A nice look at the alternative to the religion of revenge, as practiced
by the American "justice" system. The complete article is here. Here's an excerpt:
The treatment of inmates at Halden is wholly focused on helping to prepare them for a life after they get out. Not only is there no death penalty in Norway, there are no life sentences. The maximum term for any crime is 21 years — even for Anders Behring Breivik, who is responsible for probably the deadliest recorded rampage in the world, in which he killed 77 people and injured hundreds more in 2011 by detonating a bomb at a government building in Oslo and then opening fire at a nearby summer camp. “Better out than in” is an unofficial motto of the Norwegian Correctional Service, which makes a reintegration guarantee to all released inmates. It works with other government agencies to secure a home, a job and access to a supportive social network for each inmate before release; Norway’s social safety net also provides health care, education and a pension to all citizens. With one of the highest per capita gross domestic products of any country in the world, thanks to the profits from oil production in the North Sea, Norway is in a good position to provide all of this, and spending on the Halden prison runs to more than $93,000 per inmate per year, compared with just $31,000 for prisoners in the United States, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization.
Photo
A card game between inmates.
Credit
Knut Egil Wang for The New York Times
That
might sound expensive. But if the United States incarcerated its
citizens at the same low rate as the Norwegians do (75 per 100,000
residents, versus roughly 700), it could spend that much per inmate and
still save more than $45 billion a year. At a time when the American
correctional system is under scrutiny — over the harshness of its
sentences, its overreliance on solitary confinement, its racial
disparities — citizens might ask themselves what all that money is
getting them, besides 2.2 million incarcerated people and the hardships
that fall on the families they leave behind. The extravagant brutality
of the American approach to prisons is not working, and so it might just
be worth looking for lessons at the opposite extreme, here in a sea of blabaerskog, or blueberry forest.
....
Kristoffersen published a research paper comparing recidivism rates in the Scandinavian countries. A survey of inmates who were released in 2005 put Norway’s two-year recidivism rate at 20 percent, the lowest in Scandinavia, which was widely praised in the Norwegian and international press. For comparison, a 2014 recidivism report from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that an estimated 68 percent of prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years. [Note: Norway imprisons speeding drivers. Without traffic offenses, the recidivism rises to 25 percent...so this is a little more complex than it first appears. In fact the scientist at the source of these statistics is reluctant to take them at face value.]
The treatment of inmates at Halden is wholly focused on helping to prepare them for a life after they get out. Not only is there no death penalty in Norway, there are no life sentences. The maximum term for any crime is 21 years — even for Anders Behring Breivik, who is responsible for probably the deadliest recorded rampage in the world, in which he killed 77 people and injured hundreds more in 2011 by detonating a bomb at a government building in Oslo and then opening fire at a nearby summer camp. “Better out than in” is an unofficial motto of the Norwegian Correctional Service, which makes a reintegration guarantee to all released inmates. It works with other government agencies to secure a home, a job and access to a supportive social network for each inmate before release; Norway’s social safety net also provides health care, education and a pension to all citizens. With one of the highest per capita gross domestic products of any country in the world, thanks to the profits from oil production in the North Sea, Norway is in a good position to provide all of this, and spending on the Halden prison runs to more than $93,000 per inmate per year, compared with just $31,000 for prisoners in the United States, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization.
Photo
....
Kristoffersen published a research paper comparing recidivism rates in the Scandinavian countries. A survey of inmates who were released in 2005 put Norway’s two-year recidivism rate at 20 percent, the lowest in Scandinavia, which was widely praised in the Norwegian and international press. For comparison, a 2014 recidivism report from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that an estimated 68 percent of prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years. [Note: Norway imprisons speeding drivers. Without traffic offenses, the recidivism rises to 25 percent...so this is a little more complex than it first appears. In fact the scientist at the source of these statistics is reluctant to take them at face value.]
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