

Norway's controversial 'cushy prison' experiment - could it catch on? - stollercyrus
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1384308/Norways-controversial-cushy-prison-experiment--catch-UK.html

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vidarh
[2011]

It is fascinating to see the kind of mental gymnastics some people try to
engage with in response to these reoffending rates. It's particularly worth
pointing out that this was/is an experiment even by Norwegian standard.

Norway's prisons used to be horrible 100-150 years ago - we used to have
prisons where people would be kept in iron and used for forced heavy manual
labour, and kept in dark miserable cells. But it was clear that it didn't
really work. The system was getting miserable results whether you cared about
reoffending rates, cost, human rights or whatever measure you might care about
other than pure vengeance.

Rather than trying more of the same, which seems to be the common reaction,
the criminal justice system has continuously been subject to experiments that
has been focused on outcomes, and nearly every time, the experiments ends up
evidence supporting a more and more lenient system whether you are looking at
costs to society, reoffending rates or other factors.

Even satisfaction for victims is better served by reforms that focus on
reconciliation than harsh punishment (people who consent to meet with victims
or relatives of victims to explain themselves can in certain circumstances
receive substantially reduced sentences).

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nodata
This didn't seem like a daily mail article at all: it was pretty balanced,
almost welcoming of a different approach.

