One of the main goals of the Scandinavian Prison Project is to assess the impact of the Little Scandinavia unit on both in-prison outcomes (such as prison climate and misconducts) and post-release outcomes (such as employment and future offenses).

To achieve this, incarcerated people are assigned to the unit based on a lottery system. This means that all eligible incarcerated people have an equal chance of moving to the Little Scandinavia unit.

In addition to facilitating a robust research process, this approach is arguably more fair than handpicking people and it ensures that the men on Little Scandinavia are representative of the population at SCI Chester as a whole.

To assess the myriad impacts of the reform beyond what can be glanced from administrative data, the research team conducts regular surveys of the incarcerated population and interviews staff and residents on the unit to better understand the lived experience of the people living and working there.