To Solve Prison Crowding, Norway Goes Dutch | Hacker News Reader

To Solve Prison Crowding, Norway Goes Dutch

businessweek.com

26 pointsprostoalex44 comments

Every time anyone (inside Norway or outside) discuss our prisons, they feel they have to mention that the cells have flat-screen TVs.

Well, duh, of course they do. A simple flat-screen TV is the easiest and cheapest to order, service and replace.

It's always strange to see "flat-screen TV" talked about as if it were some sort of luxury item and most people can only afford CRT TVs.

It is often used (in the UK at least) in reference to people on benefits, by certain publications. The implication being that some of those benefits we've paid our taxes to provide have been wasted as they have a new item instead of making do with a cheap hand-me-down.

No reference is made to if the subject being discussed owned the item before they were on unemployment (and related) benefit, and of course these days a hand-me-down is likely to be a flat screen unit anyway.

And it probably reduces overall cost. Inmates are calmer, more entertained and need less guards.

maybe less psychiatric help too..

Consider that what most people are most surprised about is that they have TV's in the cells at all, which itself is highly uncommon most places.

Then "flat-screen" gets tacked on because we still are used to see flat-screen TV's as more of a sign of luxury than CRT's because people remember a few years back.

Norway is flush with oil money. But it is not THAT expensive. Their prisons are about 6x more expensive compared to US prisons. If US would reduce their prison population to reasonable levels, you would have the same standard easily.

Norway:

> The cost of maintaining prisoners at Halden costs about $500 per inmate per night. ($500*365 = $185 000 per year)

http://theweek.com/article/index/228229/the-jail-where-every...

US:

> The average inmate in minimum-security federal prison costs $21,000 each year. The average inmate in maximum-security federal prisons costs $33,000 each year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/13/w...

It wouldn't cost 6x as much to have Norwegian standard prisons in the US because prices/salaries are quite a bit lower. Also, the fact that the US if effing huge would mean that economies of scale would bring down the price even further.

On the other hand - widespread poverty to an extent that is completely unknown in Norway - would mean that US prisons can't be too nice, or they would be more attractive than life on the outside. (I don't know if this concern is a real problem, but it's worth mention it)

> more attractive than life on the outside.

Norway and Sweden have cold winters and warm prisons. It is somewhat common for clever bums to commit crimes (theft, burglary) in the fall that they know will give them a 4-6 month prison sentence. This is perfect timing to get to spend the winter in a warm prison with hot showers and a gym, and then get released just in time when the weather is good enough to sleep outdoors again.

Causing minor disturbances to get thrown in a cell overnight when it's as coldest, I might buy, but this sounds like an urban legend to me. Maybe a result of someone "getting lucky" that way and people jumping to conclusions.

In neither Norway or Sweden is it easy to time when you will get put into prison, as the time it takes before a case goes to court is highly variable, and the time it takes from a sentence is handed down until you are told to show up to serve that sentence is also very variable, and dependent on how crowded prison happens to be. If this was/is a common practice, then that itself would increase the odds of mis-timing the sentencing time by months.

In Norway there has been cases where the time from sentencing to being called in to serve the sentence have been multiple years. There is a system where you may ask to serve shorter sentences (3 months or shorter) immediately, but this is not at all guaranteed and would quickly be overwhelmed by any "increased demand" during the winter months.

(And remaining locked up pending trial and sentencing, as an alternative to "fix" the timing issue, is unusual unless you're suspected of something likely to result in far more than 4-6 months in prison)

That seems like an odd strategy, since a social worker should also be able to help someone get a (non-prison) apartment, if they're homeless and can't afford a place to live. Are the people you're mentioning foreigners who aren't eligible for the usual welfare benefits & housing assistance, or am I missing something else?

If that happened at scale it's unlikely that Norway would still have among the lowest recidivism rates in the world. It may happen occasionally, but saying it's "somewhat common" has to be an overstatement.

I have no numbers of scale, but it's an acknowledged problem.

(Public Swedish radio for reference Use google translate and read http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=105&arti... -- 5 of 17 known addicts in a small town are in prison by their own choice)

That said, I strongly believe that the "soft" prisons of Scandinavia is better for society than US prisons. Recidivism is one of the important measurement.

It does not say that 5 of them are in prison by their own choice. It says that 5 of them are in prison.

Further, the article is very confused. It talks about prison (fängelse) some places, and jail other places (häkte) without acknowledging the big difference (häkte would imply someone has been placed under arrest and put in jail pending a trial and sentencing, but most would be let out after the decision of whether or not to press charges have been made, possibly the next morning).

That some may seek to get arrested and put in a jail cell on particularly cold nights (häkte) without worrying about the risk of charges and prison, may be possible, especially for a drug addict who might be making a decision like that in an impaired state.

But it is very different from trying to guess and time a prison sentence.

So they voluntary go to prison rather than staying in the street. The question should be, is that better or worse for society?

> The goal is to rehabilitate the country’s roughly 3,600 prisoners ...

3600 prisoners in a population of around 5m? This is somewhat incredible in its own right.

The US is the incredible place: 25% of the world's prisoners for 5% of the world's population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...

There aren't that many criminals unless people go to special effort to create them.

>This is somewhat incredible in its own right.

Not really. I'm from an average Eastern European country and the rate of prisoners per capita is about the same.

Just for context

norway population / 3600 = 1388

ireland population / 3,892 = 1203

uk population / 85,493 = 743

usa population / 1,574,741 = 208

--So the ratio is worse than the USA and prob doesn't mean too much.--

edit Completely misunderstood my own numbers... moving too quick. Will leave here

How is one in every 1388 people worse than one in every 208?

You've got things the wrong way around.

i was in oslo & amsterdam recently and the difference in junkie on the street levels was staggering - much much higher in oslo where drug laws are harsher.

i imagine this is a reasonable factor in amounts of prisoners in the two countries, though haven't checked data on percentage of prisoners who are heroin addicts.

Norway lags even continental Europe by 20 years or more when it comes to the drug debate, I'm afraid. It's the "dark side" of Scandinavian culture that remnants of protestant piety have successfully dominated our attitudes to drugs and alcohol in a very damaging way, where, while on one hand "everyone" acknowledges drug abuse as an illness that people needs help to combat, there is still very much an air of judgement over attitudes to junkies that makes it very hard to get support for reform of drug laws.

it was a huge problem in NL that brought about a change there - i'd say the solution was born out of need rather than being a moral thing

some more info:

http://amsterdamgang.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/drugs-on-the-h...

The drug policies in Norway is all wrong, Oslo is the european capitol of overdoses, and yet most politicians fail to face reality :/

yeah i saw one guy overdosed when i was there - some countries are providing police and even addicts family members with Anti-Overdose Drugs

seems they can be given as a nasal spray so safer than injections - when people are not medically trained

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/nyregion/anti-overdose-dru...

In Bergen, Norway, they have just started handing out the nasal spray to heroin addicts. We have a huge overdose problem here and I hope this helps.

thats encouraging to hear - it seems like huge problems in the US are starting to force a change towards harm reduction, i think it's vermont where it's really out of control and they're changing laws a little bit, for example, if an addict calls an ambulance for someone who overdosed, then they won't be arrested or charged for drug offences

I have no idea what crimes the Oslo police are actually focusing on, but drugs seem to be on the absolute bottom of their list. It would be one thing if they didn't have the resources to respond to every call about a witnessed drug deal, but they won't even send someone out to collect the drugs when they're told where the dealers are hiding them! At least they could get some of the drugs off the streets that way.

Actually, they do focus on this from time to time, busting a lot of dealers and drug addicts. This normally happens when the area they dealers/addicts occupy becomes too annoying for the public.

However, it doesn't solve anything. It just spreads the drug addicts and dealers around the city for a while, making drugs available everywhere instead of just around the "junkie area".

And then when the police stops busting people, a new "junkie area" appears.

Until it all repeats again..

part of how that was tackled in holland was that if an addict was arrested they were offered a choice between being charged or going into treatment - and they may have also been banned from the junkie area (normally people are arrested if they violate this kind of ban)

That sounds like a very good practice. Much better than here. However, there aren't enough political will to do something like that here.. The bars for getting into treatment, especially with "replacement drugs" are way to high.

some parts of the UK had problems with dealers scaring away litter collectors and road repair crews - they were hiding drugs in cracks in the road and empty coke cans in the street

end result was bad roads and lots of rubbish in those neighbourhoods

So the reason the Netherlands has more prisoners is because in Oslo junkies live on the streets? I don't quite follow the reasoning.

The war on drugs is still going on in Oslo, and the human cost is evident in the human misery on the streets (and filling up the prisons). The dutch have reached a more enlightened stage in the fight against drugs, and it shows.

i'm not sure they live on the streets or not - but i think it's safe to say that the heroin problem is holland is being dealt with and in norway it's out of control - last figures i saw were 17k dutch addicts with 12k in treatment, no idea how norway stacks up though

that article says that the dutch want to close 19 prisons due to lack of prisoners, but there are not enough prisons in norway

My point was: The fact that the Netherlands has too many prisons and Norway too few compared to prison population does not entail that the amounts of prisoners are wildly different. In fact, they're pretty much the same. Norway just hasn't built as many prisons as the Netherlands.

Whether the difference in prison saturation is related to their drug policy is a completely different question. (In any case, it seems Norway is doing an about-turn wrt. rehabilitation: http://theforeigner.no/pages/columns/a-forthcoming-change-in... )

fair enough - i guess i wanted to tell people about my recent observation.

I remember when I first saw a picture of a Norwegian prison, all the comments were along the lines of "that has things my home doesn't". Obviously, people were so impressed they headed to Norway to get arrested.

Meanwhile, in France, prisons are 20% over capacity and have the highest suicide rate in Europe. Maybe the EU should do something about that and impose EU-wide standards closer to the Norwegian model.

I'm more curious about the Dutch. How come so few are in prison? What are they doing right? Imposing one successful country's standards EU-wide would be a short-term improvement, but we would lose whatever the Dutch are doing right, though it might just be drug laws and not prisons per se. Diversity allows for policy experimentation.

The Netherlands have a comparable prison population to Norway:

http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/netherlands 75/100,000

http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/norway 72/100,000

However, Norway has less prisons. That's why they want to "export people", not because there are so many prisoners on a world scale.

(The US is also on that site: http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america )

> Diversity allows for policy experimentation.

Sure, but when the "experimentation" involves inmates being bitten by rats, maybe some minimal standards are in order [1].

1: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/france-la-sante...

Well, there's their drug policy—

All things considered, that should be a major factor on its own.

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