Best in Class? Norwegian Incarceration and the Pragmatic Production of Legitimacy

What happens when a self-styled humanitarian superpower receives external human rights-based criticism? To what extent has the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) influenced Norwegian prisons and Norwegian penal policy and jurisprudence? How has this criticism been understood, what has been the response and what have been the effects at the practical level—if any? In our chapter, we discuss Norwegian self-perception and attitudes toward human rights and penal policy. Then we briefly describe the influence of the ECHR in Norway before we discuss the influence of CPT visits. Concerning CPT, we draw attention to two specific cases in particular: the case of pre-trial solitary confinement and the country’s single high-security immigration detention centre.