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Which prison is better for society?

JC Callender

JC Callender

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Sheriff Arpaio's Tent City:

tent city.jpg

Or Halden Prison in Norway:

norway.jpg norway 2.jpg

And do you think the Halden model would work in the U.S.?
 
Prison is not supposed to be a country club.The more primitive the better.
 
polgara said:
Greetings, JC. :2wave:

I like the looks of that fence at Halden - how high is that? And it seems that a white fence would certainly highlight anyone trying to scale it - unless they were wearing a bed sheet! :mrgreen:
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Hi Polgra! :kissy:

I'd say it's probably 10' high. I feel like shame might play a part in Norway's lower prison population, as a prisoner (or pupil as they call them) is taught with much more TLC than just about anywhere else how to behave in society. It's like they're not considered criminals, they're considered regular people who just made bad decisions. I don't see a person getting much street cred for that.
 
gulfman said:
Prison is not supposed to be a country club.The more primitive the better.
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Generally in our country white collar criminals do not get assigned to "primitive" conditions.
 
JC Callender said:
Sheriff Arpaio's Tent City:

Or Halden Prison in Norway:

And do you think the Halden model would work in the U.S.?
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Depends on what you're going for. If the goal is to keep people put away, on the cheap, that shouldn't be reintegrated into society then the tent prison. If your goal is to imprison people who will eventually come back out, then Norway's prison, but you'd have to make more changes than just the prison to get the overall benefits (e.g. getting rid of felony statuses).
 
Comparing American society to Norwegian society is like comparing apples to oranges. Norway doesn't have millions of hardened criminals, like the US does. What works for them wouldn't work for us.
 
truthatallcost said:
Comparing American society to Norwegian society is like comparing apples to oranges. Norway doesn't have millions of hardened criminals, like the US does. What works for them wouldn't work for us.
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Why do you suppose we have so many more hardened criminals?
 
Fishking said:
Depends on what you're going for. If the goal is to keep people put away, on the cheap, that shouldn't be reintegrated into society then the tent prison. If your goal is to imprison people who will eventually come back out, then Norway's prison, but you'd have to make more changes than just the prison to get the overall benefits (e.g. getting rid of felony statuses).
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I agree, there needs to be different types of prisons, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. The only thing that makes me recoil at the tent prison system is the bordering on "cruel and unusual". I think you guys can do better, but I get that this is an outlier, and a bit of a gimmick, insomuch as I don't think anyone is actually for making "tent prisons" a "standard" approach to incarceration.

The tricky part, of course, is what to do with all those for-profit prisons. Sadly, even if it were possible to do better in the states, there's so much invested in the current infrastructure, and so much to gain financially from it, that I think it would be a tough row to hoe to get anything to change. Fair?
 
JC Callender said:
How so?
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They don't call it "con college" for nothing. ;) There are mountains of anecdotal evidence that prison, rather than reforming many folks who go through the system, actually ends up in an escalation of crime, as criminals have the opportunity to share "best practices". Also, given the stigma around hiring ex-cons, it's not exactly easy to transition into work that pays as much as crime does... You brought up recidivism, so I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. :)
 
In the U.S. you usually get treated like a civilized human being if you're rich or powerful/connected. If you're a poor nobody, you'll probably end up in terrible place. That's how many in the U.S. like it, they simply don't understand how other nations try very hard to ensure everyone is treated fairly well. Martha Stewart spent her time in a place they nicknamed "Camp Cupcake".

Has anyone watched Lilyhammer? It was on Netflix for a while.

Mafia mobster in witness protection moves to Norway and gets to experience Norwegian culture.
It was enjoyable, not a great show or anything, but the Norwegians stole the show. At least one episode showed "jails" similar to the picture you posted, it actually looked familiar to me after watching a few episodes.

Prevalence of guns, shooting wolves that were eating livestock, they address a lot of the cultural differences in an amusing way.
 
OlNate said:
They don't call it "con college" for nothing. ;) There are mountains of anecdotal evidence that prison, rather than reforming many folks who go through the system, actually ends up in an escalation of crime, as criminals have the opportunity to share "best practices". Also, given the stigma around hiring ex-cons, it's not exactly easy to transition into work that pays as much as crime does... You brought up recidivism, so I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. :)
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Why aren't they sharing "best practices" in Norway? And why would a Norwegian company hire an ex-con?
 
truthatallcost said:
Comparing American society to Norwegian society is like comparing apples to oranges. Norway doesn't have millions of hardened criminals, like the US does. What works for them wouldn't work for us.
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Isn't Trump wondering why we aren't assimilating more Norweigans?
 
truthatallcost said:
Various differences in culture and population. But a simpler answer; the population size of the USA is 66x the size of Norway's population.
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And the percentage of prisoners to general population is what?
 
JC Callender said:
The U.S. has a percentage (per 100,000) of almost 10 times that of Norway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
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There are multiple factors for that too, including the shameful privatization of prisons and juvenile detention facilities, which turned incarceration into a big business.

My personal opinion is that the USA is never going to function like a small, quaint European nation such as Norway.

Population size isn't the sole factor of course, just look at Japan - they have many times more people than Norway, with a lower incarceration rate than Norway. And their prisons are very harsh and disciplinary in nature. Basically, the culture of Japan doesn't glorify criminality as we've always done here in the USA. They have their own organized crime in Japan, but nothing like we have over here.
 
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