FX.co ★ Most comfortable prison in the world

The prison is designed as a small village, and it is believed that prisoners will be able to live normal lives as far as possible. Storstrom can contain up to 250 people, each of them is provided with a four square meter individual cell. Every cell has its own toilet equipped with everything necessary.

An unusual project for the penitentiary was created by architects of the Scandinavian company C.F. Mølle. "When you are locked up - you are locked up. And there is always an atmosphere of rigidity that forms a very painful environment for highly vulnerable people. But here you can use the architecture to create parameters that help to build positive communities. It would be naive to think that architecture can achieve this alone. It simply becomes one of many important measures when there is a task to create some form of normality," Mads Mandrup, a designer at CF Møller Architects, said.

The prison resembles a small village. It has a church, its own gardens and farmland. Inside the prison there is a lot of light and no black color. Such environment should facilitate the rehabilitation of prisoners. According to the representative of C.F. Møller, traditional cells do not cope with this task.

We do not know how comfort will help reduce the crime rate, but some criminals will certainly not mind getting back to Storstrom. In every cell there is a TV, a fridge, a wardrobe, a window and a personal bathroom. Some units have large windows that are tilted to let viewers take in the landscape up to the surrounding perimeter wall, without allowing anyone to see inside.

The construction, which will replace the state prison in Vridsleselille, was commissioned by the Danish Prison and Probation Service. According to Rasmus Bo Andersen, the regional director of the Correctional Authority Zealand, the new architecture should facilitate work with prisoners.

"We believe that the more we teach prisoners behavior in everyday life, the better they will manage it themselves when they are released. We have a lot of prisoners who never lived a real life. Some do not have any education, some do not know how to make purchases."

A 6-meter wall surrounds the correctional facility, steel wires are stretched across the top of each building to prevent helicopters from landing on them. One click on a button can close several mechanical doors dividing a room into a few smaller compartments with six prisoners in each. 34 out of 250 prisoners will be held in a specially protected area. The prison, measuring 18 football fields, is located on an island.

Special sports fields and a lot of leisure rooms were equipped for prisoners. There they can communicate freely. Prison officers will also never get bored. Storstrom looks more like a good hospital or a forest resort.

It took five years to build the prison. In their spare time, prisoners can walk, attend various workshops, pray, draw or play sports indoors or outdoors amid greenery.

The icing on the cake is a grocery store, a playground for children visiting their dads, a library and a common kitchen where criminals can cook any dish they want.

The Storstrom prison became the subject of debate when its first pictures were published on the Internet. Bloggers, journalists and Internet users are already jokingly offering to sell tour packages to this green zone.

We will see whether the prison will reduce the number of criminals only after a while. However, the problem may seem far-fetched. After all, in Denmark, the level of repeat offenses is very low - only 27%. Meanwhile, in the United States, it is 43%.