, some pictures and films are inspired by the rise of amateur and rape pornography and recorded to produce and enjoy such images. Second, recordings are done to further humiliate the victim in a new online culture of humiliation. Third, as part o…
Opp mot toppen, ned langs elven
One is talking more and more openly about a crisis of education. School systems are old-fashioned, teaching technology is obsolete, education expensive and insufficiently effective. In 1993 European Union defined in Mastricht the basis of economy politics, but also general principals for its members' educational politics. Educational systems of European Union countries are still rather different. Similarities are visible in primary education and …
Penal Exceptionalism
1. Introduction: exceptional prisons, exceptional societies? Jane Dullum and Thomas Ugelvik Part I: Exceptions or not? 2. Scandinavian exceptionalism in penal matters - reality or wishful thinking? Thomas Mathiesen 3. A critical look at Scandinavian exceptionalism: welfare state theories, penal populism, and prison conditions in Denmark and Scandinavia, Peter Scharff Smith 4. Media, crime and Nordic exceptionalism: the limits of convergence, Davi…
The hidden food
How can prisoners’ blatant aversion for the official prison food be understood? And what can we make of the various covert practices of illegal or semi-legal alternative food making that goes on behind closed cell doors? Are prisoners picky and difficult people, or is the food truly as horrible as they claim? Or could this best be understood on levels other than that of individual taste? The article will argue that prisoners experience the offici…
Prisoners and their victims
Denial of the victim' is one of the five classic techniques described by Sykes and Matza in their seminal work on techniques of neutralization. Based on ethnographic field work in a Norwegian remand prison, this article explores this particular technique as it is employed by prisoners in their narratives about how they came to be imprisoned. I will argue that this particular technique of neutralization, understood by Sykes and Matza as part of th…
Enforcing the Convict Code
Power and Resistance in Prison
This book explores how prisoners turn themselves into active opponents of the prison regime, and thus reclaim their freedom and manhood. Using extensive ethnographic fieldwork from Norway's largest pr
Paternal pains of imprisonment
According to official statistics, about half of the male prisoners in Norwegian prisons are fathers. At the same time, just over three prisoners in 10 are foreign nationals. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Norwegian remand prison, this article will discuss some of the problems imprisoned ethnic minority fathers are facing, and detail some of the solutions they employ. I will focus particularly on two narrative problem-solving strategies. One…
Prison Ethnography as Lived Experience
This article reflects on my own experiences as a prison researcher and my position within the cultural web of the prison society. From the first minute of the first day of fieldwork, I entered into perpetual negotiations about my position in the prison and my proper place in the ever-present struggle between (various factions of) prisoners and officers. Entering a prison as a researcher is both scary and exciting. How would I be greeted? Would I …
The past, present, and future of narrative criminology
Techniques of legitimation
In many countries, immigrating detention is a controversial issue. Immigration detention centres are frequently seen as concrete symbols of the most problematic side of state immigration control. Immigration detention is often seen as illegitimate by external (immigration law activists) and internal (detainees) critics. Detention centres, in short, frequently operate with a significant legitimacy deficit. This deficit creates problems for detenti…
Why do offenders tape their crimes? Crime and punishment in the age of the selfie
New technologies have changed the way we produce and relate to images. Three socio-cultural trends and associated offender motivations stand out when understanding why offenders record their crimes. First, some pictures and films are inspired by the rise of amateur and rape pornography and recorded to produce and enjoy such images. Second, recordings are done to further humiliate the victim in a new online culture of humiliation. Third, as part o…
Introduction
Imagine a prison. What does it look like? Who live inside? How are they treated? Ask these questions of children, and they will tend to give you a pretty straightforward answer based on what they have learned from adults and quite often what they have seen in movies, TV series and on the Internet: “The windows are very small and it’s dark,” “you wear a blue uniform—or orange,” “the guards are strict because you are criminal” and so on. Many learn…
Punishment and Welfare in Scandinavia
Analytically, one could argue that the literature on Scandinavian or Nordic exceptionalism has been characterised by a logic of juxtaposition where specific prisons in specific countries have been used as stand-ins for two ideal types: (1) Punitive penal state prisons, with high prison population rates and punitive and coercive regimes that lack any proper focus on rehabilitation; (2) Egalitarian welfare state prisons, where punishment is humane,…
The Limits of the Welfare State? Foreign National Prisoners in the Norwegian Crimmigration Prison
The publication of the annual State Budget is always a significant political event in Norway, and the 2013 budget (released on 8 October 2012) was no exception. One of the major new developments made public that day was the fact that Kongsvinger prison, until then an unremarkable medium-sized prison with both high-security and low-security wings serving the larger Kongsvinger area, would soon reopen as Norway’s first all-foreign prison. About a m…
Scandinavian Penal History, Culture and Prison Practice
This book draws on historical and cross-disciplinary studies to critically examine penal practices in Scandinavia. The Nordic countries are often hailed by international observers as 'model societies
A Difference That Makes a Difference? Reflexivity and Researcher Effects in an All-Foreign Prison
Today, researchers are expected to spend considerable energy describing and discussing their own social positions and personas in the field for at least two reasons: First, researchers always observe the field from a specific point of view. Their perspective is structured by their own social position and biography and is thus unique. Second, the people in the field react differently to the presence of different researchers. The field persona of t…
The Pains of Crimmigration Imprisonment
In the second part of his article on Scandinavian exceptionalism, John Pratt identified certain developments that might undermine the exceptional status of Scandinavian prisons and penal culture. A major problem looming on the horizon, according to Pratt, was the effects of globalization on Scandinavian societies. Since then, scholars have claimed that a bifurcation is emerging in the Norwegian correctional system, with humane and inclusive punis…
The pains of detainment
In most jurisdictions, immigration detention centres are seen as an important part of the immigration control system. Research suggests that stressful waiting and the experience of uncertainty are common at such institutions. However, few empirical studies show how detainees manage these matters. In this article, we draw on fieldwork conducted at the only detention centre in Norway. Detainees described their situation as frustrating and emotional…
They Tell Me I’m Dangerous’
Ambidextrous states can grasp citizens with both the welfare/support-oriented left hand and the punishment/control-oriented right hand. When people go to prison in such contexts, they may simultaneously face punishment and welfare interventions. Based on interviews with six women serving prison sentences in Norway for violence against their own children, this article discusses certain aspects of the prison experience in welfare-state prisons. The…
Straff, risiko og omdømme
Kriminalomsorgen har ansvar for å gjennomføre straffene som domstolene foreskriver, med unntak av de rene pengestraffene. I denne artikkelen utsetter vi kriminalomsorgens ferske virksomhetsstrategi for kritisk nærlesning. Utgangspunktet vårt er spenningen som oppstår når en offentlig etat som er relativt usynlig, går aktivt ut og forsøker å formidle sine målsetninger og selvforståelse. Vi sammenlikner strategiteksten med to slike tekster kriminal…
The Transformative Power of Trust
While prisons are often described as places of pain, despair and hopelessness, studies show that some prisoners under certain conditions report positive life changes happening in prison. This paper explores the connections between trust and desistance processes, specifically between the experience of being trusted and ‘tertiary desistance’. I argue that trust can be an engine of positive change in prison and that the experience of being trusted m…
The kindness of strangers
This article explores the significance of new relationships between former offenders who have made changes to their lives and the people they meet as part of their desistance journeys. Many studies of individual desistance processes have focused on the experience of stigma and exclusion, but the related concept of trust rarely appears in the literature. What does it mean for ongoing desistance and identity reconstruction processes when strangers …
Labelling the Void
Parole is worse than doing time’
Norway uses indefinite post-conviction detention, or forvaring, as its most severe penal sanction. This article will be the first to describe how people who have served a forvaring sentence experience conditional release on parole. We develop an analytical framework that builds on the ‘pains of imprisonment’ literature and Sexton's work on penal consciousness. Based on interviews with eight people who have been released from forvaring under the s…
Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (18 works) · Criminology (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Prison (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Computer Science (6 works)