Well said. The distinction Americans (myself as one of them) seem to have lost is the one between "rehabilitation" and "revenge." We call prisons "correctiona

Well said. The distinction Americans (myself as one of them) seem to have lost is the one between "rehabilitation" and "revenge." We call prisons "correctional facilities" because at one point in time their purpose was to correct the behavior of offenders so that they could be reintegrated into society. Today they would be better termed "revenge facilities", because 1) nobody who enters a run-of-the mill American prison for any appreciable length of time is going to leave a productive member of society, and 2) as the Swartz case aptly demonstrates, there's no longer a sense of just and fair punishment, only maximum, nuclear, life-crushing revenge. (30+ years for downloading academic documents, millions of dollars for sharing a handful of songs on Kazaa--and that's just the HN-flavor "crimes".) I really applaud the Norwegians for staying true to their principles in the face of a monstrous tragedy.