

The Radical Humaneness of Norway’s Halden Prison - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/the-radical-humaneness-of-norways-halden-prison.html

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noir_lord
> “You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners”. - Fyodor
> Dostoevsky

He wasn't wrong.

I'm in the UK and we seem to straddle the fence between a European
"rehabilitation first" and US "punishment first" approach which is irritating
as what we get is broken.

Study after study have shown that treating prisoners humanely while genuinely
trying to rehabilitate them has the best outcome on recidivism and yet because
politician's fear the media spinning the "soft on crime" line we end up with
ever more draconian mandatory sentences, over crowded prisons and a system on
the edge of systemic collapse.

We should be better than this.

~~~
arethuza
It's interesting that in the UK we abolished capital punishment even though at
the time there was actually pretty strong public support for keeping it - so
politicians _can_ do the "right" thing occasionally.

Indeed, UK support for capital punishment has only very recently gone under
50%:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32061822](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32061822)

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mdf
Yle - Finland's national broadcasting company - broadcast a TV-series named
The Pohjoismaat (The Nordic Countries), where people from around the world are
taken around in Nordic Countries and shown things they might consider weird.
The first episode[1] was about a prison warden from the U.S. and the humane
way how e.g. Finland and Norway treat their prisoners. The warden gets to
visit Halden in Norway.

[1] [http://areena.yle.fi/tv/2199727](http://areena.yle.fi/tv/2199727) (the
audio is partly in Finnish and Swedish, but the parts where they take the
warden around also contain English; the subtitles are only available in
Finnish and Swedish)

~~~
ptaipale
We (Finland) also do have some ideas about "let's put old people in prisons
and criminals in old people's institutions!"

This way the old people could get five healthy meals served to them daily, a
possibility to shower every day, have some activity arranged to them
regularly, and they would get paid instead of having to pay for their care.

Criminals would get only cold food, spend almost all their time alone, have
their lights switched off at 8PM, and get to shower once a week, if the warden
happens to be on a good mood.

That said, I don't object to prisons being the way they are. I object to the
extremely lenient sentences for violent crimes. The only crimes where
punishment is harsh seem to be tax and drug offences.

Just look at the recent case where a woman was held captive for four years,
was forced to give birth to three babies while being held. The sentence for
perpetrators? 3 years 10 months for the main responsible, of which he will do
less than two years in prison. And he's appealing for too harsh sentence. This
system is slightly too humane for my taste.

~~~
zurn
Well, it's important to remember the tabloids are always seeking to evoke
feelings of outrage.

Anecdotes about too-lenient senteces always make it to the headlines, but
errors in the other direction don't. Without credible studies we can't know
which kind of errors cause more harm.

Prison population and budget is orders of magnitude smaller than elder care so
the swap is just a values-related thought experiment about elder care.
(Hopefully its inventor didn't mean to invoke "pampering criminals"). Of
course it's an outrage that voters and politicians underbudget it so badly,
but that's what you get with this austerity and anti-welfare mindset that's
gripping Europe.

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yequalsx
What surprises me the most about the headline is that humane treatment of
prisoners is considered radical to the American public. I find this especially
disconcerting given the large numbers of conservative Christians in the U.S.
and their apparent desire for vengeance. It's almost as if Hebrews 13:3 and
Mathew 25:35-46 are unknown to them. Someday the U.S. may see the light but
I'm doubtful it will happen in my lifetime.

~~~
jacquesm
There are lots of people Christian in name only, not just in the US.

~~~
mercurial
That's a bit of a No true Scotsman.

~~~
jacquesm
In a manner of speech, yes.

This all started when the person of Christ was co-opted to become the
(conveniently deceased) figurehead to a bunch of institutions, his name on the
one hand and his followers adopting his name but not really paying overly much
attention to the principles (assuming history as recounted is accurate, likely
it is not) is the root cause of that.

Imagine that your 'personal brand' of good intentions is stolen from you and
re-purposed as a fig-leaf to cover anything from warrior popes to insane
riches and abortion clinic attackers. In light of your comment of course 'no
true Christian' would ever do anything like that.

I suspect Christ would not be pleased about a large chunk of those that lay
claim to being Christian.

~~~
logfromblammo
If you are having difficulty imagining that, just read _Small Gods_, by Terry
Pratchett. Maybe also read it if you are not having difficulty.

The premise of that story, exploring the difference between _followers_ and
_believers_ can be mapped directly to... well, quite a lot of religions, I'd
think.

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runarb
Some more pictures: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1277158/Halden-
Priso...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1277158/Halden-Prison-
Inside-Norways-posh-new-jail.html) and
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1277158/Halden-
Priso...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1277158/Halden-Prison-
Inside-Norways-posh-new-jail.html)

If you find this interesting, take a look on this short Michael Moore video
about another prison in Norway, Bastøy:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01mTKDaKa6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01mTKDaKa6Q)

