I oppose most prison sentences, but not strictly prisons. I'm curious what your alternative is?

For clarity, I'm for rehabilitation and not retribution -- it gains us nothing. When it comes to drug crimes and youthful offenders, community service and rehab seem like far better things than X days/months/years in jail with a grabbag of offenders running the gamut from arsony to grand theft to smoking a joint. And while I think the purpose of imprisoning them should be to offer rehabilitation, would you not imprison murderers or would you put them in mental health institutions rather than "prisons"?

You're being facetious, but you have to agree that even thought there is strict sentencing in the EU, America goes beyond the pale.

We have higher incarceration rates than China, and even with their massive population we have more people in prison than China does. [1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...) We are roughly tied with North Korea for highest % of population in prison by country. [2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...)

It would be a crime anywhere, but not likely to receive a 10-year sentence. As far as I know, the only sentence approaching that length issued in Denmark for a non-violent crime in recent years was Stein Bagger, who was sentenced to 7 years for defrauding investors of about $250 million, then fleeing to Dubai. His sentence was that high because it was very clearly willful fraud on a large scale intended to enrich himself, and included a number of subsidiary elements such as invented degrees, faked financial information, tax fraud, etc.