
In Norway, a Prison Built on Second Chances - user_235711
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/31/410532066/in-norway-a-prison-built-on-second-chances
======
bsenftner
The US prison system is actually an industrialized slavery system for US
corporations. The prison system here has a "work program" for inmates where
they earn pennies per hour to manufacture products for US corporations.
Investigate how institutionalized this practice has become. We need to stop
this immediately, as it can and will spread unless we do. This is evil
unmasked.

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-
unit...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-
states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289)
[http://www.alternet.org/story/151732/21st-
century_slaves%3A_...](http://www.alternet.org/story/151732/21st-
century_slaves%3A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor)
[http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/18/prison-small-business-
ent-m...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/18/prison-small-business-ent-manage-
cx_mf_0818prisonlabor.html)

~~~
notdanariely
I agree that this trend is disturbing, but am unable to reconcile your
alarmist language with the numbers in the links you provided.

I do not support private corporations (or even public good -- yes, I think the
chain gang days of old are similarly awful) making money off of prisoners.
However, from the articles you linked, some data:

* 2 million (2,000,000) inmates in federal/state/local prisons.

* 100 private prisons, 62,000 inmates in them (6.2%)

* 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states (unsure how this relates to previous point, the article isn't very well written and doesn't connect these numbers)

* Forbes.com article says there are 6,000 prisoners in the US serving time while working for a private enterprise.

So on the one extreme, we're looking at 6% of the prison population being
affected by this. At the other extreme, there are only 6k prisoners affected.

I believe there are a huge number of ethical and moral violations surrounding
the prison side of the US criminal justice system. Private prisons are one of
them, but hyperbole and extreme language do not serve any of the population.

~~~
themartorana
I think "hyperbole" is unfair. Waiting to be "alarmist" until after an "alarm"
has the capacity to halt a terrible situation is rather pointless. It's so
much easier to stop a bad practice than walk it back from significant
implementation.

This may be small, but it's growing rapidly, and if it's 6.2% now, it's 15% by
2020, and so on.

~~~
rayiner
The problem with the argument is not that it's not worth raising alarm about
6%. It's alarming--that number was basically 0% 20 years ago. However, the
argument doesn't explain how our justice system got to be the way it is.
Private prison corporations didn't create extreme minimum sentences. They came
along after the fact to profit from them. The core problem is a lack of virtue
in the American people. We're unsympathetic, unforgiving, and unmerciful. our
lack of virtue created the system that opportunists are now profiting from.

~~~
kevinnk
Ironically, painting broad swaths of people with labels like "non-virtuous" is
how we got extreme sentences In the first place.

------
kristofferR
Cool that this appeared here right now, as I'm in the middle of rewatching The
House I Live In, a fantastic documentary about the US drug war/justice system.
Go watch it now.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0atL1HSwi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0atL1HSwi8)

The current US system is mindblowingly stupid. People who are treated like
animals tend to act like it, especially if they're encouraged to.

~~~
kw71
What's amazing is that the US penal system acts the way it does even when
these examples have been on the planet for decades and the benefits clearly
visible. It also seems that the general consensus among psychologists and
psychiatrists is that the current system damages people and does nothing to
achieve its alleged aims. Running a third world penal system only burdens our
society in so many ways, and it's even officially named in the third-
world/soviet/despotic style of calling it something it's not: a "correctional"
system.

~~~
vidarh
I've said many times that if I was ever on a US jury (which would never
happen; I'm Norwegian, living in the UK, and even if I at some point where to
be resident in the US, this attitude would get me out of jury duty very
quickly:),

I would have a hard time voting for a guilty plea except in the most
exceptionally horrible cases, because I would find it exceptionally hard to
justify making anyone suffer through the US prison system. That would include
if it was a murder trial or similar.

Not only do I find the US prison system immoral for its treatment of inmates,
I find it immoral for the violence it is indirectly responsible for inflicting
on wider society by actively treating people in a way known to at best be
ineffective, and at worst having a massively negative effect on re-offending
rates.

Anyone worried about violent crime in the US should start by demanding reform
of the prison system.

~~~
themartorana
This is partially why the innocence and sentencing portions are separated.

~~~
vidarh
And that separation is a substantial part of why I'd find it hard to morally
justify giving a "guilty" vote given the penal system in question.

------
kristofferR
This is on the front page of one of the largest newspapers in Norway right
now: [http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/usa/fengselsdoemt-
nordmann...](http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/usa/fengselsdoemt-nordmann-i-
soeknad-ber-om-aa-bli-henrettet/a/23461936/)

A Norwegian guy in the US, convicted to 7 years in prison for driving the
wrong way down a one way street (and not injuring anyone btw), asks to be
executed because the prison he is in is so horrible since he doesn't receive
enough pain medication (he broke his neck in prison). He spends most of the
time in isolation.

~~~
hnarn
1) He was not convicted merely for "driving the wrong way down a one way
street", he was convicted for driving recklessly down a road with a lot of
people on it.

2) He is not asking to be executed because the prison is horrible, but because
they have taken away his pain meds -- which they did because he (allegedly)
tried not swallowing them in order to sell them.

There's definitely more to this story, I wouldn't be so sure that he's
completely innocent (regardless of how reasonable the sentence is).

The link posted by twoodfin says this:

"He has a history of aggressive behavior," said Navajo County Attorney
Carlyon, whose investigators unearthed police reports relating to John in
Alabama, Illinois and California.

Those incidents included threats, an alleged stalking of a young girl, an
attempted suicide and a run-in with a Los Angeles bicyclist in which John was
accused of running over the man's bicycle in a fit of anger. Not all the
incidents resulted in charges, and none resulted in a conviction."

~~~
tptacek
Just to add a bit: according to witnesses, he was driving the wrong way down a
one-way street on which there was a street festival, vocalizing threats to
pedestrians who wouldn't get out of his way, actually grazing one of them,
with his car periodically leaving the street and jumping onto the sidewalk, at
one point menacing a food stand on the sidewalk.

His mother, in the car with him at the time, indicates that they were driving
the wrong way down the street on purpose: frustrated by the street closures
from the ongoing festival, they got to within visual range of their
destination (a garage where their belongings were) and opted to ignore the
street signs to get there.

Photos of him post-arrest show visible injuries to his face. That wasn't the
police: his driving menaced some young children (apparently near the food
stand) so frightening their father that he ran after the car and decked the
driver. It was at that point that the driver fled the scene.

Seven year is a crazy high sentence; much too long. But using a moving car to
forcibly coerce people out of your way isn't a simple moving violation: it is,
and should be, a felony.

------
aarmenante
What if someone opened a for-profit prison in the US that focused on
rehabilitation? The prison could start by bidding on incarceration contracts
for non-violent drug offenders. The prison could take notes from the
Scandinavian system:

    
    
      * Humane housing
      * Counseling 
      * Family visits
      * Emphasis on self-reliance
    

To help reduce the costs of the prison, the inmates could produce something
that is very labor intensive and hard to create without cheap labor. Farming?
Food production? Laundering uniforms? QA testing for large software companies?
(Only half joking.)

Without the political clout that the Corrections Corp of America has, I bet it
would be difficult to bid for contracts, but it's a more realistic way of
making a change than political pressure.

------
buro9
It's fine building a prison on the premise of second chances, but it will fail
if the society it belongs to isn't build on the premise of offering a second
(or third, etc) chance.

Either you believe in the ability of every human to change their behaviour,
and you give them a chance to... every time... or you don't.

This, I feel, is tied to the death penalty too. Societies that give no second
chance do not seem to worry too much about killing people.

------
dataker
It's a good idea for Americans to get elements from the article, but it's
impossible to completely emulate it.

Norway has a smaller and more homogeneous population, making these programs
easier to be managed and funded.

~~~
vidarh
This line of thinking never ceases to amaze me.

The US consists of 50 states, a substantial majority of which have fewer
people than Norway. In other words there already is a convenient delineation
to use for separate systems; and there already are state-level penal systems.

For the handful of states where the population is more than twice as big or
so, there are easy regional separations you could make.

These kind of problems are easy to scale because they partition trivially if
there are aspects of the system that does not benefit from scale.

Now you also make the argument it makes it easier to fund these programs in a
smaller more homogeneous population. If you mean that getting political
agreement to funding is easier, that may be a point. But then the problem is
not emulating it, but lack of will to emulate it.

~~~
andreyf
Could it be a prisoner's dilemma of sorts between states? If one state
introduces prisons along the lines of those described in the article, then
criminals will flock to that state because it'll be known as the one that has
nice prisons.

~~~
vidarh
If criminals picked jurisdictions based on criminal justice systems,
presumably there would have been pretty much no crime in places like Maricopa
County, Arizona under "Sherrif Joe", but as it happens criminals rarely appear
to weigh the impact of getting caught very much.

~~~
andreyf
I'm not saying all criminals do, but enough might, especially if there is a
drastic difference in punishment / rehabilitation.

------
BjoernKW
There's a non-profit organization in Germany called Leonhard, which educates
and coaches inmates to become entrepreneurs when they're released from prison:

[http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://ww...](http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.leonhard.eu/&prev=search)

I think that's a wonderful example of how to both treat prisoners respectfully
and at the same time provide a benefit to society.

------
paulpauper
_The 250 inmates here are locked in their cells for 12 hours a day. But those
cells are private rooms, with wood furniture, a shower, a fridge and a flat-
screen TV._

hmmm...Private rooms could be part of the problem. Isolation can create
psychosis. Maybe 12 hours a day is good enough, but I think total isolation
should be avoided whenever possible, or let prisoners choose whether or not to
be isolated. Integrating prisoners saves money and makes then happier. But
these are probably among worst offenders given that there are only 250.

~~~
masklinn
> But these are probably among worst offenders given that there are only 250.

While Halden is a maximum security prison, it's also highly focused on
rehabilitation, so it's not necessarily where the worst offenders are (Breivik
is at Ila for instance, which can hold 124 people).

Halden is actually a fairly big prison by norwegian standard I think, the
capacity of the whole Norwegian prison system is a bit below 4000 (77 per
100000 citizens, the current incarceration rate is 72 per 100000 according to
wikipedia).

~~~
ceejayoz
72/100,000 versus Louisiana's 867/100,000 is a pretty shocking difference.
Wow. The lowest in the US (Maine) is still 148/100,000.

~~~
drpgq
I'm surprised Maine is only twice times Norway.

------
mediascreen
Sweden has a similar system. And the Swedish Prison and Probation Service even
has a "an average day in prison"-page about everyday life at a Swedish medium
security prison:

[https://www.kriminalvarden.se/fangelse-frivard-och-
hakte/fan...](https://www.kriminalvarden.se/fangelse-frivard-och-
hakte/fangelse/en-dag-pa-fangelset)

~~~
masklinn
Halden is high/maximum security though.

------
tomjen3
Too bad there are no second chances for the victims though.

~~~
linuxhansl
So you want revenge? Because one life it ruined (assuming irreparable crimes
like rape or murder) you need to ruin another one?

The goal of penal system should not be punishment, but rather prevention of
crime. Punishment is only one aspect of crime prevention.

IMHO, imprisonment has two goals:

    
    
      1. deterrence, to prevent _another_ person to commit the same crime in the future
      2. get really dangerous people away from the general population (this would be rare)
    

Every crime is a failure of society already. There is no place for revenge or
intentionally bad treatment of offenders.

~~~
tomjen3
>Every crime is a failure of society already. There is no place for revenge or
intentionally bad treatment of offenders.

That is, at the very best, an extremely simplified extreme opinion.

Victims have every right to hate their offenders and a just society should do
everything they can to help the victims, including punishing the offender. I
don't get why this is an extreme pov but apparently it is.

~~~
narrowingorbits
> Victims have every right to hate their offenders and a just society should
> do everything they can to help the victims...

Yes, society should do everything it can to help the victims---to help the
victims to heal. Society has no imperative to help the victims to hate.

~~~
tomjen3
Ah but healing requires pain be inflicted on your transgressor.

~~~
vidarh
I feel sad for you if that is genuinely how you feel.

