It was a lovely spring day in Berlin when a tour bus pulled up outside a maximum-security prison called Tegel. Cobblestones, bike racks and blooming azaleas gave it the air of a college campus.
But what Shannon Davison, a deputy prison warden from North Dakota, noticed were security threats.
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Ms. Davison, part of a delegation of U.S. prison officials who were there to learn about Germany’s system, clocked them in seconds. Inmates working outside the gate. Guards using vape pens, potentially a valuable commodity. Broom handles, a cart with metal wheels and cell windows that opened.
There were other things you simply would not see in an American prison, like a warden casually placing a giant ring of keys on the floor beside her chair.
“They treat their maximum-security prisoners like minimum-security prisoners,” Ms. Davison marveled. And yet, Tegel Prison is far less violent than many American prisons.
