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Well, free education and free job training is not far off. And people in Norway do have a higher standard of living than most western countries. But of course, not everyone has a sauna.
I find your reference to Club Med a bit far off. The lack of freedom actually counts for something. Most people would choose a lousy apartement over a fancy one, to be able to walk outside, be with friends, make their own choices etc. I've been inside a prison in Norway, a school trip with my social science class when I was a teenager, and my impression was definitely not that the prisoners felt like being on a vacation. Although the prison looked quite alright.
They should have never brought Anders Breivik in alive.
I don't think prison should be a resort type facility. Individuals are sent to prison as punishment for crimes committed. There is nothing wrong with 23 hours in a cell with one hour of doing whatever.
Yes, I agree with you. That should have taken him out when they had the chance.
All this "rehab" talk is total BS. You cannot rehabilitate this "man." And tell this to the 80+ dead people, who are now worm food. Not too mention, their families. How many thousands of people has this "man's" actions destroyed? The emotional and economic fall out, of what he did, hasn't even begun to to shape itself.
How many families are going to be ripped apart, because of what occurred? Husbands/wives getting divorced? Siblings becoming alcohol/drug dependant? How about the first responders? The paramedics? The police? Fireman? How about their emotional fallout, seeing so many people shot to death? The wounded?
What about the survivors? The people who had limbs amputated? The people who will, years from now, commit sucide, because they still cannot come to grips with what occurred?
ANY prison is too good for this worthless, walking, waste of oxygen...
I disagree that making prisons like Club Med will deter crime. If someone else thinks it will, they're welcome to go somewhere where prisons are like Club Med. I think making prison like vacation has little to do with recividism rates. Quite likely, it has more to do with shorter sentences and a focus on rehabilitation than prison conditions beyond those conditions not aggrevating the issues but you don't have to go to a Club Med setting to make prison more condusive to rehabilitation.
Personally, I don't want their taxes so I'm staying here. Anyone who wants them is welcome to move. That's the beauty of living in the United States. No one is keeping you here if you don't like it.
The real beauty of living in the US is the ability to be vocal about the shortcomings of its' policies. I think the US is pretty terrible with it's criminal system. I don't believe it works well at all.
Furthermore, the love it or leave it attitude is nonproductive and dangerous for the US. The US is not the end all and be all of the world. We can learn things from other countries.
Never did I say that the prison itself is the reason for low recidivism rates. I said, pointedly, that the rates are due to the PHILOSOPHY of the Norwegian justice system.
I'm not sure why you are participating on a thread that is hitting some sort of nerve with you. You offer no concrete solutions or arguments of why the Norwegian way is wrong. You simply keep comparing the prison in the article to Club Med. Ok, we get it. Now, what substantiative arguments do you have?
As for the Club Med comparison, I find it laughable. Freedom is a highly valuable commodity. Having it stripped from you is a very real punishment. I don't think that Norwegians are clamoring to screw up their lives in order to stay at this prison. The idea is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
Personally, I want our country to be safer and more forward thinking. Personally, I believe we can learn from other countries in how they handle their criminals. Personally, I believe some things are a bit more important than "taxes".
Yes, I agree with you. That should have taken him out when they had the chance.
All this "rehab" talk is total BS. You cannot rehabilitate this "man." And tell this to the 80+ dead people, who are now worm food. Not too mention, their families. How many thousands of people has this "man's" actions destroyed? The emotional and economic fall out, of what he did, hasn't even begun to to shape itself.
How many families are going to be ripped apart, because of what occurred? Husbands/wives getting divorced? Siblings becoming alcohol/drug dependant? How about the first responders? The paramedics? The police? Fireman? How about their emotional fallout, seeing so many people shot to death? The wounded?
What about the survivors? The people who had limbs amputated? The people who will, years from now, commit sucide, because they still cannot come to grips with what occurred?
ANY prison is too good for this worthless, walking, waste of oxygen...
I am not advocating Breivik EVER be released. I hope he does serve life in prison. However, many of the victims and their families have come forward stating they do not wish revenge on Breivik. They want to maintain their way of life and thinking. To change it would be a victory for Breivik.
I am not advocating Breivik EVER be released. I hope he does serve life in prison. However, many of the victims and their families have come forward stating they do not wish revenge on Breivik. They want to maintain their way of life and thinking. To change it would be a victory for Breivik.
He already won. He got everything he wanted and then some.
All this "rehab" talk is total BS. You cannot rehabilitate this "man."
I believe it is difficult for Americans to understand how it works in Norway by reading news articles written by American journalists. The point is not to rehabilitate the mass murderer/terrorist. He will be kept in jail for as many years as possible, which by Norwegian law experts is assumed to be for the rest of his life. (No such crime has ever been committed in Norway, not even close, and laws that has never been used before will now be tried for the first time. That's why we are so unsure of the maximum penalty.)
Why we don't have death penalty, or awful prisons? We don't believe in revenge, we believe in securing our society. And we do not wan't such a hard society that death penalty involves. Criminals will be in jail to protect the rest of us, and/or to be rehabilitated. It does not always work that way, around 20 % get inside again. But that is still way below many other western countries.
He already won. He got everything he wanted and then some.
I beg to differ. He accomplished nothing in the way of policy changes, immigration reform or any of his other extreme right wing desires. All he accomplished was killing people.
I believe it is difficult for Americans to understand how it works in Norway by reading news articles written by American journalists. The point is not to rehabilitate the mass murderer/terrorist. He will be kept in jail for as many years as possible, which by Norwegian law experts is assumed to be for the rest of his life. (No such crime has ever been committed in Norway, not even close, and laws that has never been used before will now be tried for the first time. That's why we are so unsure of the maximum penalty.)
Why we don't have death penalty, or awful prisons? We don't believe in revenge, we believe in securing our society. And we do not wan't such a hard society that death penalty involves. Criminals will be in jail to protect the rest of us, and/or to be rehabilitated. It does not always work that way, around 20 % get inside again. But that is still way below many other western countries.
I'm an American and when I understand the philosophy. I agree with it as well.
I believe it is difficult for Americans to understand how it works in Norway by reading news articles written by American journalists. The point is not to rehabilitate the mass murderer/terrorist. He will be kept in jail for as many years as possible, which by Norwegian law experts is assumed to be for the rest of his life. (No such crime has ever been committed in Norway, not even close, and laws that has never been used before will now be tried for the first time. That's why we are so unsure of the maximum penalty.)
Why we don't have death penalty, or awful prisons? We don't believe in revenge, we believe in securing our society. And we do not wan't such a hard society that death penalty involves. Criminals will be in jail to protect the rest of us, and/or to be rehabilitated. It does not always work that way, around 20 % get inside again. But that is still way below many other western countries.
I am not saying that I agree with it. However, I believe I can articulate some other reasons why Norway and other European countries do not have a death penalty. There are many people still alive in Europe who lived through World War II and the Holocaust. While Americans fought in World War II, thankfully we never dealt with the experience of being occupied by a brutal and tyrannical foreign nation.
Those who lived through this learned what a government with unlimited power (Nazi Germany) was capable of doing. The hallmarks of such a government are mass executions, torture, deliberate starvation of its enemies, and long periods of incarceration of thousands of innocent people in concentration camps.
Norway was occupied from 1940 through 1945 by the Germans during the war and its citizens learned firsthand about these abuses.
The European countries decided that a way to prevent future abuses of this nature was to structure a government with limited power over its citizens. The death penalty has been abolished everywhere in Europe. The Norwegian government as mentioned above has placed limitations on the length of time citizens may be incarcerated in prison.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote "The life of the law has been experience rather than logic". What Holmes was trying to say is that societies base law more on history and experiences that they have lived through rather than upon intellectual discourse. What seems "proper", "fair", or "just" may take on entirely different connotations when you deal with a people that suffered recently under the hands of a tyrannical government.
As an American, what I see in Norway may not make sense to me given my own experiences. However, it is the right of Norway and the Norwegian people to put in place the system that they believe is best for them. I almost hear some of the people here trying to tell Norway they need to do something else. I say what the Norwegians think is best for them is none of our business.
I'm really having a good laugh here. I did a little research on Norway's resort prisons and it turns out that criminals must apply to go there which means that the prisoners are hand selected. That being the case, the recividism rate is meaningless and only proves that one can hand select prisoners and attain a low recividism rate.
Interestingly, I found other countries with prisons that have even better recividism rates who also focus on rehabilitation but do not offer a resort lifestyle. Less restrictive than our own (you'd have to be to focus on rehabilitation) but no saunas, gourmet kitchens, beaches or sun decks....Which leads me to what I concluded in the first place....it's the focus on rehabilitation that is working, not the saunas, though I'm sure the prisoners love the saunas...
From what I'm reading, the key seems to be a focus on rehabilitation and shorter sentences, which makes perfect sense.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 08-01-2011 at 03:57 PM..
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