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It looks like the Norwegians have gotten over the fundamental problem that we have in the States (and presumably in other countries): the idea that people shoul

It looks like the Norwegians have gotten over the fundamental problem that we have in the States (and presumably in other countries): the idea that people should be made to suffer for perceived transgressions even if it costs the rest of society more (and yes, I do mean after accounting for the accompanied reduction of the undesired behavior by making an example of offenders). Apparently we're too primitive to get beyond the juvenile practice of cutting off our nose to spite our face, and it informs our drug policy, the way we deal with the homeless, our prison system, our views on social welfare, etc.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
The US criminal justice system is very much about punishment and retribution and almost not at all about rehabilitation or protection of society. That's the sort of system one would expect in a medieval country, we can and should do better.
Nicholas_C 13y ago
It's a really crappy predicament. Any politician here in the US that would want to model our prisons in a more humane manner would be labelled soft/weak on crime and would never get elected. I can't see this changing anytime in the next 20 years.
WizzleKake 13y ago
Prison in the US isn't about punishment or rehabilitation. It's about money. Incarceration is big business.
- rayiner 13y ago
  It's not. Only a small percentage of prisons are for profit (http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...), and our tendency to incarcerate people dates back to long before we had for profit prisons. Our incarceration rate is mostly a backlash against desegregation. It's mostly because of the war on drugs, which is at its base a war on black people.
  - knieveltech 13y ago
    "Only a tiny percentage of prisons are for profit" Can you source that?
    - rayiner 13y ago
      http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g... 128k out of 1.6m, or 8%. Graph of the incarcerated population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean-fixed-timescale.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-.... The prison population started exploding in 1980 with the drug war and the war on immigration, but for-profit prisons had less than 10,000 prisoners as of 1990. It's a lagging effect--the for-profit prisons are sprouting up because we put so many people in prison, not the other way around.
  - mjn 13y ago
    In California at least the prison-guard union does have a significant role, which is a kind of profit motive. They successfully campaigned for the three-strikes law, for example, and have been a strong influence on politicians for decades. I agree the war on drugs is a much bigger factor.
    - protomyth 13y ago
      Looking at what bills the Prison Guards union gets behind or tries to stop, it is a very big amount of money. Corporations are not the only ones with a profit motive.
JackFr 13y ago
I imagine I might agree with you on many things -- there is much to be admired in this Norwegian system and an there is much to be lamented in the US system. However you lose me when you say 'perceived transgressions'. The transgressions are real -- you might think that certain drug laws are injust (I certainly do) but the transgression is not simply perceived. And certainly I'll grant you that people have been wrongly convicted -- but that is a very small part of the prison population. That being said, our prisons aim to punish, incapacitate and rehabilitate. Punishment is a legitimate role for society; it is not juvenile.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  Oh I certainly agree. I added perceived because my broader point included perceived transgressions like poverty. Drug offenses are (generally) perceived transgressions that are justified; poverty and homelessness (generally) are not.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
  > Punishment is a legitimate role for society; it is not juvenile. What's your rationale for this? Personally I can't agree. I can see the logic behind punishment-as-deterrent (but then it creates perverse incentives), but punishment as an end goal itself isn't an appropriate concern for society.
  - smokeyj 13y ago
    Statist logic 101. Governments must establish their authority with violence and punishment. Without punishing those who disobey, society would be lawless and chaotic.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      You're a very naive anarchist if you think a stateless society won't have punishment for criminals. It will, and it will be really quite severe: Banishment. Unlike in a statist society, no-one can be forced to cooperate with a criminal, and without the safety net of the state, that's not a pleasant situation to be in.
VMG 13y ago
> I do mean after accounting for the accompanied reduction of the undesired behavior by making an example of offenders Do you really account for it? Assuming that there is a certain percentage of people who will not commit a crime under any circumstance, another percentage of people who will commit a crime and are not deterred by any punishment, there remains a sub-population who will offend if the cost-benefit ratio is right. The only way to drive up cost for this population is by making them suffer, unfortunately. Do you see another solution?
- cgag 13y ago
  Is locking people in a cage not enough for you?
- mjn 13y ago
  There are many factors besides contemplation of future punishment that influences whether people become more or less likely to commit a crime, so I would focus on tackling the whole host of them, rather than moving that one lever. Mental health, poverty, education, urban planning, etc. all influence crime rates. For example, one factor contributing to the U.S.'s high drunk-driving rates is that the state of late-night public transit, combined with urban design, means that people routinely drive to bars, which sets up an obviously problematic situation. Plus, the empirical data on sentence lengths as a deterrent is fairly weak. People do seem to respond to likelihood of being caught: a 6-month sentence you are virtually sure to get is more of a deterrent than a 6-month sentence that you have maybe a 5% chance of being caught and sentenced to. But especially at the high end, there is little to no evidence that having prison sentences of 30 years is more of a disincentive than prison sentences of 10 years.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  > Do you really account for it? What? I'm talking about hypothetical situations. This means by definition cases in which the increase in incentives to offend is more than counteracted by other factors.
jessedhillon 13y ago
I think the article hints at a salient way to frame this discussion: think of the future victims of those whom we neglect to rehabilitate. Investing in more humane prisons is a way to avert future criminality.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  This is hardly a new concept, and it's been expressed in public before. I can't imagine the missing element for approaching these issues like a civilized society is that we neglected to frame it in terms of future costs. I can only speak for America, but a big part of the problem here is that, culturally and politically, we don't trust expert knowledge, so things that are counter-intuitive are political poison. For example: In the case where housing programs for the homeless actually directly _save_ the gov't money, the only argument against them is "I'm taxed enough already!!! Stop giving my money to people who are homeless because they deserve it!!!!". Telling them that, empirically, it's far more likely that the state is saving money from doing this is useless, because "facts are just another opinion" is a disgustingly prevalent belief around here. through reduced spending on homeless-related law enforcement and emergency medical care, and this doesn't even include the indirect economic value of lower crime and higher property values
  - wutbrodo 13y ago
    Sorry for the messed-up formatting, I don't see any edit link anywhere..
gahahaha 13y ago
"Apparently we're too primitive to get beyond the juvenile practice of cutting off our nose to spite our face" Don't be too hard on yourself. A conservative coalition that includes a right wing populist party that want prison to be less about rehabilitation and more about suffering and punishment just won the general election here. The next four years will see how much impact they can have on the system..
mzs 13y ago
The retribution vs, rehabilitation has fluctuated. There was some research in the '70s that showed that rehabilitation was not really impacting recidivism. Some said that research was flawed, for example because of the other things that were happening in that same period, much like after the Civil War had a similar effect. But a tough on crime mentality was embraced and now we have what we have. This is a decent overview with some good sources at the end: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12282007/penalphilosophy.html http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12282007/penalphilosophy.h...
vixen99 13y ago
Why 'perceived' transgressions? Am I right in concluding that aside from rehabilitation and the practical requirement for the sequestration of persons who are a danger to an innocent population, you believe there is no other purpose in incarceration? If that is so, we need to introduce re-education courses for victims who primitively persist in calling for revenge (though they call it justice) following the misery resulting from destruction of treasured possessions through to rape and murder of family members.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

The US criminal justice system is very much about punishment and retribution and almost not at all about rehabilitation or protection of society. That's the sort of system one would expect in a medieval country, we can and should do better.

Nicholas_C 13y ago

It's a really crappy predicament. Any politician here in the US that would want to model our prisons in a more humane manner would be labelled soft/weak on crime and would never get elected. I can't see this changing anytime in the next 20 years.

WizzleKake 13y ago

Prison in the US isn't about punishment or rehabilitation. It's about money. Incarceration is big business.

rayiner 13y ago
It's not. Only a small percentage of prisons are for profit (http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...), and our tendency to incarcerate people dates back to long before we had for profit prisons. Our incarceration rate is mostly a backlash against desegregation. It's mostly because of the war on drugs, which is at its base a war on black people.
- knieveltech 13y ago
  "Only a tiny percentage of prisons are for profit" Can you source that?
  - rayiner 13y ago
    http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g... 128k out of 1.6m, or 8%. Graph of the incarcerated population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean-fixed-timescale.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-.... The prison population started exploding in 1980 with the drug war and the war on immigration, but for-profit prisons had less than 10,000 prisoners as of 1990. It's a lagging effect--the for-profit prisons are sprouting up because we put so many people in prison, not the other way around.
- mjn 13y ago
  In California at least the prison-guard union does have a significant role, which is a kind of profit motive. They successfully campaigned for the three-strikes law, for example, and have been a strong influence on politicians for decades. I agree the war on drugs is a much bigger factor.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Looking at what bills the Prison Guards union gets behind or tries to stop, it is a very big amount of money. Corporations are not the only ones with a profit motive.

JackFr 13y ago

I imagine I might agree with you on many things -- there is much to be admired in this Norwegian system and an there is much to be lamented in the US system. However you lose me when you say 'perceived transgressions'. The transgressions are real -- you might think that certain drug laws are injust (I certainly do) but the transgression is not simply perceived. And certainly I'll grant you that people have been wrongly convicted -- but that is a very small part of the prison population. That being said, our prisons aim to punish, incapacitate and rehabilitate. Punishment is a legitimate role for society; it is not juvenile.

wutbrodo 13y ago
Oh I certainly agree. I added perceived because my broader point included perceived transgressions like poverty. Drug offenses are (generally) perceived transgressions that are justified; poverty and homelessness (generally) are not.
hackinthebochs 13y ago
> Punishment is a legitimate role for society; it is not juvenile. What's your rationale for this? Personally I can't agree. I can see the logic behind punishment-as-deterrent (but then it creates perverse incentives), but punishment as an end goal itself isn't an appropriate concern for society.
- smokeyj 13y ago
  Statist logic 101. Governments must establish their authority with violence and punishment. Without punishing those who disobey, society would be lawless and chaotic.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    You're a very naive anarchist if you think a stateless society won't have punishment for criminals. It will, and it will be really quite severe: Banishment. Unlike in a statist society, no-one can be forced to cooperate with a criminal, and without the safety net of the state, that's not a pleasant situation to be in.

VMG 13y ago

> I do mean after accounting for the accompanied reduction of the undesired behavior by making an example of offenders Do you really account for it? Assuming that there is a certain percentage of people who will not commit a crime under any circumstance, another percentage of people who will commit a crime and are not deterred by any punishment, there remains a sub-population who will offend if the cost-benefit ratio is right. The only way to drive up cost for this population is by making them suffer, unfortunately. Do you see another solution?

cgag 13y ago
Is locking people in a cage not enough for you?
mjn 13y ago
There are many factors besides contemplation of future punishment that influences whether people become more or less likely to commit a crime, so I would focus on tackling the whole host of them, rather than moving that one lever. Mental health, poverty, education, urban planning, etc. all influence crime rates. For example, one factor contributing to the U.S.'s high drunk-driving rates is that the state of late-night public transit, combined with urban design, means that people routinely drive to bars, which sets up an obviously problematic situation. Plus, the empirical data on sentence lengths as a deterrent is fairly weak. People do seem to respond to likelihood of being caught: a 6-month sentence you are virtually sure to get is more of a deterrent than a 6-month sentence that you have maybe a 5% chance of being caught and sentenced to. But especially at the high end, there is little to no evidence that having prison sentences of 30 years is more of a disincentive than prison sentences of 10 years.
wutbrodo 13y ago
> Do you really account for it? What? I'm talking about hypothetical situations. This means by definition cases in which the increase in incentives to offend is more than counteracted by other factors.

jessedhillon 13y ago

I think the article hints at a salient way to frame this discussion: think of the future victims of those whom we neglect to rehabilitate. Investing in more humane prisons is a way to avert future criminality.

wutbrodo 13y ago
This is hardly a new concept, and it's been expressed in public before. I can't imagine the missing element for approaching these issues like a civilized society is that we neglected to frame it in terms of future costs. I can only speak for America, but a big part of the problem here is that, culturally and politically, we don't trust expert knowledge, so things that are counter-intuitive are political poison. For example: In the case where housing programs for the homeless actually directly _save_ the gov't money, the only argument against them is "I'm taxed enough already!!! Stop giving my money to people who are homeless because they deserve it!!!!". Telling them that, empirically, it's far more likely that the state is saving money from doing this is useless, because "facts are just another opinion" is a disgustingly prevalent belief around here. through reduced spending on homeless-related law enforcement and emergency medical care, and this doesn't even include the indirect economic value of lower crime and higher property values
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  Sorry for the messed-up formatting, I don't see any edit link anywhere..

gahahaha 13y ago

"Apparently we're too primitive to get beyond the juvenile practice of cutting off our nose to spite our face" Don't be too hard on yourself. A conservative coalition that includes a right wing populist party that want prison to be less about rehabilitation and more about suffering and punishment just won the general election here. The next four years will see how much impact they can have on the system..

mzs 13y ago

The retribution vs, rehabilitation has fluctuated. There was some research in the '70s that showed that rehabilitation was not really impacting recidivism. Some said that research was flawed, for example because of the other things that were happening in that same period, much like after the Civil War had a similar effect. But a tough on crime mentality was embraced and now we have what we have. This is a decent overview with some good sources at the end: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12282007/penalphilosophy.html http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12282007/penalphilosophy.h...

vixen99 13y ago

Why 'perceived' transgressions? Am I right in concluding that aside from rehabilitation and the practical requirement for the sequestration of persons who are a danger to an innocent population, you believe there is no other purpose in incarceration? If that is so, we need to introduce re-education courses for victims who primitively persist in calling for revenge (though they call it justice) following the misery resulting from destruction of treasured possessions through to rape and murder of family members.