So, whatever the crime - a mass murdering, pedophile, rapist - he/she will get a maximum 21 years and be let back into the community? And the warden says; "When released, what sort of person do you want as a neighbour, an angry person, or one that has been rehabilitated?" No, what people want is justice and a punishment that fits the crime. Someone capable of bestial acts, showing no mercy for the victims, does not deserve rehabilitation. This place actually rewards criminality. "Come on in. We provide food, entertainment, training and even pretty guards. After all, your rights are more important than your victims."

you clearly have no idea how the justice system in a civilized country in the 21st century is supposed to be.

The judicial system (of a proper nation) is not about what people WANT. It doesn't cater to wishes of the victims OR the criminals. It's a neutral party. An eye for an eye is not justice, it's revenge.

And of course, a serial killer wouldn't just be released after 21 years, like he was suddenly a nice person. What would probably happen is that he would spend the rest of his days in a padded room in a psychiatric hospital.

edit: by the way, I don't know if you understood what that small text said at the beginning of the video, but it says that 80% of the inmates that go to this prison don't return to a life of crime. I would say that is pretty, pretty, pretty good.

This system works fine for Norway and serves as a model for a humane system of rehabilitation/education/reintegration-This would work as a model for any modern civilized society given a similar petri dish.

Any transition to something similar in the U.S. would take a few generations and maybe something as simple as re-indoctrination of her population through eliminating television and consumer advertising and re-claiming education as a system of human potential and critical thinking rather than a mind-numbing-and-dumbing of young minds and a platform for the roboticism of humanity.

Hardly any violent crime in Canada and this is due mainly to the lack of 24/7 violence and disinformation being pumped-into homes through the cathode-ray nipple....The only wet-nurse that could create a cripple!

Developmental-disability and criminals running the machine has created the big business of "criminal" recidivism in America-The real criminals are in charge of the prisons system apparatus-

For these pieces of human garbage, there should be no-quarter and televised trials should broadcast worldwide for about five solid years should they ever be brought to justice...

The U.S. systems' broken and beyond redemption.

But I would also add, that it works just fine for the assholes in charge-

Whatever stats they have for Norwegians reforming after a stint in prison are temporary.

Scandinavia's gang-rape and street crime rates have already skyrocketed.

It's only a matter of time before they realize the people they've been importing who have low academic scores and high crime rates have a different ideology and much worse prison reform stats.

Do you have any references for that? Norway has some of the lowest crime figures in Europe, and their stats of 20% recidivism after 2 years compares fairly favourably with the United States statistics of 80% after 3, wouldn't you agree?

There was an article recently in The Norway Post talking about visitor crime, but it took great pains to point out that although the visitors were giving immigrants a bad name, the actual immigrants weren't causing trouble.

@oritteropo

The reason you didn't know these things is because your thought-leaders intentionally hide information from you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden:

Immigrants were five times more likely to commit sex crimes.[3] A report by the Sweden Democrats published September 2010 and compiled from 114 of 253 court rulings from around the country, stated that 48% of convicted rapists in Sweden in 2009 were born abroad.

"In Linköping, central southern Sweden, police responded to 120 incidents as cars, caravans and two schools were set alight. At one point a blazing truck was rolled into a building, which caught fire."

But while the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.

”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Byström, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”

@oritteropo
"[Norway's] stats of 20% recidivism after 2 years compares fairly favourably with the United States statistics of 80% after 3, wouldn't you agree?"

You are controlling for ethnicity, right? Or not?

Scandinavians in the US do just as well as they do in Scandinavia, in the same way that East Asians in the US have just as low crime rates as they have in East Asia.

(Actually, Scandinavians do even better in the US than in Scandinavia, but not by a huge amount.)


So no, Scandinavians' crime rates in Scandinavia don't compare favorably with Scandinavians' crime rates in the US. They do great in both systems.

This video was talking about Norway, and the Norwegian system, and although there are some similarities with Sweden it would be a bit like me suggesting that Canada is unsafe because of crime in the U.S.A.

One thing that does stand out when looking at both countries is that they are very small. Norway has approximately the population of Melbourne (or Los Angeles) and Sweden is approximately New York City (or Melbourne and Sydney combined)... and of course there is more crime in the larger cities like Oslo than in smaller towns.

Thanks for your comment since, despite not entirely agreeing with your original statement because I think the topic is a little more complicated than that, I have learned something (about both Norway and Sweden)

I have the same information as you, so there are limits!

Approximately one third (32.4% in 2012) of Norway's prisoners are foreigners, so it is statistically possible to end up with a 20% rate consisting of a 50% rate among foreigners and 5% among locals, I consider it both a little unlikely, and hardly a damning indictment of the system even if that is the case.

The english language section of the Norwegian Correctional Services web site does mention the challenges they face in trying to rehabilitate foreign prisoners:

This presents a number of challenges for the staff as to language, religion and culture. In addition, a part of this category consists of more or less professional criminal offenders with a certain degree of organization who may be responsible for security problems, criminal activity in or from prison and recruitment of young offenders. Visiting facilities and rehabilitation measures are much harder or impossible to create for offenders who will be deported to their home country after serving their sentence.

The US and Canada are very different. In contrast, every European country has a problem among their Muslim immigrant population with high-crime and low academic scores.

Witness, for example, the famously high rate of Muslim car-burnings across France, same as the recent violence in Sweden.


The best way to create a liberal utopia is to prevent liberals from importing millions of high-crime, low-academic-score foreigners who will be a problem for hundreds of years to come. Witness, for example, the US' intractable problems with its own sub-populations, who don't improve academically in later generations.

In contrast, importing impoverished East Asians increases the nation's average IQ, and lowers the average crime rate. That just goes to show that immigration decisions should be data-based, instead of trying to hide the downsides of our past decisions.


Thanks for the conversation

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Low Security Jail In Norway prison' to 'Low Security, Jail, Norway, prison' - edited by kulpims

I like Velocity5's data-based immigration model and would add preservation of culture and language as a caveat to citizenship, as well as a "3-R's" approach to a welcome mat for new arrivals. Knowledge is power-

And you "clearly" have never been on the receiving end of a scumbag smirking at his sentence (I hope you never are). You say; "The judicial system (of a proper nation) is not about what people WANT." The system is rightly impartial, but once found guilty, sentencing is defined to reflect the gravity of the crime, and in that sense it is ALL about what people want. You disparage the term "revenge" as if it were wrong to seek it, want it, or require it. Well, what you call revenge, many call fair and right reparation. Oh, and yes, I did understand the recidivism rate thank you. I would point out that many re-offend to get back to their responsibility free lifestyle. As for the rate? I would turn it around and say 20% re-offending is pretty, pretty, pretty bad. It is simple, the time should fit the crime. Prison should deter - if not, what is it for? Is its purpose to make people believe that "society is to blame, not the criminals?" Sadly it is the wishy washy bleeding hearts that have turned criminal behavior into a vocation with the promise of a holiday camp, free meals, and training if caught.

If you can't even understand the extremely basic concept of why revenge is wrong, and shouldn't be sought, I'll clearly only waste my time discussing this matter with you.

Your patronizing attitude denotes you lack of understanding of the very basic concept of justice, and the need for justice. Judicial punishment may not eradicate crime, but it exists to act, either, as a deterrent, or the vengeance of society. Either way, the sentence must be seen as punishment. If is not - which is increasingly the case - then why have laws at all? I suggest you spend more of your time thinking of the innocent victims of crime, rather than the welfare, comfort, and rehabilitation of those who perpetrate it. I'm done.

Judicial punishment is not equal to revenge. It exists to appease the victim's feeling of injustice, and to show the criminal that what he did was wrong and society will remove his individual freedom if he decides to act in this way.

If I didn't think about the victims as you say so, I would've said that criminals shouldn't have to pay at all. But that's not what I said was it?

Between the god awful american encarceration system (and the use of death penalty in some states), and letting prisoners go off with a warning, there is, I am pretty sure, a middle ground. And that middle ground doesn't involve dehumanizing people, treating them like animals, and letting them get ass raped everyday in the showers.

You say; "Judicial punishment is not equal to revenge. It exists to appease the victim's feeling of injustice." Be quiet, you are an idiot to make such a statement. Try thinking about the nonsensical, statement you just made.

Here's a tip: go check out a dictionary, and see the definition of revenge.

I'll make it easy for you. Here it is:

"to exact punishment or expiation for a wrong on behalf of, especially in a resentful or vindictive spirit"

This is NOT what a judicial system does. Stop trolling.

Revenge Synonyms;
noun. vengeance - retaliation - retribution - reprisal
verb. avenge - retaliate - wreak - requite - pay back

Your "arguments" revolve around semantics, and glib statements.These, my friend, are not an arguments at all. I have defended my position, whereas you have nothing to offer in serious defense of yours. At best your "views" are fluffy, idealistic nonsense, which only reflect how you think justice would be best served. Get into the real world. You could start by asking the victims of serious crime whether they are happy that the criminal who killed a loved one will be allowed back into society. Get some coherent, rational, factual information about peoples views on crime and punishment, and then try and debate. In the mean time, stop wasting my time with any more puerile comments (you can use your dictionary to look up puerile).

Yeah you don't know the underpinnings of the French riots and the situations that brought it on. It wasn't just "Muslim Mad, Muslim Smash." It's about class and France is really fucked up in that department. Racist and Xenophobic as hell after being a colonial shitbag for centuries.

The difference here is between "punishment" and "treatment".

Punishment demands that one have an absolute and objective moral imperative . Such absolute imperatives quite demonstrably do not exist (save perhaps that the strongest tend survive and prosper which is of little use to us here)

Simply put, unless you want to invoke some absolute ethical standard such as the commandment of God, "punishment" can only ever be equivalent to forcing ones own prejudices and desires onto others. (and if you reject the existence of absolute authorities like God then doubly so)

This would be fine if we had any objective prejudices with which to inflict people, but we don't. We have only mob consensus and this is how human legal systems have worked for most of our history. The Crowd doesn't like something you did so they lynch/burn/flog/exile you for it. (pure democracy at its finest)

While naturally many dangerous and delinquent individuals are effectively dealt with in this way there is an unacceptable price. It enshrines personal prejudice in law and a great many otherwise perfectly innocent or relatively harmless individuals inevitably fall foul of this.
(much) Moreover it also demands that one accept the premise that some people are just born "bad", or rather that "criminals" are a breed apart from the rest of us. This assumption is essential if one is to justify "punishing" some and not others because you are asserting that they are inherently bad and will continue to be so. One is not concerned with improving them as a person or correcting the problem, one is instead concerned with justifying and demonstrating ones own moral superiority. "you are not like us and so we will subjugate you and inflict suffering to prove our way is the superior".

Due to the barbarism inherent in such systems many cultures have moved instead to systems based instead upon treatment of the "criminal" and protection of the victim in recognition of the fact that all humans share the same fundamental condition.
Many of the practicalities remain the same e.g. a need to segregate the perpetrator, set laws to prevent certain behaviours etc. (the need for this I think should be obvious), however there is a fundamental difference in how one deals with "delinquents".

Instead of an aberrant product of nature which must be defeated the unacceptable behaviour is instead seen as simply an undesirable/unacceptable but perfectly natural aspect of the human condition we all share.
All humans share an innate capacity for violence and subjugation, every single one of us has at some point felt the desire to hit someone etc. we only take issue with those that fail to control such impulses.
However rather than seeing this lack of control as anathema we simply see it as an underdeveloped or damaged aspect of the human condition we all share.

We must take steps to control it for the sake of potential future victims but the idea of actually "punishing" people for simply being human is to me patently absurd and backwards.
Further to that pretty much all of the modern psychology and neuroscience on the subject supports this position. There is no "criminal gene" or race, the only common factor that appears to exist is frontal brain damage (the bit that controls impulse and behaviour)

Treat them like humans and you might actually get a human out of the other side. Treat them like animals..............

Lets be clear though, I'm almost agreeing with you. The way you have used the word "punishment" is closer in some ways to my use of the word "treatment". But I've placed the emphasis that little bit more on "treatment" or rather against "punishment". As you've defined it "punishment" isn't the extreme example I have described with the term, but I did so in order to highlight the clear distinction between two positions.
Meaning is use and I don't want anyone to get too hung up on the semantics at the expense of the underlying concepts .