Comments
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@twopotatoes, Think a fancy hotel room, that's about it
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@Pachirisu, you ever been in juvie or jail in America? Not great.
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@twopotatoes, that's kind of the point...
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@RogueKnight, have you been to either though?
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@twopotatoes, I have. Been to jail. Doing a 30 yr sentence
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@UglyNakedGuy, how are you on Funnypics bud?
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must be nice prisons in Norway
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@HellHog, indeed. It's more like a nice hotel. The thought is to try to calm the person, so when they get out, they don't do bad stuff again. Where as being locked in a cold grey concrete room will make them even more aggressive.
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@Bonersaurus, and it works very well. They give people the possibility to get an education and find a way back. I think about 70% don't end up in prison again.
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@Kim Jong Pun, right I remember it being a high percentage stays out of prison.
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@HellHog, it’s a result of a different focus on the main purpose of prison. From a policy perspective, jail/prison has three purposes: (1) separating the offender from the public to keep the public safe; (2) punishment; and (3) rehabilitation so they don’t become a repeat offender. In America, we tend to prioritize punishment. In Norway, they prioritize rehabilitation. As a result, we have a high recidivism rate and they don’t. So it really comes down to, would you rather see bad people get what they deserve? Or would you rather see them stop doing bad things. No system I’m aware of has been able to achieve both.
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@Scuzzinator, the real question is why wouldn’t I take up crime? It’s easy money I won’t have to pay taxes on and there’s little punishment even if I get caught. If I go rob a bank and then just go be rich somewhere else then come back and repeat why wouldn’t I take that risk? This can only work in a place with no poverty and minimum rewards for being rich.
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@BigJohnson86, you’re asking why you wouldn’t take up crime in a system like Norway? Two reasons: (1) Generally speaking, people don’t turn to crime as a first resort. It may not always be a last resort, but it is typically very far down that list. I’m sure there’s a lot of debate that could go into why that’s the case, but it is a general truth. If people can lead a decent life without resorting to crime, over 99% of the time they will do so. (2) Just because Norway’s jail/prison system focuses on rehabilitation doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t still punish you in such a way to crime deferrable. There’s a lot of other forms of punishment than sticking someone in a hellish box with a ton of dangerous other people. For example, you could fine the shjt out of them to take away the profitability of crime. You could also still impose lifetime sentences for people who end up becoming repeat offenders anyway, proving that they’re beyond rehabilitation.
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@Scuzzinator, I think his point is that if the punishment for committing a crime is less severe, you’re more likely to commit that crime.
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@Scuzzinator, I think your missing my point. What’s to stop poor people from going to Norway robbing a bank? They’ve got little to lose and everything to gain. The punishment is better than the life they currently live. This type of structure only works if no one is poor. It’s why in America people aren’t committing crime because of race. They’re mostly doing it cuz the risk is worth the reward. This system would exacerbate that concept.
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@stevebons, that definitely tends to be the American way of thinking, but statistics don’t actually bear that out. It turns out that actually trying to fix the underlying cause of crime, rather than just making increasingly harsh penalties, tends to yield better results. Again, I’m not here to say why that’s the case, but the result is indisputable. Just look at the crime rate comparison between Norway and America. Norway does significantly better.
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@BigJohnson86, Norway is also probably better described as a social democracy, so they have a lot more safety nets for poor people, which makes crime less necessary. I only have a cursory understanding of their system, so I can’t say how that interplays with their criminal justice system. But I wouldn’t be surprised if criminal convictions could lead to at least a reduction in social services, which I would think would help with that deterrence. You are right that implementing Norway’s criminal justice system and only that aspect of their politics probably wouldn’t have the same effect here. In order to make it work in America, we would probably need to adopt a lot of their other social policies as well, which given the general anti-socialist sentiment here, wouldn’t fly.
I threw glass in my regular trash, take me now Norway!