Prisoners in the community: the open prison model in Catalonia

Open prisons are low-security penitentiary institutions in which life conditions are less strict than in closed prisons, and where prisoners have more contact with the outside world. Despite sharing important features, some variations can be found in the model of open prisons in different countries. This article describes the Catalan open prison model, characterized by the fact that prisoners serve the sentence in full semi-liberty; that is, by day they work and spend time with their families or doing other activities, but return to prison to sleep. As a contribution to the comparative study of open prisons, I describe here how Catalan open prisons are run and discuss the concept of ‘openness’ with reference, above all, to the open prisons that exist in Scandinavian countries. This work shows that the degree of openness of open prisons varies considerably between different countries – therefore approaching community penalties or closed prisons in a greater or lesser extent – and suggests that the role that open prisons are granted in each penal system is part of the explanation.1 Abstract Åbne fængsler har et lavere control-niveau end lukkede fængsler og indsatte i åbne fængsler har mere kontakt til verden uden for fængslet. Trods mange ligheder findes der også en del forskelle imellem åbne fængsler i forskellige lande. I denneÅbne fængsler har et lavere control-niveau end lukkede fængsler og indsatte i åbne fængsler har mere kontakt til verden uden for fængslet. Trods mange ligheder findes der også en del forskelle imellem åbne fængsler i forskellige lande. I denne 1. Marta Martí holds a PhD in Law (Criminology). Currently, she is working as an external consultant for the International Committee of the Red Cross in El Salvador and she is member of the Research Group in Criminology and Criminal Justice System of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain). This article is based on her PhD dissertation, ‘One foot in and one foot out: serving a prison sentence in an open prison’, which was accepted in November 2018 in Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain). The full version of the dissertation (in Spanish) can be found on the following link: https://repositori.upf.edu/handle/10230/36320. This article is part of the project ‘Ejecución y supervisión de la pena: calidad de la intervención, legitimidad y reincidencia’ (DER2015-64403-P), funded by the Spanish Government. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Kriminalvidenskab 2/2019 212 artikel præsenteres åbne fængsler i Catalonien. Disse er kendetegnet ved at de indsatte rent faktisk nyder delvis frihed. Det indebærer, at de i dagtimerne går på arbejde uden for fængslet eller tilbringer tid sammen med deres familie eller er beskæftiget på anden måde i lokalområdet. Om aftenen vender de tilbage til fængslet og tilbringer natten dér. I artiklen sammenlignes de catalanske åbne fængsler med åbne fængsler i Skandinavien. Sammenligningen viser, at der er store forskelle i graden af åbenhed i åbne fængsler, nogle steder ligger de tættere på samfunds-straffe og andre steder langt tættere på lukkede fængsler. Der argumenteres for, at en del af forklaringen her på er, hvilken rolle i det samlede nationale straffesystem de åbne fængsler har i forskellige lande.

1. Marta Martí holds a PhD in Law (Criminology). Currently, she is working as an external consultant for the International Committee of the Red Cross in El Salvador and she is member of the Research Group in Criminology and Criminal Justice System of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain). This article is based on her PhD dissertation, 'One foot in and one foot out: serving a prison sentence in an open prison', which was accepted in November 2018 in Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain). The full version of the dissertation (in Spanish) can be found on the following link: https://repositori.upf.edu/handle/10230/36320. This article is part of the project 'Ejecución y supervisión de la pena: calidad de la intervención, legitimidad y reincidencia' (DER2015-64403-P), funded by the Spanish Government.

Introduction
Open prisons are low-security penitentiary institutions in which life conditions are less strict than in closed prisons, and where prisoners have more contact with the outside world. The aim of this type of prison is for the prisoners to serve their sentence under conditions that -to the extent that it is possible -resemble those of normal life, and to helping their future resettlement. Although the best-known open prisons are probably in Scandinavia (Birk 2011;Fransen 2017;Hornum 1988;Shammas 2014;, prisons of this type also exist in many other countries such as the United Kingdom (Jones & Stockford 1977), Spain (Cutiño 2015;Martí 2018) and India (Chakraburtty 2018). There is little literature on the subject -in English, at least -as most studies on prisons tend to concentrate on closed prisons, in which prisoners are isolated from society and controlled by strictly regulated regimes. In addition, the study of open prisons in some countries is frequently included under the study of open institutions in general, leaving the specific characteristics of open prisons unobserved. As such, the reality of open prisons is poorly understood; indeed, even those with good knowledge of prison regimes might still ask: 'What is an open prison like?' 'What does serving a sentence in a prison of this type imply?' 'Are all open prisons the same?' The lack of studies on the subject means that there are no easy answers to these questions, which helps explain why currently comparative debate on the subject is all but absent.
This work consists of a description of the open prison model in Catalonia (Spain) that I hope will provide a contribution to the literature on open prisons and will help stimulate discussion on the subject. Catalan open prisons are characterized by the fact that prisoners serve the sentence in full semi-liberty, that is, by day they work or do other activities in the community and spend time with their families but return to prison to sleep. In the first section I describe the nature of these Catalan prisons and how prisoners are supervised; subsequently, I explore this concept of 'openness' in the Catalan prison system and use the Nordic model of open prisons as a comparison. This article is based on a literature review and on broad-ranging qualitative research performed in Catalonia, during which I interviewed both prison staff and inmates in three open prisons (Martí 2018).

Open prisons in Catalonia
To understand the Catalan model of open prisons it is first necessary to examine some of the general characteristics of the Spanish prison system. Catalonia is one of the 17 Autonomous Communities in Spain and shares with the other regions a common Penal Code and set of prison regulations (LOGP and RP). 2 Nevertheless, certain areas of competence relating to prison sentences have been devolved to Catalonia and, in questions concerning the enforcement of prison sentences and community sanctions, the Catalan system differs from the rest of Spain. Given that this work concentrates on the Catalan experience, some of the issues concerning open prisons may differ from the situation in the rest of the State, even though the overall configuration of their prison systems is essentially the same in both Spain and Catalonia. The Spanish penal system is a progressive and flexible system that divides sentences into three different levels or grades that correspond to different types of prisons and regimes (see Figure 1). Level one, which is similar to the English category A, is for prisoners regarded as dangerous, who are held in isolation in maximum security institutions or in maximum security wings in closed prisons; level two corresponds to English category B and C, and consists of an ordinary prison regime for the majority of prisoners, who serve their sentences in ordinary wings in closed prisons; level three, similar to the English category D, corresponds to people who are serving prison terms under open conditions. Towards the end of their sentences, third-level prisoners may be released on parole. Given that it is a progressive and flexible system, prisoners do not have to pass through all levels and at the beginning of their sentence the prisoner is classified in any one of the three levels (except that of parole). Generally, the procedure is as follows: a prisoner is placed in a closed prison and, after assessment for up to two months -which in practice may be longer -, the Prison Board proposes a classification 3 and if necessary the prisoner is then moved to an appropriate facility. This classification is reviewed throughout a prisoner's sentence and they can change level -in either direction -depending on their behaviour.
Here, we will concentrate on the third level given that it is the level from which prisoners prisons in Catalonia are known as 'open centres' (centres oberts) and possess the following characteristics: a) they are independent institutions within the penitentiary system; b) their control mechanisms are minimized and the supervision of prisoners is based on trust and self-regulation; and c) prisoners are held in semiliberty: by day they live and work in the community but spend the night in prison.
As Figure 1 shows

Who can be sent to an open prison and who serves time there?
As mentioned above, in Catalonia to be sent to an open prison a person must first be classified as a third-level prisoner (English Category D). Given that the system is flexible, in theory there is no minimum time requirement for being classified at this level -once the prisoner has served the assessment period-and any convicted prisoner can be sent to an open prison at any time after their sentence begins. Nevertheless, the 2003 penal reform introduced exceptions to this rule in cases considered to be of exceptional seriousness, such as terrorism or sexual abuse of minors. In these instances, prisoners must have served at least half of their sentences in a closed prison if their sentence is for five years or more (Article 36, Spanish Penal Code). In 2015, life sentences were introduced, which prevents prisoners from being sent to open prisons until they have served at least 15 years of their sentences. Other than these time-based restrictions and certain additional requisites in cases of terrorism and criminal organizations, in Catalonia (and in Spain) there are no types of crime that preclude a prisoner from being sent to an open prison.
Prison regulations state that to be sent to an open prison a prisoner must "have the ability to live a life in semi-liberty" (Article 63, LOGP) and, if the prisoner has been condemned to pay victim compensation, he or she must have either paid the full amount or be able to guarantee that they will pay when in semi-liberty.
In light of the above, current legislation is fairly generous and does not impose any excessively strict criteria regarding access to open prisons. In practice, when deciding whether or not a prisoner should be granted access to an open prison, Prison Boards take into account aspects such as the possibility that they will find work, their social and family background, their behaviour in prison (e.g. whether or not they have ever been sanctioned or disciplined), whether or not they have been granted prison leaves, and possible addictions that may be treatable with external care (see broadly Cid & Ibàñez 2019;Cutiño 2015). Despite the lack of rigid legislation, studies show that in reality certain groups of prisoners are less likely to gain access to open prisons and other open institutions. For example, Cid & Ibàñez (2019, 320) indicate that one of these groups are foreigners, especially those without residence permit who run the risk of being deported. Likewise, short-term prisoners 5 or those who have served a large part of their sentences on remand (in pre-trial prison) are also unlikely to be able to enjoy the benefits of open prisons given that there is not enough time for them to be classified and to progress to open conditions (Cid & Ibàñez 2019, 320).
It is worth noting that in Spain all prison sentences of less than two years can be suspended by the judge, so that the convicted person need not enter prison, although they may be obliged, for example, to report regularly to the police or court, or to enter a community service programme (Probation Service). In practice, according to the study of Varona (forthcoming) conducted in Catalonia, between the 70 and 80% of prison sentences up to 2 years are suspended. Nevertheless, once a prison sentence has not been suspended, there are no fast-track classification procedures for short-term prisoners or specific measures that enable prisoners facing short sentences to serve them in open prisons.
As of January 2018, there were 1,548 prisoners classified as level three in Catalonia, who represent 21.8% of all convicted prisoners. 6 Of the 1,548 third-level 5. In Spain, legally short-term prison sentences are those of two years or less. The minimum sentence is three months in prison, although some people are obliged to enter prison for less time in the case of the non-payment of a fine. 6. 68.5% are level-two prisoners in closed prisons and 1.8% are level one in maximum-security institutions.
prisoners, about 900 people were in open prisons (12% of all convicted prisoners), 7 while the others were in other open institutions (9.8%), for instance, with electronic monitoring or in halfway houses. The commonest offences committed by prisoners in open prisons are property-related offences (i.e. theft), offences against public health such as drug trafficking, or offences involving bodily harm (Justice Department statistics, 2019). In general these offences coincide with the commonest offences committed by the whole prison population and a priori there is no over-or under-representation of any type of offences in open prisons. Of the prisoners who entered open regimes in 2018, 45.1% did so at the beginning of their sentences, while 54.9% did so having served a part of their sentence as second-level prisoners in a closed prison (Justice Department statistics, 2019). Finally, 54.4% of the sentences served by third-level prisoners are for less than five years (19.3% are for less than two years), around 27.9% of sentences are for five or 10 years, and the remaining 17.7% are for over 10 years 8 (Justice Department statistics, 2019).

What are open prisons like?
Catalonia has four open prisons, 9 which have three main features in an organizational and structural sense: -Firstly, they are organizational and functionally independent of Catalonia's closed prisons, and have their own management boards and full decisionmaking autonomy. This independence allows these prisons to work more effectively and in more specialized ways (Cutiño 2015, 73) since they do not depend on resources provided by the closed prisons. Moreover, open prisons have Prison Boards on which members of the treatment teams and the prison management evaluate prisoners and have the final word on decisions relating to their treatment, including proposals to change a prisoners' classification and 7. Some of these prisoners are in the open wing of a prison in Barcelona but I decided to include them because this wing is run independently and these prisoners enjoy the same type of regime as prisoners in open prisons (see Marti 2019, pp. 228-229). 8. There are no data regarding the duration of the sentences of the prisoners that enter open prison from the start of their sentences or because of good behaviour. However, a study by Capdevila et al. (2005, 66) shows that if condemned to a sentence of more than four years it is very unlikely that a prisoner will enter an open prison right from the start of his/her sentence. 9. In Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona and Lleida. grant conditional releases -which have to be approved by the judge -, approval of treatment programs and the granting of extraordinary leaves.
-Secondly, open prisons are physically independent of closed prisons as the objective is to separate the former from the closed isolated penitentiary regimes that characterize the latter and to locate them in urban areas to facilitate contact with the local community. . Supervision involves both intervention designed to help in the rehabilitation of the prisoner -for example, via treatment programmes -and control measures that ensure that the prisoner comply with the conditions of his or her sentence, which may include checks on drug use. Open prisons are halfway between the prison and the community, and so the supervision of the prisoners (i.e. rehabilitation and control) involves measures from both the prison and the community penalties context (i.e. the Probation Service).
half in prison, except at weekends, which they spend at home. Although a prisoner's exact timetable will depend on their job and routine, they generally leave at 8-9 am and then return to prison -where they must spend at least eight hours -at 8-9 pm. All prisoners are obliged to leave prison every day as the time they spend in open conditions is regarded as preparation for life after prison. The idea is that being incarcerated day-after-day is no preparation for post-prison life and so prisoners must venture out to 'earn a living on the outside'. Thus, in Catalan open prisons inmates are usually not allowed to stay in the prison when they should be outside nor may they come back before their set return time unless they are working inside the prison, for example, on prison maintenance. Taking into account each prisoner's characteristics, the treatment teams draw up individualized plans that detail the duties designed to their treatment. Criminological studies suggest that the factors that most influence prisoners' desistance from crime are work, housing, the use of drugs and the family situation (see a complete summary in LeBel & Maruna 2012). In a similar way, and according to the Instruction 1/2007 from the Catalan Directorate of Prisons, intervention in Catalan open prisons is organized in the five areas that I describe below: -The personal area, which embraces possible addictions, health-related concerns and violence. Prisoners who are thought to require intervention in one of these areas may be obliged to attend a rehabilitation centre or a health clinic, or may have to undertake specialized programmes designed to prevent sexual and gender-based offences. -The work or training area is the most important aspect of open prisons and most prisoners are obliged to work, job-seek or enrol on training courses. Most prisoners work outside the prison in construction work, in bars and restaurants or as bus-or taxi-drivers, while a few are employed inside the prison as cleaners or repair workers. Prison social workers highlight that one of their main tasks is to help prisoners overcome the additional obstacles that prisoners have to confront when trying to find work (i.e. criminal records). -The social-family area provides support to the prisoner's family, above all with respect to accommodation and financial questions. Prisoners may be obliged to try and improve their relationships with their children, act as a responsible family member, or find suitable housing. If necessary, social workers can put prisoners in touch with the local social services or other community-based institutions that will help find accommodation for homeless people or assist immigrants with applications for residence permits.
-The reparation area is concerned with ensuring that prisoners pay all the compensation to the victim that they were sentenced to pay, as this is one of the conditions for being allowed to stay in an open prison. One of the commonest obligations of prisoners is to keep abreast of payments and present the prison treatment teams with proofs of payment. -Finally, the institutional area works to ensure that prisoners adapt to both prison regulations and life in the community. This area focuses above all on long-term prisoners who have been imprisoned in closed prisons for a long time and so find it much harder to adapt to life in semi-liberty. This work often involves teaching new technologies and how to use public transport, and encouraging prisoners to take decisions for themselves.
Furthermore, beyond these areas of intervention, serving a sentence in an open prison means being supervised by members of the treatment team and prison guards both when prisoners are inside the prison and when they are working in the community. Although the rigour of the security measures is less than in closed prisons and there is more trust and self-responsibility, prisoners are still subject to control and supervision. Prison staff ensure that prisoners fulfil their obligations in the intervention areas outlined above. For example, prison staff are in permanent contact with the social and health services and other external bodies where prisoners are being treated, and keep a careful watch on their attendance records and behaviour. Likewise, prisoners with addiction-related problems and those who return to prison showing evident signs of having taken drugs are subject to controls for drug and alcohol consumption. In the work area, for example, prisoners must present a job contract when they find a job and then all of their monthly pay slips. Open-prison staff can contact prisoners' work supervisors by telephone or personally to check that they are fulfilling their work-related obligations. If prisoners decide not to give details to their employers about their prisoner condition, prison staff typically will supervise them in other ways by, in the case of a bar worker, 'dropping by to have a coffee'. Beyond the controls that ensure that prisoners complete their treatments, in open prisons there are also a number of other regulations that must be obeyed. The most important norm is that the prisoner must return to the prison during the week to sleep every night. Thus, the control of times of arrival and departure is of great importance: when a prisoner returns to the centre, the prison guards check that they are on time and are then sent for a security check. Prisoners must place in lockers all objects that are not allowed in the prison (mobile phones with cameras, personal computers and tablets, alcohol, cutlery, food, rucksacks and so forth), then pass through a metal-detector and, in some cases, be tested for drug or alcohol consumption. After this, the guard opens the gate and the prisoner returns inside, where he or she must obey the internal regulations: no drug or alcohol use, no noise at night, no use of mobile phones with cameras or internet, and tidy cells. 11 Even though the supervision in open prisons is more relaxed than in a closed prison, prisoners' freedoms are still restricted in a number of ways. 12 In conclusion, serving a sentence in an open prison in Catalonia does not consist simply of 'going to prison to spend the night' as prisoners have to fulfil a series of obligations that -according to the prison system -aim to help in their rehabilitation, and they are subject to a series of supervisory measures. These measures and obligations, as we have seen, do not only apply during the time prisoners spend in the prison at night, as they have to be followed when prisoners are in the community on the daytime. In short, prisoners are supervised both inside and outside the prison. In open prisons, prisoner control is more diffuse than in traditional prisons but it does not necessarily mean that it is not intrusive or demanding or does not inflict pain on prisoners (Crewe 2011;Shammas 2014). In this context, in open prisons, supervision may be intrusive as prison staff are required to intervene in a prisoner's work and family life, and a prisoner will have to obey a set of rules that they may not agree with or that they feel is 'nobody else's business'. On the other hand, this relative lack of direct control and supervision in open prisons obliges prisoners to have more self discipline since, unlike prisoners in closed prisons, there are real opportunities for escape (Birk 2011, 7).
Thus, in open prisons control mechanisms are based on trust and a prisoner's sense of responsibility, and prisoners 'are forced to strive for self-improvement' (Shammas 2014, 117). In addition, semi-liberty represent a double-edged sword for some prisoners, as 'the beguiling fruits of liberty -the possibility to drink alcohol, taking drugs, and developing intimate relationships -become honey traps of risks'; adding greater responsibility onto the prisoners to self-regulate their desires (Crewe 2015, 56). 11. Male and female prisoners might serve the sentence in the same open prison but in separate wings. 12. In order to supervise their life in the outside world, prisoners are interviewed regularly by prison staff. On the basis of these interviews and the other above-mentioned control measures, the Prison Boards evaluate whether or not prisoners are to be released on parole or, if they are not fulfilling their obligations or have committed an offence, will be sent back to a closed prison.

Discussion: some thoughts on the openness of open prisons
As the international literature states, open prisons in general have four recognizable elements: they are still prisons and conform to the notion of a penitentiary institution as there are prison guards, curfews, or counts and checks; they are physically and administratively independent and separate from closed prisons and operate as such; they have fewer control measures and more 'normal' living conditions; and prisoners have frequent contact with the outside world, which gives them more freedom but demands of them more self-responsibility and selfdiscipline.
Different types of open prisons exist as each country's penal system develops a model regarding the above-mentioned feature that most suits it. We have already described the open prison system in Catalonia whose principal characteristic is that prisoners have a significant degree of contact with the outside world: all leave in the morning and do not -indeed, they cannot -return until the evening. In this way, a large part of the sentence is served outside the prison and, moreover, prisoners are obliged to become involved in the local community: most work or look for work in conventional businesses or services, use the public health services, look after their families by, for example, taking their children to school or, if time and distance permit, by doing household chores and spending time with family members before returning to prison.
The Catalan open prison system operates only with this type of prisoner and does not accept people in semi-liberty whose movements are more restricted and who are not allowed to leave the prison every day or for the whole day. This type of prisoner resides in open or semi-open wings in closed prisons. Some professionals believe that this lack of facilities for prisoners in a restricted semi-liberty in open prisons may hinder individualized supervision. For example, when a person who is serving the sentence in an open prison defaults on his or her obligations but not in a serious way that would warrant his or her being returned to a second level -and so being moved to an ordinary wing in a closed prison -the law states that this prisoner could retain the third-level category but in a situation of restricted semi-liberty (Article 82, RP). However, given that the current Catalan open prison system does not have any semi-open units, returning prisoners to a situation of restricted semi-liberty necessarily means that they will be moved to a closed prison (albeit -possibly -to an open wing). Some professionals believe that in certain situations a revocation of this magnitude is out of proportion with some misdemeanours and that, moreover, moving to a closed prison represents an interruption of the treatment they are receiving in the open prison. Thus, some professionals advocate the setting up of semi-open (or semi-closed) wings in open prisons: "I for one think that it would be a good idea to have here prisoners with restrictions because I think that it's not necessarily a step backwards. Sometimes, with a few more restrictions but without changing prisons we can continue working on some of the things that we have already begun. Continuity like this wouldn't be a bad thing. Even if you pass on the information to your colleagues [in the closed prison], some details always get lost on the way. As well, going back to a closed prison is always a heavy blow for prisoners, even if they are sent to an open wing" (Fragment of an interview to an open prison social worker).
Additionally, the possibility of having semi-open wings in open prisons would also make it possible for prisoners to serve there the short sentences that are currently served in closed facilities. As has been commented above, the initial classification of prisoners -which in Catalonia takes place in closed prisons -on occasions takes so long that short-term prisoners actually serve their sentences before they are classified (Cid & Ibàñez 2019, 320), which means that they serve their whole sentences in closed prisons. 13 To speed up the classification process and so stop these people from entering closed prisons, it has been suggested that shortterm prisoners should enter directly into open prisons 14 and that their initial classification should take place under open conditions (Capdevila et al. 2014, 245). Even so, some professionals defend the current model and believe that this proposal is unviable because it would oblige open prisons to have closed wings and to adopt security measures for these prisoners resembling those of closed prisons, which would pervert the 'purity' of the current model of Catalan open prisons. 15 13. There are not pre-trial prisons in Spain, and detained prisoners are (ideally) incarcerated in specific wings of closed prisons (for a maximum of two years), even though some of them are transferred to ordinary wings. 14. The concept of a suspended sentence designed to avoid prison entry exists in Spain and is decided by a judge (see p. 5). I am referring here to those administrative measures that can be taken to make it more likely that a sentence may be completed under open conditions when the judge has not suspended it. 15. Another option would be to classify directly prisoners with short sentences as third-level prisoners who will complete their sentences in open prisons. Nevertheless, a common view in the Catalan prison system is that access to open prisons should be determined by the profile of every prisoner, and that a short sentence does not necessarily mean that a prisoner will be capable of living in semi-liberty.
The possibility of making the initial classification of a prisoner in open prisons would hinder the functioning of these institutions, as they would suddenly need more security because these prisoners would initially be subject to an ordinary regime. That's to say, we would need a closed Not all open prisons are as open or as 'pure' as they are in Catalonia. For example, in some Scandinavian countries open prisons, which have around 30% or even 60% of the country's prison populations, house prisoners subject to more restrictive regimes of semi-liberty who have less contact with the local community than in Catalonia. Although there may be differences between countries, in general open prisons in Nordic countries are characterized by low levels of static security, meaning little guard against escape and considerable freedom of movement within the prison area (Fransen 2017, 82). As well, there are generally no bars or security fences, prisoners may have their own single room and have the keys to this room, and there are no restrictions on hours to watch television or visiting other prisoners in their rooms (Hornumm 1988, 71 referring to Sweden and Denmark). In Nordic open prisons, prisoners usually have the chance to be granted to prison leave to visit their families or their doctors, to go to the supermarket or take part in sporting events, although most often these activities -with a general exception regarding family visits -are supervised by prison staff (see Reiter et al. 2017, 495;Shammas 2015, 6). Likewise, some prisoners may be allowed to leave the prison to go to work, but typically the prisoners work in the prison or nearby, inside the prison area. As is observed, open prisons in Scandinavian countries are slightly different from those in Catalonia (see Figure 2). Although both types of open prison are situated somewhere between closed prisons and community sanctions (a fact that guarantees that they have a special place within the penal system), Catalan and Nordic open prisons seem to be at different places on the same route since their openness vary considerably. On the one hand, Catalan open prisons grant the local community a central role in the (expected) rehabilitation of prisoners (which does not mean that there is any lack of control or absence of punishment) and does not allow prisoners to remain in the penal facility by day. On the other hand, Nordic open prisons promote contact with the outside world less frequently and less intensely as it commonly takes places within the prison area or under the supervision of prison officers, and they emphasize the normalization of life conditi-ons inside the prison perimeter (about the principle of normalization, see Fransen 2017;Reiter et al. 2017). Therefore Fransen (2017, 99) claims that Danish open prisons have never reached the level of openness that was initially hoped for and that indeed in recent years they have undergone a series of changes that have led them to have only a 'qualified degree of openness'. For example, this author states that open prisons have been fenced in with the creation of semi-open spaces and remand prison units established within the open prisons, with large fences, tight security and small 'cages' for short spells of outdoor yard time (Fransen 2017, 99).   (Cohen 1979, 345) and it certainly becomes hard to resolve when a prison starts to be open, when it keeps being closed and when it stops being a prison. Likewise, the role that open prisons are granted in each penal system seems to be a key element shaping the different models. Although more research is needed on this issue, I suggest that the greater openness of Catalan open prisons is due to the fact that they are conceived essentially as tools for easing rehabilitation, i.e. as 'back end' or release measures (see Cid & Ibàñez), rather than as a way of 'humanizing' or 'normalizing' prisons, as occurs in Nordic countries. This link between Catalan open prisons and prisoner rehabilitation and resettlement may help explain the importance given to the idea that prisoner supervision in open prisons should be carried out in the local community and the resistance of some professionals to introduce restricted areas. Additionally, some authors have suggested that the Catalan Administration has a 'supervision and probation' ideology in regards of the supervision of people with community sanctions -rather than a 'sentence enforcement' ideology - (Blay & Larrauri 2017, 199), 17 which could also explain the openness of their open prisons considering that they are conceived fundamentally as a release measure and so closer in some ways to community penalties than to prisons. In Nordic countries, open prisons also justify their work in terms of rehabilitation and treatment but do not play such an important role in the resettlement or release process, which instead is mainly seen as the task of parole and other measures including halfway houses and electronic monitoring 18 (see

Summary
There is an abundant body of literature on closed prisons that provides good evidence of the psychological and social effects of imprisonment in closed prisons on a person. Although no studies exist demonstrating that open prisons are in fact more effective (Birk 2011, 8), it is reasonable to think that they are a more desi-   (Pennington & Crewe 2015, 12)? The existence of such fundamental doubts may engender a sense of frustration, but at the same time they can be considered as 'restarting points' for investigating further the subject of open prisons and widening the debate on the models of 'semi-imprisonment', which is essential if we are to ensure that the penal systems become respectful of basic human rights and therefore more open.