Sweden is closing prisons due to lack of people to put in them

[elabayarde]

you know... i have a friend who was in the military and about to commission.(he was just finishing college) He was accepted to start law school immediately after, on a military scholarship program. He was very very squared away. But he was a complete and public womanizer. Well one girl, cried rape on his frat boy roomate. well he was there asleep, the roomate and the girl were messing around and he woke up after to the girl freaking out and leaving. She realized he was in the military....and come to find out she was actually married, to a military guy and her drugged and unsober mind decided that she should hall ass, after banging for 30 mins. She realized she was cheating closer to home than she thought.

Well, she 3 days later says she was rapped. My friend threw away her panties and very honestly told the cops this, when they showed up to ask about the situation. He didnt know what was going on when he woke up.
Minutes later he was arrested, and charged with rape as well. Well the DNA evidence destroyed her story about him having any physical interaction with her, although his roomate did. Well ultimately both were convicted, and he was convicted of some sort of accessory charge landing him in prison for up to 5.

Fast forward, when he gets out. He is almost unrecognizable to me. He is racist, very extreme in his views, almost like he has been reverse educated... it was amazing how it changed him and definitely for the worse. He was someone who was winning academic and military awards volunteering and mentoring kids. Now he is just such damaged goods. Prison definitely isnt to a place for rehab in the states...just a place to hide them from society, making them even more dysfunctional when they re-enter.

 

[InternationPlayboy]

When comparing the American prison system to swedens, I think Sweden wins. Most criminals in America that spend time in prison end up going right back. Many of them prefer prison over the real world after being locked up for so long. It's like you go in for petty drug sales and graduate with a degree in international drug smuggling. I believe in rehabilitation. I think depending in the case, some of those people deserve to rot in prison, like murderers and crazy shit like that. But an alarmingly high rate of people locked up in the states are there on some garbage drug chargers. People spending 20 years behind bars for selling some coke? What the fuck is that? Garbage is what it is.

 

[Teedub]

But an alarmingly high rate of people locked up in the states are there on some garbage drug chargers. People spending 20 years behind bars for selling some coke? What the fuck is that? Garbage is what it is.

Blame the Prison Industrial complex. Things like justice and punishment shouldn't be privatized. It's like something out of Robocop, which was meant as a satire on militarism and hyper-capitalism. Here in Britain, the probation service is getting privatized in March 2014.

 

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

This doesn't surprise me. But you must note that this is all in many shades of gray (not, those shades you perverts). The gentle Swedish approach, while it undeniably works far better then the cruel USA system (i.e. it rescues all those "accidental criminals" and steers them back to normal life instead of guaranteeing that they'll become hardened gangsters), would be a hard sell in a primitive country.

For example, Croatian prisons are chock full of these gentle rules: facilities, services, rehabilitation, holidays and vacations (yes, HOLIDAYS AND VACATIONS) - but people on average are far too much of a scum to be reformed by that, so instead the enjoy their vacation from prison during which they kill a cop and rob a bank just for fun, then go back to prison and are again let out for vacations. It's crazy. My point being: the gentle justice system is great, but it only works on gentle, generally civilized people where most people are not scum. Try to use it on a much more depraved (on average) population and it will fail spectacularly.

 

[Samseau]

But an alarmingly high rate of people locked up in the states are there on some garbage drug chargers. People spending 20 years behind bars for selling some coke? What the fuck is that? Garbage is what it is.

This is a different issue unrelated to rehabilitation vs. incarceration. You're talking about cruel and unusual punishments, which are unconstitutional, but still get applied anyways because our country doesn't follow good rules anymore.

In an ideal world, very few things are punishable, and people are rarely falsely convicted of crimes, but if someone is indeed a criminal for something wrong, such as theft or murder, then they deserve hard time. First-time offenders should be left off easy, but second and third timers deserve harsh punishments as these people have proven they cannot function in a free society without causing harm to others.

so instead the enjoy their vacation from prison during which they kill a cop and rob a bank just for fun, then go back to prison and are again let out for vacations. It's crazy.

Exactly as I would imagine it to be. Sociopaths will overwhelm any pussy system that does not try to stop them, and that's why rehabilitation systems will always fail.

Incarceration has evolved out of 1000's of years of various prison systems and it has been the one most effective for a reason. Problem people in a society must either be removed, killed, or detained. They cannot be changed, thus they must be dealt with accordingly.



I get that this isn't perfect. But there's no such thing as a perfect society.

 

[bojangles]

This doesn't surprise me. But you must note that this is all in many shades of gray (not, those shades you perverts). The gentle Swedish approach, while it undeniably works far better then the cruel USA system (i.e. it rescues all those "accidental criminals" and steers them back to normal life instead of guaranteeing that they'll become hardened gangsters), would be a hard sell in a primitive country.

For example, Croatian prisons are chock full of these gentle rules: facilities, services, rehabilitation, holidays and vacations (yes, HOLIDAYS AND VACATIONS) - but people on average are far too much of a scum to be reformed by that, so instead the enjoy their vacation from prison during which they kill a cop and rob a bank just for fun, then go back to prison and are again let out for vacations. It's crazy. My point being: the gentle justice system is great, but it only works on gentle, generally civilized people where most people are not scum. Try to use it on a much more depraved (on average) population and it will fail spectacularly.

Yep, I think the perfect prison system is an ancient prison system, murderers are killed and no money is wasted on them.

 

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

However, I wouldn't completely discount the possibility that Sweden in general has developed such a peaceful and non-psychopatic population that their "gentle prison" experiment just might work. I'm certainly against it in Croatia. But in Sweden? I say wait a bit more and see.

Of course, this excludes the vastly more violent (in general) immigrants from very poor countries, who will probably soon overwhelm the system and so we'll never get the chance to test this hypothesis about Sweden's native population.

 

[Samseau]

This doesn't surprise me. But you must note that this is all in many shades of gray (not, those shades you perverts). The gentle Swedish approach, while it undeniably works far better then the cruel USA system (i.e. it rescues all those "accidental criminals" and steers them back to normal life instead of guaranteeing that they'll become hardened gangsters), would be a hard sell in a primitive country.

For example, Croatian prisons are chock full of these gentle rules: facilities, services, rehabilitation, holidays and vacations (yes, HOLIDAYS AND VACATIONS) - but people on average are far too much of a scum to be reformed by that, so instead the enjoy their vacation from prison during which they kill a cop and rob a bank just for fun, then go back to prison and are again let out for vacations. It's crazy. My point being: the gentle justice system is great, but it only works on gentle, generally civilized people where most people are not scum. Try to use it on a much more depraved (on average) population and it will fail spectacularly.

Yep, I think the perfect prison system is an ancient prison system, murderers are killed and no money is wasted on them.

What about the falsely accused? An incarceration based system is the middle-ground between pussy systems like Sweden and Draconian ones like Ancient Islam. With incarceration based systems, the falsely accused are somewhat protected from egregious harm, and the sociopaths are kept in sufficient check.

 

[Samseau]

Hard time is great. 'til the guy gets out. Then it's hard times for everyone he comes in contact with.

Don't get me wrong. Some people need to be locked away for a long long time. However, the expansion of the American prison system, to the point that we have about 2.5 million people in prison (that's not even counting local jails), is completely counterproductive to the goal of a safer society, a huge fiscal drain, and completely immoral. All it does is facilitate the expansion of the perpetual underclass and brin us closer to the day where our society is completely split into an elite upper class and a prole underclass.

I'm not a big fan of the Scandinavian welfare
state or their very progressive versions of feminism and multiculturalism, but they are miles ahead of us in the area of criminal justice.

If a guy serves a 20 year prison sentence, and goes back out and does more crime, then he probably deserves a death sentence. If a man doesn't change in 20 years, then he never will.

That said, I agree that going to prison is a death sentence for your financial life and basically forces you into underground activities almost permanently. But this is not a fault of the prison system, but rather the heavy stigma there is employing anyone with a criminal history. That stigma is the issue, not the prison system itself.

This stigma is also unfortunately unlikely to ever go away as well. So the moral of the story is not to get involved with too heavy of illegal activities or else your life will be stuck in the shitter forever.

 

[MHaes]

What about the falsely accused? An incarceration based system is the middle-ground between pussy systems like Sweden and Draconian ones like Ancient Islam. With incarceration based systems, the falsely accused are somewhat protected from egregious harm, and the sociopaths are kept in sufficient check.

No, they aren't protected from egregious harm. Case in point: LINK.

Don't forget, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

 

[Vicious]

It's funny that on a board that recognizes the contemporary threat to rule of law with frivolous and false rape accusations, guys are still hardliners and uncompromising on penal code.

Actually I'm surprised that the merits of different penal systems are even discussed when there are readily available stats showing extremely clear trends and effects of various nation's solutions.

 

[Kilgo]

I find a sad irony in how America is often billed as the "land of the free" when the United States has the highest prison population, both overall and per capita, in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

 

[kdolo]

I find a sad irony in how America is often billed as the "land of the free" when the United States has the highest prison population, both overall and per capita, in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

YUP.

People don't understand that SLAVERY was never outlawed in the U.S.

 

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Hey, in Croatia you can not only get sent to jail if you don't make the alimony payments, you can also be forcibly be sent to dig ditches for highways and drainage. I'm not joking. It's an actual law, although it's been implemented only recently so this sad fate hasn't befallen anyone yet.

 

[Cr33pin]

Its cause the age of consent in Sweden is 15.... People are to busy banging highschool chicks to be bothered with committing crimes.

 

[playa_with_a_passport]

It's funny that on a board that recognizes the contemporary threat to rule of law with frivolous and false rape accusations, guys are still hardliners and uncompromising on penal code.

Actually I'm surprised that the merits of different penal systems are even discussed when there are readily available stats showing extremely clear trends and effects of various nation's solutions.

Its actually changing now, not because Americans had a big epiphany on crime & punishment, but because local states can no longer afford to keep prisons afloat. Almost all the states have some type of diversion program where people arrested on some lower level drug offenses can go to rehab instead of prison. Also, at least in NYC they are making more of an effort in treating mental illness because its cheaper to hire a social worker and given them special housing than warehousing them in prison at 40k a pop.