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Comment by ves | Hacker News Reader

The US justice system is obviously totally broken, but one would do well to remember the absolutely incredible side of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund.

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The Norwegian system is actually much cheaper than the American system when you account for lower recidivism rates and reduced prison sentences.

Is there a stigma that haunts former inmates upon release? In the US it seems ones career is essentially over once convicted of anything more than a traffic violation.

In Denmark it would be illegal for an employer to discriminate against former inmates _if their crime is irrelevant for the job at hand_.

In practice, though... At least it's automatically erased after (IIRC) five years, depending on severity.

It's the same in the nordics. Most jobs check for a criminal record, even in smaller IT companies.

At least in Sweden, the outcome of being sentenced (losing your job, making it very hard to find a new one) is factored into the sentence (that is, they decrease the prison sentence due to these factors as more punishment will be had after release).

One would do well to remember that cause has to come before effect. The Norwegian criminal policy is decades older than that fund.

One would also do well to keep in mind that the main effect of that fund is to block the state from spending money. Taxes are diverted to the fund from the budget where it could be spent on prisons or other things.

One would also do well to remember that Norway has a population of 5m, vs US at 325m. Norway is also 85% ethnic Norwegians (making for a pretty culturally homogenous society).

The United States is operating at a scale that may break the Norwegian system. I don’t know that it would, but let’s see the Norwegian system work at five times the size (25m) before even entertaining the idea that it would work at 65 times the size.

> Norway is also 85% ethnic Norwegians (making for a pretty culturally homogenous society).

Can you cite a source that shows that this matters?

It's pretty obvious how the difference in methods between the two prison systems can easily explain the difference in outcome, without having to jump to the 'race/culture'-card.

Simply put, having prisoners cost money. You have to pay for housing them, and the opportunity costs of them not being able to contribute to the economy is probably many times bigger.

European systems recognize this fact, and try their best to get prisoners out of prison as fast as possible.

Prisoners in European systems can get counseling for mental problems, access to education, and the structure in the prisons allow the prisoners to adopt a 'normal' lifestyle. They are supposed to get up themselves in the morning, go to their education, or labor, and having time off in the evening to do their own thing.

Although American media often shows otherwise, most crimes can be explained by circumstance, rather than a particular 'evilness' of the perpetrator. Nobody wants to be a criminal. European systems help prisoners to live a life free of crime. American prisons make it harder.

Cultural conformity makes for a more manageable and cooperative populace. I’m not telling you this is a worthwhile trade off so give the sensitivity a rest. This factor (cultural conformity) is a measurable difference (along with population) that makes an easy comparison to the US impossible. Again, when you can show the Norwegian system operating at a scale five times its current size and cultural complexity, then it starts to become a conversation. Right now you’re essentially telling New York City that Billings, Montana has all the answers to its crime problems. It’s a non-starter, and for the exact same reasons.

“the opportunity costs of them not being able to contribute to the economy is probably many times bigger.”

Can you cite a source that shows this is true? Skip the weasel word “probably” and set the opportunity cost to be the contribution of someone with their education and (lack of) social skills and many times as something > 3 times.

There is no such thing as a “culture card”. If there is any “science” to the social science of sociology, there is a measure of ethnic and cultural cohesion to societies that may or may not explain behaviors. That’s like saying to an engineer, “Well, if you want to play the material hardness card...”

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Race is important because people tend to support more punitive policies against transgressors of other races[1]. The demographics and the history of racial tension in the U.S. means that resistance to the Norwegian criminal justice model go far beyond considerations of cost.

[1] https://nicic.gov/race-and-punishment-racial-perceptions-cri...

>I’m always amused by how fixated Americans (even liberals) are on race in this matter. America is very diverse when it comes to ethnicities but it has a strong program of secular-national indoctrination, which results in a very homogenous culture considering its size.

Race in this case shows up because the mind wants to find an explanation for the discrepancy in social and public trust. Norwegians trust their institutions much more than Americans do. We also know that public trust was higher until the US's "lost decade" in the '70s and figure it probably depends on some factors that have been recently changing.

We look for instinctive, emotional explanations because we're interested in "forcing functions": it's not interesting to say that low-quality government caused by low-trust society leads to low-trust society because that postulates a universal dynamical property of social trust that doesn't really distinguish between societies. The hysteria surrounding the presidency of Barack Obama and the reputational endurance of a tyrant who came into the political limelight spreading ludicrous conspiracy theories about the same, in light of his significance as the first non-white POTUS, is one of many common-knowledge observations lending credence to the idea that racial resentment and mistrust drives an unwillingness to cooperate in American society. And then, of course, it's not really that easy to find truly well-run multiracial societies. Singapore and Israel have both invested in top-down integration and racial justice initiatives but resentment and discrimination stick around -- yet those are probably the best examples. Trinidad might be another example, but may be coasting on easy money from oil extraction.

How much of the wealth fund is spent on incarceration?

It's less about what is spent on incarceration, and more about how state funds are spent in such away that people don't need to commit crime as much.

What money is spent on what, and where did the money come from? You seem to be in the know.

How much does it cost society when one percent of the population is incarcerated? But I digress; the US is not exactly a place which has been blessed in terms of access to natural resources so it’s an unfair comparison.

> US is not exactly a place which has been blessed in terms of access to natural resources

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, but that's the exact opposite of what I believe is true.

I was employing something called sarcasm.

Nothing[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

This whataboutism comes up every single time anyone mentions any difference between Norway and any other country. It completely misses several important facts, most importantly:

- The other Nordic countries are very similar socially even though they do not have this source of wealth.

- AFAICT[1] it's being spent on pensions, not infrastructure, education, or other social programs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

it's not that the american justice system is broken; it's that the american nation itself is broken...or perhaps it might be accurate to say that the american nation never really existed, and that nowadays the nation is a mere shadow of what was in the past only a pseudo-nation

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