I sold drugs.
I had always sold a little weed
in order to pay for the weed I smoked,
and when I left home
I saw that as a way of making money and earning that little extra.
Then I began to buy more.
One thing led to another and I began to sell more.
I became a professional criminal.
So police started looking at me differently.
I started trying every drug I sold.
I skipped that rule: "Don't get high on your own supply"
and I got high on everything.
I started financing my addiction myself.
I used the savings account that my parents had opened for me.
I had some hundred thousand crowns that would be mine when I was 18.
I went through that money like water.
Then I started to commit crimes in order to be able
to finance my addiction.
That's because I used expensive drugs from the beginning.
Cocaine is very expensive.
That is why I started committing felonies very soon,
up to the point that I finished off my fine Stureplan quarter's life
and I began to shoot up. I began to shoot up amphetamine
in order to get the same high that you get with cocaine.
Then I ruined myself completely.
I shoot up for the first time when I was 24. I felt in heaven.
It was cheap
and the experience of shooting up was a completely different thing.
I stopped partying.
That was a whole another level.
It was much dirtier. I don't know how to put it.
You spent your days in Plattan... and then you ended up in jail.
When I first came to Sweden I lived in Stockholm.
But after some time, as my parents got divorced,
my mother moved to Skåne.
and I also moved to Skåne with my mom and my sisters.
It was not easy for my mom.
And...
the rules at home became pretty lax.
We could do whatever we wanted,
but I understand my mom.
She had to endure a divorce and an exile. It was hard for her.
When I was 15 I had already travelled around the world,
I had slept in luxury hotels, I had eaten in 5-stars places.
I come from a family that was...
It's not that we were rich, but we had pretty enough money.
Let's say we were up-middle class.
I grew up in that environment and I had a peaceful childhood.
My parents were not abusive, I was never exposed to violence,
as it is the case with many boys and girls
who end up the way I ended up, so to say.
The situation got better with time.
He also came to visit us.
But my father went to jail when I was around 12.
He was sentenced to 13 years.
Everything changed with the fact of me having to visit my dad in jail
until he was deported.
When I finished... So that's how my life as a criminal began.
Everything started with this. First of all...
being the son of a divorced couple,
I didn't fit in school and I learnt to pretend that I was sick.
I and the people that I hanged around with used to do things
that started getting me into trouble.
Trouble that I could find home.
My father is dead. He was self-employed.
My mom stayed at home. She had never worked.
My father used to run a clothing shop
and he had a family business where my sisters worked.
I am the youngest of four sisters.
I am much younger than them, so I grew up with mom and dad.
My sisters had left home.
Everything started in a pretty innocent way.
But it grew bigger and bigger. We started...
by breaking into...
places, like schools or wherever we could, and we stole little things
and we got into fights, but not in an organized way.
We were not that old. We used to break into cars
in order to steal the car radios and sell them...
Just innocent things that we did in the beginning.
Then I left home and...
I was 16 when I started taking drugs,
ecstasy and the like, and alcohol, for the first time.
That was what I always pursued: to feel pleasure.
I spent two years like that, trying a little of this and that.
But then, when I was 18... I usually describe myself
as a bomb that exploded.
I avoided my family completely.
I didn't want anything to do with them
and I started working in some joints as a barwoman
and I got some training as a waitress
and that's when everything started.
There were a lot of cocaine and alcohol around.
There were big parties every day.
Nothing comparable to what came afterwards,
but there were many after-parties in Stureplan
where we sat down snorting coke for five days in a row.
But I had, let's say, a principle or a value deep inside of me,
and that was that I'd never allow myself to become a prostitute,
which is unfortunately pretty common among those using heroin.
I managed to keep myself away from the streets.
I kept shifting from drug to drug,
and unfortunately I used different drugs
until I ended up in jail, and it was a relief,
because I was a wreck, I was a fucking wreck.
I've got a total of 14 convictions.
Many of them were for assault, and for a little bit of everything.
My name is Sara Woldu and I am 33 years-old.
I come from a family
where it's not normal for a girl to have a background like mine.
My name is Jacob Fraiman and I come originally from Chile.
I came to live in Sweden when I was 7 years-old.
I grew up in a healthy environment.
The first time I went to jail it was very different
from the rest of times, especially from the last one.
The first time I was very scared.
I was a young girl who had never been in jail.
I was very nervous and scared and I thought
that those broads were going to beat me up.
But I did not dare to show that, so I hid behind
a big mask and I pretended to be distant and indifferent,
although I felt like a very little girl inside.
The first time I was convicted I got two and a half years.
That was between 2003 and 2005. When I went out in 2005
I had not gotten enough skills, as we call it,
from the therapies, and so on.
I thought it would be alright as long as I found a job
and a girlfriend...
and then...
I wouldn't use drugs, but I'd drink, because I didn't see that as a drug.
I thought that everything was OK, that I could drink and stuff.
But that doesn't work with me. I am a dependent person, and if I drink,
I feel like scoring something else, so that's how it goes.
I relapsed into drugs again.
Stuff happened because of that. It had consequences.
I broke up with my girlfriend.
And in the end, I came back to the same place.
I came back to jail in 2010. I was sentenced to five years.
I spent five years in prison
because of many things that had happened in my life.
But I had also reached,
really,
to a point when enough was enough.
It was almost a good thing to come back to jail
because I was fed up.
Also because I got along better in jail than I did in society.
I had so many problems with police
and I was so stressed up that jail felt almost like a relief.
It is also obvious how difficult it is to kick the habit
and to come off drugs.
But in jail I could have a break and take things easy.
The last time that I was in prison
it felt like home, "I am home again."
Because that was quite common in my last years of addiction.
I went out and I went in again. Out and in again.
My name is Pernilla Jensen. I am a prison officer
in the Asptuna prison. Among my duties
are working with the inmates, helping in the infirmary
and managing our workflow and our administrative issues.
There are all kinds of people here, people that will serve a month
for driving offences and people sentenced
to life imprisonment for murder.
Right now we have nobody sentenced to life, but we usually have.
The tricky thing of our role
is that we must guard and treat them at the same time,
and that makes it very difficult. But here in Asptuna we have
inmates who do their duties pretty well,
so it happens that we...
win their trust by trusting them.
We ask them to take responsibility for themselves and for their things.
Not everybody succeeds in doing so, but most of them do.
That makes them mature also.
If someone wants just to serve his sentence
he will have no reasons to complain in a Swedish prison.
The staff doesn't beat us.
They feed us. You can train.
People can serve their sentences without changing at all,
so it's really comfortable to be in a Swedish prison.
Then it depends very much on how you are, as a person,
to have or not the will to change.
I don't believe in storing people. You cannot just store people.
I believe in transformation and in treatment.
That's what has worked for me.
There are prison systems
that I don't believe in, you cannot just put people away,
because that generates an enormous hate against the system,
to just put people in jail and isolate them.
May I say something? Some years ago there was
this TV commercial for some perfume that went,
"The first impression lasts."
You ought to be humble.
A person who works in prison with a uniform
does not convey more authority or trust
than the one who works in prison without a uniform.
In my opinion,
it is our behavior... what generates trust.
In our daily conversations with the inmates,
to be humble is very important.
To be glad. Often, even a bit too glad.
To introduce yourself quickly: "Hi, I'm your contact person."
And then maybe give them some space in the beginning.
You must give them some time for adaptation.
You must make a little effort.
That's very important.
My name is Martin Folkesson and I am a prison officer,
I mean, I am in charge
of the treatment section in the prison of Norrtälje.
We have people in therapies, but there's also room for youngsters
with ADHD who need psychiatric cares.
We don't force the inmates to do anything
because forcing someone to do something
it's a little "mission impossible".
If someone wants me to give up smoking
he will not succeed if I don't want to.
But two of a prison officer's duties
are to identify the inmates' problems
and to talk with the inmates about their needs.
To have motivational talks with them. One may be
unmotivated today, but he may change and understand it the next week.
I am Jennie von Alten and I am the director
of the prison of Norrtälje, and I'm in charge
of everything: our staff, our budget and our inmates.
A whole section works in our treatment program,
which is connected to the program's development.
Our program is accredited,
it is grounded in scientific studies and in research
in order to have an observable effect and to prevent recidivism.
So we evaluate it constantly
and we have experts devoted to this.
We can assure you that we believe in reintegration.
Our methods are based on politics,
on research and on experience.
So I think that we do work for our inmates' reintegration.
My day begins when I come from work and I go to bed.
So it's really...
The opposite of what everybody does.
Sweden is ready to work
for welcoming back the people who are willing to reintegrate.
Sweden is ready to adopt programs from anywhere in the world
that might help to achieve that goal.
That's part of my job. I have no problem with that.
Here we are. I work in a prison
where people want to change their lives,
where people really want to participate in a program
that will help them to reintegrate.
I can guarantee there are people here
who are prepared, capable and ready to help them.
The rules are very clear, and I like that from this job:
that the rules are clear. Black is black and white is white.
There's no room for: "I think..." Everything is written.
There are laws and rules.
I think that we have
a pretty good ground to work on.
Our work follows legal regulations.
There's an officer who is authorized to make decisions.
And then it is always about
treating
people with respect, as simple as that.
We prison officers have a big responsibility:
to identify problems correctly at a very early stage:
"What problems does this inmate have?"
And we have to do the right thing at the right time.
They often have very long sentences so we try and adjust our efforts
and see it as a timeline, so we can find the right moment...
in the inmate's timeline and be able to foresee the problem.
The inmates draw their timeline together with the staff,
their counselor and the department chief.
For instance, a program for avoiding recidivism
must be done towards the end, rather than in the beginning.
In the beginning we can focus on things
that can lead to stimulate his self-confidence,
and we also must do that,
to lay some foundations, they can maybe take a test in high school,
so they can graduate.
From my experience, I realize there's a crisis of trust
towards certain types of authority. That's a big step we must make.
It may take a long time to generate trust.
There is no recipe for generating trust,
but I usually tell my staff
that two cornerstones for that are to dare to be honest
and to dare to show your feelings.
That is important, I think.
Our inmates live in a pretty open environment
for being part of a prison system or a prison milieu.
It's compulsory to do something. They may either work in our sawmill
or study in our academy
or do outdoors jobs,
which also include apiculture.
We have an apiary with more than 20,000 beehives
and we produce honey.
The inmates' families may come to visit them at the weekends.
They can visit on Saturday and Sunday, 4 or 5 at a time.
The visitors may roam freely around the facilities.
We have a playground, and also a room for children.
We celebrate special days with children twice a year.
We also organize one activity for families.
It may be pony rides, sometimes a bouncy castle,
or fantasy make up,
or clowns, too. Different things.
But all of them are suitable for the age of most kids that come.
We do a game of fishing and we grill outside if the weather's nice.
Our motto can be summed up in two words: "better outside".
You must be in a better condition, more skilled and resourceful
when you go out than when you came in.
I think it's a good vision.
That's how we welcome our inmates, and a big problem
that we usually detect in them are relationships, net-building skills.
That's why in this institution we work thoroughly
together with non-profit groups
and the inmates value that, and they are truly interested.
We look for
teams covering all our groups and needs.
They may be all from KRIS
(Rehabilitation of Criminals in Society), or from the Fryshuset,
that works mainly with young people, counseling them.
We have something called
BUFF in Stockholm, which is very good, and they also come here.
Its main activity
is to be a meeting point for the inmates' kids.
They come here and organize
training courses and debates that are very successful.
Those are non-profit organizations that come here
and that afterwards can employ inmates on probation.
We see great benefits in this and the inmates are very interested.
My name is Christer Karlsson.
I am an old chap now. I'm 64 years-old.
I have grown up in orphanages, reform schools and jails.
I committed burglary and small thefts
and anything to get money, really.
Anything from burglary to selling drugs,
and also felonies, such us armed robberies and the like.
I have been sentenced 54 times.
I've spent more than 30 years in penitentiaries and jails.
I am the founder and president of this organization.
I found out that I really despised authority.
I hated authority. I hated policemen, prison officers,
emergency services, Social Security. I hated all of them.
Then I thought it might be me who was wrong.
Normal people do not hate the people that help them.
That's how I thought of starting an association for people like me.
People who, instead of having to call the emergency services,
can ask the association for help.
That's how the idea came about.
I met KRIS when I was in jail.
I told them that I wanted to change my life
and I asked them what could they do for me.
We talked about my problems
and of how could I be useful to them.
That's when they said: "Come to our office.
We will train you, and maybe we will hire you afterwards.
We might be interested on a guy like you."
And so it happened. I've worked for KRIS since April 20th 2013.
This is my third year.
Hadn't it been for KRIS, I don't know where I'd be right now.
I'm the leader of KRIS' mothers group.
We have a project together with the Legacy Fund
called Strengthened Parenthood.
I work as the leader of a group of mothers.
We motivate young mothers
to keep on living a honest, drug-free life.
We do activities with the mothers and their children.
The fathers are also welcome, of course, and some of them are...
How can I say that? There are fathers who are present.
Unfortunately, that's unusual.
Some mothers maybe got pregnant while working on the streets
and the father is not present.
It's very important for those girls to get support.
From socials services or from somewhere else.
That is my job.
We work with motivation. Our goal is motivating them.
But we don't go to a prison and say: "This is what we'll do now."
Sometimes it's enough if you just chat with them for a while
in order to verify how they are, in which point they are.
Sometimes you can talk a little about football.
Or just sit there, because I remember when I used to meet
the guys from KRIS, and what I liked the most about them
is that they didn't try to sell me anything.
They did not want to tell me what I should do.
They just came in and bought you a coffee and a bum.
We had no one else to talk to
in jail apart from them and the prison officers.
I have visited many prisons now.
Now I am giving back what KRIS gave me then.
I am visiting prisons now, and I try to motivate people
and to tell them they can follow another path, if they want.
It's very nice, because that's how I met KRIS.
So I have come full circle.
It's also our aim
for those who are set free to start working, be self-confident
and do well by themselves.
We don't want them to be a burden for society,
we want people to come back
and to be productive members of society,
people who work, pay taxes, have a family and live a normal life,
far from crime and free of drugs.
I think that is also depends a lot
on how the police in other countries behaves with the criminals,
if they understand they're people. In Sweden we understand more
that there are people behind the acts,
and you can condemn those acts, but you must use the person
and help that person so he won't commit those acts.
Our work is finding the person behind,
to try and give him moral support, so instead of punching someone
to feel safe and respected,
he will know that he can do that
in a good, trustworthy and compassionate way
I have a daughter named Emilia,
who is one year and a week old.
When I found out I thought it was awesome.
I felt that I could be a father now.
She won't have to go through what I went through with an absent father,
with a father in jail and with all that unsteadiness.
I could give my daughter that assurance and I felt
so self-confident as a person that I knew
that I would not do drugs or go to jail again.
I think I will be a good father.
I cannot see who else could help me.
If I want to start a new life,
to give up drugs, to stop committing crimes,
it must be me the one who's willing to do that effort.
Nobody can do that for me.
Often, in that situation, you expect someone to solve your problems:
"They ought to do this or that for me".
But it's you who ought to do it.
This protects me. My tattoos are all religious. Look.
This protects me.
Sometimes I say, "How can this happen to me?
God does not exist, for sure."
But I have the answer at hand if I look back on my life.
I have survived an overdose. I've lived dangerous situations.
And... and...
I also have grown up as a person and stuff happened in my life.
For me to be able to grow up as a person,
stuff had to happen
so I could realize and become the person that I am today.
So, of course it's true
that God works in mysterious ways, as they say.
Of course he does.