It's an excellent system.

I did notice the guards were all wearing guns; I wonder if they ever have problems?

But the overall idea of the place is outstanding.

Genuine rehabilitation. Along with respect for the individual...

How I wish we were like that here.

K&R

Theres no profit in running sane prisons that actually rehabilitate.

They are bad people! They deserve to be abused! Silly Norwegians, they're all squishy bleeding heart socialists anyhow.

of course.

They should not be abused or tortured, but by no means should they be living a comfortable lifestyle either.

is that if you treat people - even "bad" ones - with a basic level of kindness and decency and don't try to make their lives hell while they are in prison, they are often much less bad when they get out. So if some degree of comfort is part of that humane treatment, and if it plays a part in rehabilitating people, then give them that little comfort. It doesn't have to be like a vacation at the Ritz, but locking people in bare cages for years on end the way we so often do here is just immoral. And stupid. And counterproductive.

There's a middle ground between these prisons and US prisons.

no matter how comfortable it looks it is still prison. I do believe that you get from people what you expect from them.
I love what the guard said in the beginning these people will be returning to society - how they are treated while in custody will impact how they act when they get out. Treating them as someone of value who made a mistake is way different than treating them as worthless savages.

to one of those prisons. I don't believe that convicted murderers and rapists should be living better than poor people who have never harmed a soul.

And no life sentences? How about the man who raped and murdered his girlfriend's 4-month-old infant child?

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/18/police-infant-died-after-mother-invited-pedophile-boyfriend-to-rape-child/

I would say this man absolutely deserves a life sentence.

There's a middle ground between giving these people a cushy almost-vacation and "treating them as worthless savages". Neither is right.

which doesn't allow its poor people to live in worse conditions than its criminals.
The baby-killer and his girlfriend would probably not have been allowed to sink to their current level of depravity.
It's all about safety-nets, isn't it?

Their population is also much more homogenous is many ways. That's not to say there aren't a lot of problems that can be fixed here.

I think I saw a documentary about a prison like this the other day. Figures that'd be the part Id remember first.

Who exist in a sort of social and ethical vacuum. In the absence of good community, they pass the time breaking the law. But they are far from irredeemable. They may actually be some of the most promising individuals in our whole society.

In the United States we throw these people away. In other countries like Norway, they see the potential and they foster it.

[link:http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/25/despite-recent-shootings-norway-is-a-low-crime-nation/|

" - Norway Has Some Of The Lowest Murder Rates In The World: In 2009, Norway had .6 intentional homicides per 100,000 people. In the same year, the United States had 5 murders per 100,000 people, meaning that the U.S. proportionally has 8 times as many homicides.

- Norway’s Incarceration Rate Is A Fraction Of That Of The United States: 71 out of every 100,000 Norwegian citizens is incarcerated. In the United States, 743 out of every 100,000 citizens was incarcerated in 2009. The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate.

- Norway’s Prisoner Recidivism Rate Is Much Lower Than The United States’:The recidivism rate for prisoners in Norway is around 20 percent. Meanwhile, it’s estimated that 67 percent of America’s prisoners are re-arrested and 52 percent are re-incarcerated."

There may be many other reasons besides a constructive - rather than vengeful - prison system. Perhaps a constructive, rather than vengeful social organization?

get by, like here.

But how many would approve of Zimmerman being sent to a place like this after he is convicted?

I think the issue with the Zimmerman example is that it has been very emotional and people have a difficult time thinking rationally or empathetically.

once a person is convicted of a heinous crime, my first idea is how they should be punished. After rationally considering the matter, it becomes clearer. Do we punish criminals we don't like and try and rehabilitate those we feel some sympathy for or do we treat all equally.

We Americans are very suspicious and paranoid of certain groups. Sweden is more open. People like Zimmerman wouldn't exist and if by chance they did, they would not be carrying a pistol and playing a neighborhood vigilante cop.

I would want Zimmerman sent to a prison with a staff largely comprised of African-Americans who would all treat him humanely, in the hope that first hand experience would teach him how absurd and wrong his bigotry was

Given his crime, in prison here he'll be the target of lots of hate and, frankly, is likely to reinforce his prejudice because of the way he interprets the world, the hate others feel for him murdering Trayvon and the bigoted reasons for his crime (and subsequent statements), and the fucked up nature of our prisons where violence is a way of life.

If he were sent to a prison like the ones in Norway, he'd learn that his prejudices are ridiculous and are just plain wrong. The likelihood is that he'd come out a better person who rejects his past bigotry and, more importantly, rejects it in others around him in the present.

Learning and actually coming out of prison rehabilitated carries far greater weight with me than my lower, more vengeful desire to see him suffer.

a broken, f'd up human but still human - - but no one deserves the savage conditions of American prisons.

killed, but how he was killed and the non-follow up afterwards. And now whether or not the trial is in any way fair, how biased it is.

If Zimmy is convicted? I'd be fine with him in a place like that. Zimmy is far from the worse criminal I've heard of.

we are a very uncivilized country

what's not to love? Really, it's like being at a Hyatt except you don't have to pay (and are not allowed to leave).

Norway is populated largely with Norwegians, so they're thin on brown people to lock up.

And they're also thin on private prisons so the financial incentive to lock people up isn't there.

They probably also have employers who hire ex-cons.(My postpress supervisor is one of the few up here who hires a lot of ex-cons, and he's hired so many the county calls him when someone who looks promising shows up. Brad has hired people at the start of their sentences...for some reason they don't seem to stay long; anyone who works well gets hired out from under us after three or four months.)

And I don't think there's a way to translate "prison riot" into Norwegian.

What works there probably wouldn't work here.

Just sayin'

...but they probably have very few of them. Norwegians don't get all that pissed off anyway.

The English, otoh, know what a riot is...let FC Liverpool play Manchester United.

Thom Hartmann was talking about for-profit private prisons today and one caller said the inmates called his prison "Gladiator school". The key phrase the Norwegian warden said was "we want ex-cons who could be any of our neighbors"

wish there were english subtitles though

cant remember which scandinavian country it was, but they were putting the very few young children who did kill straight back in school the next day, but from that day on until they were 18 they had a "24/7" one on one mentor. the theory being that these few children, if it they were not psychopaths/sociopaths had no idea what they were doing and if one treated them normally they would grow up healthy, while jail with other people older than them would guarantee them a life of crime.

Unfortunately, there was still some recidivism, so the moralists ended the pilot projects and went back the their punitive old ways that don't work.

prisoners better than you treat your law-abiding citizen, or the citizen will be up in arms over the taxes required and the unfairness of it all. Here, citizens are treated like throwaway trash, so prisoners must be treated worse.

If we had a society where everyone was treated like a human being, not a cog in a capitalist machine to be used up and then discarded, why, we too could have a safety net AND decent treatment of prisoners. Until our society starts being run for the people instead of the corporations, we will be in this trap.

If we treated prisoners like this, they would get out of prison and tell their neighbors how awful they have it in the 'free' world. It would cause massive unrest. The poor would demand living conditions that were at least equal to the conditions inside the prisons. They can't allow the poor any pride or dignity; they'll start thinking they're human.

kind of treatment of any human being, for granted here.

Our prison system is a horror, a disgrace, and violates human rights as much as any country we have the gall to accuse ourselves.

Kudos to Norway, a courageous people who are not afraid, as Americans appear to be of everything and then they lash out in fear thinking that will make them 'safer'.

Yet has an extremely low crime rate.

http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/how-japan-uses-low-crime-rates-to-justify-its-cruel-prison-system/japan-death-row-shinzo-abe-justice/c3s11124/

"The low crime rate in Japan can be explained by other factors than its repressive system, most notably a severe legislation in regard to firearms. Gun ownership was banned in 1965 and penalties are very severe. In 2012, there were only 45 firearm-related crimes (killing eight people), of which 33 were gang-related. But even Japanese mobsters have a tough time finding guns on the black market. The tiny neighborhood police stations that are integrated into local life have also contributed to the safety of the cities."

There are many places in the world that are more civilized, more highly evolved, than the U.S.. Who do you think has lower rates of recidivism? Norway, or the U.S.?

Our prison system for the most part is focused on punishment through loss of time rather than try to fix what got the inmate there to begin with.

You stick someone in a cell and don't try to better them in anyway (or show them there is a better way), then at the end of the prison term, you have exactly the same person as before who has been more influenced by his peers in prison, than his society.

we treated our poor with the same dignity and respect that Norway treats its criminals?

with a minimum wage that could support two people comfortably?