"During the reindeer season we take the convicts out hunting - even the murderers," said Torben Thrue, head of the correctional institution in Nuuk.
"Obviously, we don't take the mentally unstable," he said. "They get to go fishing."
The centre's 54 felons, whose offences include sex crimes, murder and drug-dealing, also hold down jobs, often attending to business on mobile telephones from their cells.
The self-governing Danish colony of Greenland has no closed prisons.
Convicted rapists, murderers and paedophiles are free to walk Nuuk's streets, visit friends and family - even go to a bar. They can buy clothes, television sets, hi-fis and coffee machines for their cells.
Only those considered "a danger to society" are sent to the Herstedvester closed prison in Denmark.
Imprisonment has never been used in Greenland, the world's largest island with a population of 56,076, of which 80% are Inuit.
Traditionally, villains were rarely pushed out of the community. Living in one of the world's harshest habitats, the Inuit hunters needed everyone, including criminals, to survive.
The Danes retained the essence of this system when they made Greenland their largest county in 1954. They established lay courts, a police force and three correctional institutions.
"We don't believe in punishment," said Mille Pederson, a lay magistrate at the high court in Nuuk. "We achieve more by trying to re-socialise people. Locking someone up for 10 years isn't going to make them a better person."
But convicts at the Nuuk correctional institution said they were more restricted than those in closed prisons. They are locked in their cells between 9.30pm and 6am. They have to pay the centre 735 Danish krone (£63) a week for their board, and send money to their families. Counselling is compulsory.
"It's very hard to be here," said Abel Lennect, a multiple murderer. "They write reports on me all the time. I have to ask permission to do things."
Hans Jensen, a drug-smuggler, doubts the system works. Caught with 30kg of hashish in his boat off the coast of Greenland, he said he would be prepared to smuggle again.
But fewer than 1% of criminals in Greenland reoffend. Very few try to escape, as there are no roads connecting towns.
"Closed prisons are simply factories for new criminals. This system makes it possible for people to change their lives and return to society," said Yoan Meyer, the chief constable of Greenland.
But for the victims of crime, especially those who have been raped, it can be difficult to live near the perpetrator of the offence.
At the Women Working Together Centre, Bodil Karlshaj Poulsen, a Danish volunteer, helps women prepare to meet their attackers.
"You can't hide among 56,000 people," she said. "We tell the women that they will meet that man again."
However, there are plans to change the system. The government has set up a commission to review the judiciary.
It is expected to recommend building a closed prison in Greenland to accommodate the handful of Greenlanders who serve sentences in Denmark, the training of lay court officials and a wider use of the Greenlandic language.
"But the spirit of the system will remain the same, said Solya Olavsstovu, the director of the commission. "Murderers and rapists will still live among us. It might be an unusual system - but the criminals and society accept it."