Most incarcerated people will eventually return home, and the conditions they face while incarcerated will have a profound impact on whether they will be successful when they do. When incarceration is isolating, harsh, and unrepresentative of daily life, people become conditioned to an environment and to behaviors that are disconnected from what we expect of members in our communities.
In direct response to that reality, the principle of normalization is about making daily life in prison resemble life in the community as much as possible. Transforming carceral environments and routines to model and reinforce positive, prosocial behaviors, and support dignity, responsibility, and connection. This can include improvements to the physical environment, such as creating spaces for connecting with peers or mentors over coffee, or innovative programs that provide access to the outdoors, teach new skills, and support well-being.
The goal of normalization is to reduce the isolation and alienation of incarceration and to help people build patterns of behavior that support them in being healthy, productive members of society.
Normalization also benefits staff. Working in concert with dynamic security, normalized environments and routines reduce tensions, improve security, and increase job satisfaction for people working in correctional facilities. By providing an environment that is more pleasant to live and work in, and reframing interactions to model interactions in the community, when safe and appropriate to do so, people learn to become better neighbors, not better prisoners.
