How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours | Hacker News Reader

How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours

bbc.co.uk

51 pointsjentulman34 comments

I’ve read about this place on several different occasions. It fits with my world view of what criminal justice reform should look like.

Sadly, in the US (where I live) this would never fly. We are a people of violence and revenge and want those who’ve done us wrong to suffer. It doesn’t matter that it perpetuates a cycle. Even if a miracle happened and a place like this was brought into existence, some politician would start using it to score cheap shots. “Look what $party_name is doing! Sending rapists and murderers to a health spa!! I’m TOUGH on crime! I’ll end this!!”

I suppose I would have a hard time swallowing someone who killed a love one of mine getting to do yoga in the woods too. Dunno.

Norway also has the world’s lowest recidivism rate at 20 percent, while America sees 75 percent of its prisoners re-offend within five years of release. [0]

It's interesting that in the U.S. many people champion the power of incentives to produce goods and services efficiently yet are blind to the perverse incentives of having privately-run prisons. Of course a corporation whose profit comes from running prisons does not want to reduce the recidivism rate.

[0] https://www.encartele.net/2018/04/what-can-us-correctional-f...

Do state run prisons have lower rates?

Puritan ethics based on punishment rather than rehabilitation and problem solving.

20% is still higher than I expected for Norway’s system, but I suppose there’s tons of factors contributing to recidivism.

There’s so many possible avenues a person could take to commit crimes that send them to jail. I think it’s worth using prison as a way to psychologically investigate what lead people to crime or recidivism, and try to understand crime from micro and macro levels more. Like some kind of criminal science retrospective that goes beyond solving a crime, and also provides a meta post-crime analysis. Of course, this isn’t perfect either and probably will receive privacy and medical qualms, but I also don’t know of a definitive answer about what a realistic hope is to reach for concerning criminal justice. As far as human history goes back, there has always been crime and it has always sucked.

I tried to find the recidivism rate of criminals who serve time in US Federal prison camps (lowest security federal prisons). Does anyone know how to find it?

Bit of an unpopular opinion here: either you have a criminal correction system or a justice system or a hybrid of the two. My unpopular opinion is that if justice is to be administered in any shape or form it supersedes the need to correct a criminal.

I am sure many here will agree with "Ends don't justify means". That goes both ways,the end goal of rehabilitating a criminal does not justify the means.

To me justice means to correct a wrong done. Someone did some wrong therefore a fairly measured punishment is given so that the wrong doer suffers and/or makes up for their wrong actions. It is this idea that when someone commits a wrong they are indebted for that wrong. It does not have to be a criminal situation, when you see someone suffer and offer help, you saw wrong and attempted to correct it,you attempted to administer justice even though there was no criminal.

Now, a debt can be forgiven but it must be explicit. I understand and can accept mercy being shown to anyone. The core of my disagreement here is portrayal of justice to mean correction and rehabilitation of the wrongdoer. In the eyes of justice, the debt being paid is all that counts. If rehabilitation is a priority to a society, mercy needs to be explicitly shown,it should not be done in a way that waters down justice to where we say "you owe this much but due to the end result we will only accept so much repayment of wrongs from you",you're saying the unpaid debt is ignored,not forgiven. if there is a victim,the victim should also have a say.

I hope I wasn't all over the place with my comment. All in all, I am mostly displeased with the end result being the focus here. I do need good neighbors but not at the cost of graying-down justice.

That's just selfish thinking. Your type of thinking breaks down as soon as someone innocent is punished. At that point it's just about having an axe to grind.

The ugly truth is a lot of 'benefits' of the scandanavian approach come from a highly (for now) homogenous society and an extreme reluctance to imprison or even pursue certain crimes that would be unacceptable anywhere else. Combined with being caught hiding data such as demographic information I'd take any fellation of scandanavian policy with a grain of salt. I assume the community here considers themselves logically minded so just ask yourself this. If this approach is as miraculous as its put forth to be why hasn't it ever reached as widespread implementation not just in evil America but anywhere in the world? The concept of rehabilitative imprisonment is almost as old as imprisonment itself.

> The ugly truth is a lot of 'benefits' of the scandanavian approach come from a highly (for now) homogenous society

Citation needed. This claim gets thrown around a lot, but is there any evidence or actual research backing the claim that diversity leads to crime?

There is plenty of evidence that disenfranchisement leads to crime, but you can have diversity without disenfranchisement.

Where are your citations that the Scandinavian style of relatively luxurious prisoner treatment is more effective? If we're going by correlations there's probably no more evidence for this than the correlation with homogeneous ordered societies. Probably less since you have like a couple datapoints exclusively in northern europe while the whole world tends to show a trend of imprisonment outcomes being better in nonbanana republics.

Since you don't have evidence, your "ugly truth" is really just your ugly opinion.

Yet when similar approaches have been trialled in the UK, they worked just as well. When you consider the cost per year of imprisonment recidivism and rehabilitation should the main priority. Homogeneity is not required.

The whole "tough on crime" headlines and media campaigns in certain sections of the media, and certain shades of politics are the cause of much of our problem with overcrowded and brutal prisons. Tough sentencing does not work. It's been demonstrated decade after decade. It flies well for voters seeking vengeance. The same voters who'd probably bring back hanging tomorrow if there were a referendum. That's not justice.

Okay why hasn't this revolutionized the entire UK prison system and why haven't they bought yachts and luxurious hunting cabins for all their murderers and rapists if this is both drastically cheaper and more effective? Why hasn't this been adapted in the same way as fully anywhere in the world except Scandinavia? I mean officials do what they want when deciding not to execute or give elective surgery to felons or needles to druggies despite what the public thinks but this is a line they won't cross despite the supposed mountain of evidence? And its not like rehabilitation, even fairly generous rehabilitation isn't a concept thats been tried for centuries.

Just read this HN thread. The people don't want less crime, they want more "justice". Especially the people that run those prisons.

> Okay why hasn't this revolutionized the entire UK prison system

But it is quietly revolutionising the UK prison system. We've had Conservative politicians saying that prisons don't work and that we need a different approach.

As with everything that got shelved because Brexit.

> "In Norway, the punishment is just to take away someone's liberty. The other rights stay. Prisoners can vote, they can have access to school, to health care; they have the same rights as any Norwegian citizen. Because inmates are human beings. They have done wrong, they must be punished, but they are still human beings." > "In Norway, all will be released - there are no life sentences," he reminds me.

Really? Even with this low recidivism rate, I find this hard to accept somehow.

I don't even think deranged people like serial killers and pedophile rapists can change.

Even if they could theoretically change, why would we accept them back in society and spend any resources on them after they did that?

That doesn't make us more human. We are redefining 'humanity' to match our politics. But we have evolved over millions of years. Those two things can't coexist.

(edit: removed a paragraph, it was kinda OT)

There are no life sentences; this does not mean that individuals can’t be detained indefinitely. If a prisoner is not judged fit for release, their sentence can be extended by up to I think four or five years at a time. The Norwegian prison system isn’t releasing flocks of “serial killers and paedophile rapists” as a result of not imposing life sentences at conviction.

OK in that case, it's semantics.

You can call it whatever you want, as long as you keep certain people forever excluded from society. Preferably at low cost.

It's not semantics. Every judgment is not accurate, systems need to account for their own fallibility.

Not sure why we are talking about accuracy(?) all of a sudden, but goes without saying that I am talking about actionable convictions where the party is guilty, given based on facts and without prejudice.

My main point is people who commit certain severe crimes (think about serial killers, raping children, mutilation, premeditated murders/arson/lying in wait, etc.; these people should remain behind bars for all eternity. That's just my opinion; I can't imagine going to the families victims and telling them "dont worry, they will be good in a couple of years, and will get to live their lives thanks to our tax dollars, while your son/daughter rots in a grave".

There's no justice, no humanity in that.

People can commit these crimes for a wide array of reasons and under a wide array of circumstances. Someone could commit a heinous crime while under the influence of powerful narcotics but still be a perfectly decent person once they've been treated for their addiction. It's not possible to say who can and who cannot be rehabilitated at the moment of sentencing. It's something you should update your judgement on continuously throughout their sentence.

And in my mind, reconciliation is always better than revenge. I should think any family should be happier to know that the killer lived to deeply regret their crimes and become a better person than to think that somewhere out there is someone locked in a cage wallowing in resentment and still thinks what they did was right.

Also, i don't know if norway has the same kind of system (i assume it does. Most western european nations have this). but "terbeschikkingstelling"(TBS) is usually a punishment for people with severe issues like serial killers.

see: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terbeschikkingstelling_(Nederl...

Link for English speakers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment

Well pedophiles and rapists arent all given life sentences in the US system, it varies greatly

So which part do you disagree with? That prisoners can vote?

I find that unbearable and senseless, doesn't matter who does it.

Certain people need to be excluded from the society and there is nothing wrong with it. Why do we insist otherwise?

How did we manage to convince ourselves that is "more humane"?

When the prison population got too big and ensnaring prisoners became too efficient

It is undermining the productivity of our society when we have such a large marginalized population that is unemployed and desperate

the fact that prisoners cannot vote seems bizarre to me. This seems like a massive tool to prevent your political opponents from voting.

Yeah both the 13th and 14th amendments let states create arbitrary conditions for voting for state and federal issues. The only carveout being to prove that its a racially motivated condition and most of the states have matter of fact prisoner disenfranchisement that existed long before any correlation with race, so there isnt currently a challenge except for individual legislatures to make new laws.

> I don't even think deranged people like serial killers and pedophile rapists can change.

It's a lot better to base this judgement on real data than on the vengeful feelings of the wronged.

Humans aren't adapted to the possibility of reconciliation, our knee-jerk reaction is revenge out of past necessities. But if we can afford to rehabilitate someone, we absolutely should. We should never limit the rights we grant people purely out of vengeance.

> Humans aren't adapted to the possibility of reconciliation, our knee-jerk reaction is revenge out of past necessities. But if we can afford to rehabilitate someone, we absolutely should. We should never limit the rights we grant people purely out of vengeance.

I don't think punishment for criminal action is "revenge" or "vengeance". In theory, it is suppose to stop the possibility of it occurring again and hopefully deter people attempting it.

My opinion is that society needs to be protected from certain people.

If you tell me with a straight face that if someone mutilated your kids and did unimaginable things and you are truly fine with accepting that he will live his life as if nothing happened after a few years, I wouldn't believe you are human.

I can be downvoted to oblivion, but it won't change certain facts and realities.

> I don't think punishment for criminal action is "revenge" or "vengeance". In theory, it is suppose to stop the possibility of it occurring again and hopefully deter people attempting it.

Again, why wouldn't we leave this determination to the data? If the effect of punishment is practical, then we should look at the practical results of punishment versus rehabilitation.

Do you want to live in a safer society, or do you want to live in a society that fulfills your emotional need for retribution at the cost of efficacy and the rights of others?

>it is suppose to stop the possibility of it occurring again

It doesn't do that.

>I don't even think deranged people like serial killers and pedophile rapists can change.

Assuming you are right, the great majority of prisoners fall into other groups. These prisoners are going to be released at some point, and if you use this effective rehabilitation program, then they will be much less likely to commit more crimes against citizens in the community.

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