6 ms·

Bizarre how Americans never seem to think prisons are bad enough. As long as there are prisons worse than American ones the prisons are too good. It seems like

• fredley 10y ago
  But they're bad people, and they must be punished. /s
  • VMG 10y ago
    Why the sarcasm? Is that not true? Do you think deterrence is ineffective?
    • willvarfar 10y ago
      The National Institute for Justice (which is the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice) says that prison is an ineffective deterent: http://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx http://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx
    • kbart 10y ago
      "Do you think deterrence is ineffective?" Not as much as you'd expect. There are plenty of studies that confirm this (I'm too lazy to google them for you). The problem is, that when crimes are done, one does not usually think rationally or does not expect to be caught (or else he wouldn't do that in first place). Another big category of crimes (especially violent ones) are the ones committed out of passion, where severity of sentence does not play significant role either.
    • fredley 10y ago
      I do not think it is, no. I think the difference in deterrence between prison, and prison where you might starve is likely to be very low. The real question is not whether rehabilitation-based prison systems give better outcomes across factors such as reoffending and reintegration into society (they do, but at a perceived higher cost), but how to transition from a punitive system to a rehabilitative system.
    • dagw 10y ago
      Do you think deterrence is ineffective? The evidence supporting it is very weak, especially the assumption the more punishment always leads to more deterrence. The more effective deterrence in many cases is increasing the probability of getting caught, not increasing the punishment for the few that do get caught.
    • mootothemax 10y ago
      > Do you think deterrence is ineffective? When even The Bloody Code[1] didn't stop people from offending, you have to question the effectiveness of future punishment as a reason to not commit a crime. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code
    • pjc50 10y ago
      What matters in deterrence is getting caught, more than the actual duration or intensity of the punishment. (It's also important that people are not punished when they're not guilty, which the US tends to forget. The other side of reinforcement learning. The tendency of US police to administer adhoc punishment up to and including execution on the street is a problem. You can't say "don't commit crimes or you'll be in trouble with the police" when simply driving while black can get you in trouble with the police.)
• IIAOPSW 10y ago
  Get outta here with your socialist appeals to cost effectiveness. I want to feel that bad people are being punished. /s
  • xxs 10y ago
    >>bad people are being punished. HARD!
• thesimon 10y ago
  It's a different school of thought IMHO. In Europe, prisons are more focused on rehabilitation, whereas US prisons are more focused on punishment. This can also be seen in the different sentences. Whereas in Norway (maximum sentence 21 years) or Germany (mostly out of prison after 15 years), you can be sentenced for life or even death in the US. It obviously works out more expensive and doesn't seem really fair, but bad people must be punished!!1
  • masklinn 10y ago
    > This can also be seen in the different sentences. Whereas in Norway (maximum sentence 21 years) or Germany (mostly out of prison after 15 years), you can be sentenced for life or even death in the US. Things are not that clear cut, you can't get "hard" sentenced to life (or death) in Norway but you can be sentenced to indeterminate-length "preventive detention": the sentence can be renewed for up to 5 years at a time indefinitely.
    • jpatokal 10y ago
      But those sentences are extremely rare and reserved for violent psychopaths. Norway currently has 76 people serving one. In the US, it's possible and not even that rare to end up with life sentences for things like non-violent drugs offenses and repeated petty theft (three strikes), so there are >150,000 people with actual life sentences. Plus all the people serving something like 80 years, which is notionally definite, but in practice also a life sentence.
      • toomanybeersies 10y ago
        I linked this just the other day, and it's relevant again. Life in prison for stealing a pair of socks: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-the-shame-of-three-strikes-laws-20130327 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-... If that's not manifestly unjust, I don't know what is. I have no idea how 3 strikes laws and mandatory minimums are constitutional in the USA, I'm no constitutional scholar (or American), but I'm fairly sure that it violates separation of powers. Regardless, the above link is a very good reason for judicial discretion, among other reasons.
• ewoodrich 10y ago
  Not all Americans, though... Personally, I'm surprised and relieved that the federal government has recently decided to abandon private prison contracts. It's a very positive and unexpected development, no doubt. But I'm disillusioned by the inevitability that public prisons will implement many of the same cost-savings with a priority over humane methods to decrease recidivism. Most importantly, despite the federal sentencing guidelines, even many minor offenders will be incarcerated for sentences vastly exceeding your Nordic standards. Evidence shows that this is counterproductive, but it is supported by the voter, and won't likely end soon...
  • nickbauman 10y ago
    DoJ has just ruled that you can't hold someone who is too poor to pay bail bond. Things are starting to improve.
    • briandear 10y ago
      So we've just removed the incentive for an accused person to show up to court? Bail serves a purpose. However the amounts of bail could be recalculated to be relevant to a specific prisoner's condition. A million dollar bail to a poor person might as well be 100 billion which is the same as no bail. That same bail to a rich person would be the equivalent to a $1000 bail to a poor person. So bail shouldn't be eliminated but scaled appropriately to the financial situation of the prisoner.
      • dagw 10y ago
        Making bail a multiple of something like gross total income and remove the need for the judge to set a dollar amount should help. So basically instead of saying "Bail is set at $50000" the judge can just say "bail is set at X month income or Y% of net worth" without having to take any consideration of the accused financial situation into account . Of course you'll probably need some minimums and few other tweaks, but on the whole it feels like a better method.
        • 10y ago
• lordnacho 10y ago
  What's particularly annoying to me is that they talk about prison rape as if it's a natural part of the punishment. Growing up in Denmark, I recall an incident on the news where someone drove a bulldozer through the wall of a prison. Only a handful of prisoners actually ran. The others decided to stay inside. They are quite happy to do things that will allow prisoners to reintegrate. For instance, a friend of the family did something quite stupid and ended up in jail. He was still allowed out on weekends to teach me how to swim. With supervision of course, but his crime was violent you wouldn't expect someone with that sentence to be let out in the US system. The flipside of course is you get a guy like Breivik. He basically gets the maximum, but for a nutter like him it's almost not even a punishment. He's like nothing more than his own suite, a playstation, and peace and quiet to write his ideas.
  • creshal 10y ago
    > He's like nothing more than his own suite, a playstation, and peace and quiet to write his ideas. Denying him any chance to rightfully complain about prison conditions is probably the most effective punishment you can come up with. When the Baader-Meinhof gang was thrown into inhumane solitary confinement, it and their hunger strikes and suicides made them martyrs to their cause, spawning a new generation of terrorists that picked up their banners. Meanwhile, Breivik complaining that his PlayStation is too old and that he can't play the newest games makes him a joke figure.
    • stcredzero 10y ago
      So basically, in the future, we should sentence people to becoming memes?
      • creshal 10y ago
        For terrorists who commit crimes to further their political agenda? Why not. Obviously this doesn't translate to all prisoners, but in cases like Breivik's, the priority is containing his ideology, not punishing the person.
• kbart 10y ago
  Another surprising thing about Norway prisons is that they do work. Criminals come out of prisons rehabilitated more often than not, meanwhile, in countries with harsh prison conditions, petty criminals simply become hardened criminals. That, combined with no prospect of good career, leads to the endless crime-prison loop.
• coredog64 10y ago
  Norway is an 85% ethnically homogeneous country with the population of a large US city. It's totally the approach and nothing else that describes the difference between life in the two prison systems.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    I can understand the scale argument when we're talking about things like railroads or internet connectivity, but how exactly does it impact this issue? The jailing system seems quite "horizontally scalable" to me.
• bborud 10y ago
  Norwegian prisons are designed to rehabilitate people and turn them into productive taxpayers. American prisons implement an underlying revenge culture. (Or "justice" as it is called). You can argue all you want about cost and effect, but it all boils down to a fundamentally different way of viewing human beings that have made mistakes and what society wants from them.
• DominikR 10y ago
  The US is not a ethnically homogenous society like Norway is. Neither does Norway have a wide spread gang culture like the US has in African American neighbourhoods where even law abiding African Americans that want to have a normal life can't because no one is effectively policing these areas for various reasons. These people have to put up with living in high crime areas where laws are generally not enforced, most people have no legal jobs and instead criminals and gangs set the rules for everyone. What makes you believe that what you are doing in your culture is automatically applicable to certain US subcultures? I can tell you from the experience we had here in Austria and Germany with Arab immigrants that our way of handling such issues does not work at all with them. While a typical German is afraid of consequences should he get into conflict with the law and will stop and rethink what he is doing an Arab immigrant often wont. That's because they are used to a much more cruel enforcement of laws, thus they regard our way of punishing them as a mere slap on the wrist and will continue with their behaviour. You would be amazed if you knew how many of them got convicted 6,7,8 or even more times within the first year of arrival. Just look at whats going on in neighbouring Sweden at the moment. Does this kind of liberal law enforcement work there?
• Shivetya 10y ago
  Please quit branding us under one umbrella. Many of us don't like the current situation. Even those of us on the right (Libertarian) find the system appalling. This is purely a power play and money machine of the political class (the true one percent). Prisons, if not the whole police state, are all products of the political class. It is there means to spread money to constituencies that they favor, punish those they don't like, and put away people they don't want to deal with. Oh, it also makes tons of money for local, state, and national, politicians. The idea we put people in prison for drug use, financial improprieties, and such, never fails to depress me. Prison should be only for violent offenders. People who willingly harm others should be locked up. Then they should be prevented from harming fellow prisoners and also stopped from forming gangs/violent associations within. However that later issue is overlooked because it feeds the cycle. Prisons make many people worse and that sends them right back to the system to make even more money. tl;dr Prisons are profit centers of the political class.
• kosherbeefcake 10y ago
  Complete speculation, but it probably has to do with how Americans look at the use of their tax dollars. To Americans, setting up prisons where prisoners are in suites, and can leave on weekends, it sounds nicer than the lives of some free people! All of this on the American tax dollar also. Why reward prisoners for breaking the law, so make prison terrible.