How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours

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Gosh what an amazing idea - treat prisoners like human beings instead of animals to be caged and, for the most part,.they will behave like human beings instead of caged animals.
 
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Can I live there?
 
I know I’d rather be a prison officer at a Norwegian prison than at one in the US.
I’m also more interested in rehabilitation–that is, doing everything possible to release the offender as a productive and law-abiding citizen–than I am in revenge or labeling someone who has broken the law as a “criminal” for the rest of their lives. People have a way of living up to that kind of expectation, and figure that while they’re at it they’d “rather be hung for a sheep than for a lamb.”

Having said that, there are people who have committed murder who are objectively psychopaths with an extremely high chance of re-offense. More to the point, there is an injustice to releasing an unrepentant murderer who ended someone else’s life in cold blood. There really does need to be such a thing a life sentence and a high-security prison.
 
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According to the article, the Norwegians spend twice as much as the British on prisoners. And being a largely socialist country, they probably don’t have private prisons the way the U.S. does.

The private prison model doesn’t do good for any society because there’s a financial incentive for recidivism, mass incarceration, and cost-cutting. Society will always have those with mental illnesses like sociopathy and psychopathy, but for the majority of offenders doing time for non-violent crimes, the Norwegian model would be great to incorporate here in the U.S. While expensive, I’d argue that it’s a worthwhile investment for society at large.
 
blackforest said:
According to the article, the Norwegians spend twice as much as the British on prisoners. And being a largely socialist country, they probably don’t have private prisons the way the U.S. does.

The private prison model doesn’t do good for any society because there’s a financial incentive for recidivism, mass incarceration, and cost-cutting. Society will always have those with mental illnesses like sociopathy and psychopathy, but for the majority of offenders doing time for non-violent crimes, the Norwegian model would be great to incorporate here in the U.S. While expensive, I’d argue that it’s a worthwhile investment for society at large.
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If there were only one thing I would change about the US prison system, it would be incarceration that improves mental health instead of undermining or destroying it. There also ought to be a way to encourage profitable friendships rather than only encouraging the destructive kinds of alliances. There are too many people who go to prison and come out worse than they went in.
 
blackforest said:
The practice of solitary confinement especially concerns me in this regard.
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Yes, especially since it can probably be presumed that few people of the people who ever wind up with a life sentence are remotely prepared to spend that much time in silence with themselves. Few people are, particularly in such a bleak setting, even if they know it is going to have an end.

Having said that, there are also offenders who are a constant threat to the physical safety and even the lives of others. They really are that unpredictable and viciously violent, particularly in a “nothing left to lose” situation. At that point, though, we’re talking about someone so outside of the experience of most people who have no experience with that kind of psyche that they’d have to be handled by a protocol that only someone with far greater knowledge of psychiatry and corrections than I will ever have.

The most obvious risk is that an inmate might be more mentally unstable and antisocial–and therefore more dangerous to society–when he or she is finally released from prison than at the time of arrest. Just as important, though, is that Christians cannot be cooperating with cruelty or revenge. That is not the Gospel.
 
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Just curious–do any of you who have commented on this thread so far work with prisoners on a daily or at least regular basis?

I don’t, BTW, but I know people who do.
 
I think we are going to see a huge decrease in “non-violent” offenders released, at least here in Illinois, and in several other states who have made marijuana legal. Many people have ended up in prison for possession of cannabis, even just one joint. No more!

Very soon, I expect to see some kind of state-wide “forgiveness” of most of these prisoners (so they don’t have to hire a lawyer) and their release.

I can go along with this. I think a lot of these people, especially the young ones, end up getting recruited into big-time criminal gangs/mobs while they’re in prison, and then end up with repeat offenses that are often violent.
 
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Sometimes it seems to me that criminals often arise from people who have had terrible upbringings. I realize of course that not everyone who has a bad upbringing becomes a criminal. Is there a way to improve the parenting skills of a nation? Some of it (parenting skills) are a function of wealth, but wouldn’t it be in the interests of the population to have better parenting, which would also mean (probably) fewer children born to people who are too immature / poor / addicted / etc?
In other words should governments be promoting abstinence outside marriage? (I realize that lot of people would say that’s why young people need free birth control, but as Catholics we obviously can’t promote that). And that governments should be helping to educate parents better?
 
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Peeps said:
at least regular basis?

I don’t, BTW, but I know people who do.
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I work with teens in a juvie diversion program.

I think this works because of several reasons
  • homogeneity of the residents
  • they spend x2 the amount per prisoner, better guards and facilities
  • they have real opportunities for work when they leave
 
Peeps said:
Just curious–do any of you who have commented on this thread so far work with prisoners on a daily or at least regular basis?

I don’t, BTW, but I know people who do.
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No, but a priest I knew who did said he was overwhelmed by how many come from families with a lot of chaos or one overworked and overwhelmed parent. If you don’t have a healthy upbringing for whatever reason, you’re a lot more likely to do antisocial things, self-medicate with drugs or alcohol, etc.
Not everybody who goes to prison has had a hard life or poor parenting. There are a lot of mentally needy people out there, though, and once they fall into crime it is a hard road out of it.
 
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PetraG said:
No, but a priest I knew who did said he was overwhelmed by how many come from families with a lot of chaos or one overworked and overwhelmed parent.
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Virtually all the teens I see in our diversion program come from broken homes. The few who have two parents tend to have been adopted, and experienced family trauma before their adoption.
 
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Theo520 said:
Virtually all the teens I see in our diversion program come from broken homes. The few who have two parents tend to have been adopted, and experienced family trauma before their adoption.
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The adults are too often the youngsters who never got the healing they needed.
Again: not everybody and the system cannot become so free of proportional consequences that it becomes an invitation to sin for the cynical. Some people aren’t going to rehabilitate. They do need to be at least kept off of the streets for awhile. Those who want to change ought to have opportunities helping them to do it, though. Very few are equipped to make those changes themselves, especially if prison is traumatizing and mostly develops their survival instincts, a dim view of human nature and a very real sense that the society they return to has a permanently dim view of them.
 
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Seems like inmates in the USA need to seek asylum in Norway for inhumane living conditions…
 
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