6 ms·

The US justice system is obviously totally broken, but one would do well to remember the absolutely incredible side of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund.

• Privacy846 6y ago
  How much of the wealth fund is spent on incarceration?
  • Mizza 6y ago
    It's less about what is spent on incarceration, and more about how state funds are spent in such away that people don't need to commit crime as much.
    • Privacy846 6y ago
      What money is spent on what, and where did the money come from? You seem to be in the know. How much does it cost society when one percent of the population is incarcerated? But I digress; the US is not exactly a place which has been blessed in terms of access to natural resources so it’s an unfair comparison.
      • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
        > US is not exactly a place which has been blessed in terms of access to natural resources I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, but that's the exact opposite of what I believe is true.
        • Privacy846 6y ago
          I was employing something called sarcasm.
  • l0b0 6y ago
    Nothing[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
• baron816 6y ago
  The Norwegian system is actually much cheaper than the American system when you account for lower recidivism rates and reduced prison sentences.
  • paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Is there a stigma that haunts former inmates upon release? In the US it seems ones career is essentially over once convicted of anything more than a traffic violation.
    • zapt02 6y ago
      It's the same in the nordics. Most jobs check for a criminal record, even in smaller IT companies. At least in Sweden, the outcome of being sentenced (losing your job, making it very hard to find a new one) is factored into the sentence (that is, they decrease the prison sentence due to these factors as more punishment will be had after release).
    • TheNorthman 6y ago
      In Denmark it would be illegal for an employer to discriminate against former inmates _if their crime is irrelevant for the job at hand_. In practice, though... At least it's automatically erased after (IIRC) five years, depending on severity.
• aksss 6y ago
  One would also do well to remember that Norway has a population of 5m, vs US at 325m. Norway is also 85% ethnic Norwegians (making for a pretty culturally homogenous society). The United States is operating at a scale that may break the Norwegian system. I don’t know that it would, but let’s see the Norwegian system work at five times the size (25m) before even entertaining the idea that it would work at 65 times the size.
  • Privacy846 6y ago
    [deleted]
    • hackinthebochs 6y ago
      Race is important because people tend to support more punitive policies against transgressors of other races[1]. The demographics and the history of racial tension in the U.S. means that resistance to the Norwegian criminal justice model go far beyond considerations of cost. [1] https://nicic.gov/race-and-punishment-racial-perceptions-crime-and-support-punitive-policies https://nicic.gov/race-and-punishment-racial-perceptions-cri...
      • FruityCoconut 6y ago
        There's also the significant disparity in criminality across races, as many other Western countries are discovering the hard way now too with the recent acute increase in diversity. Sociologists can argue until they're blue in the face about why that is (and I'm sure everyone reading this has their view) but it's a fact of which the Norwegians perhaps have the privilege of relative ignorance compared to the historically diverse USA.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • Privacy846 6y ago
          [deleted]
• anti-shill 6y ago
  it's not that the american justice system is broken; it's that the american nation itself is broken...or perhaps it might be accurate to say that the american nation never really existed, and that nowadays the nation is a mere shadow of what was in the past only a pseudo-nation
• Arnt 6y ago
  One would do well to remember that cause has to come before effect. The Norwegian criminal policy is decades older than that fund. One would also do well to keep in mind that the main effect of that fund is to block the state from spending money. Taxes are diverted to the fund from the budget where it could be spent on prisons or other things.
• l0b0 6y ago
  This whataboutism comes up every single time anyone mentions any difference between Norway and any other country. It completely misses several important facts, most importantly: - The other Nordic countries are very similar socially even though they do not have this source of wealth. - AFAICT[1] it's being spent on pensions, not infrastructure, education, or other social programs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...