Isbjørn

Welp, in Norway the main ideal is rehabilitation rather than punishment. Criminals live in nice cells, they get to study, and even Anders Breivik got access to the internet. Also, you can't be in prison for more than 21 years - they can, however, keep you in custody if you're considered a danger to society/need protection from society yourself. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that the American justice system is better (then again, I'm a novice at best when it comes to political knowledge).

Ja Army unite!

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Frownland

**** ja.

I just prefer it to the barbaric yeah or the gentlemen's yes.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Chula Vista

That's messed up man.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

Agreed, but I'd punch Bard before Varg. His description of murdering that man was just so chilling. Like, he just wanted to know what it was like to kill someone, and so he just lured some guy into the woods. I guess I'll give him credit for owning up to and not sugar coating it to make himself look better, but I can't help but get the feeling that he's just too cold and empty to care enough to even lie to himself about his motivations. And of course the homophobia he spouts even to this day is... well, it's hard to make the guy more repulsive, but it's still something else to hate about him.

Varg definitely deserves a punch, but when you listen to him talk, and hear some of the things he says, I can't help but feel that my disgust would be temporarily put on the backburner just so I could talk to him out of curiosity. He comes across as a less bat**** Charles Manson, in that he seemed to have cultivated a cult of personality among the Norwegian black metal scene, so I'd be wary of agreeing with anything he said without keeping some ironclad doubt in the back of my mind---not so much concerning the racism thing, but his stance on the non-racial aspects of his political and cultural views are certainly intriguing.

"Ja" is "yes" in German.

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grindy

It does make one pretty angry, on the other hand this whole reformation thing seems to be working relatively well. It's a really complex issue.

Since I live in Germany I was kinda suspecting this. Just thought there might be some other background.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Isbjørn

How?

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Chula Vista

Bard, unprovoked, stabbed a dude 37 times and then stomped his head in while he lay bleeding to death. And he showed zero remorse about it.

He served a total of 9 years in prison?

Like I said, messed up IMO.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

I disagree. The percentage in America of former prisoners relapsing into their old ways and ending up back in prison certainly isn't an argument in favor of our way. I don't agree with the concept of an eye for an eye and punishing criminals just for the sake of our own sense of revenge. It doesn't do us any favors as a moral society, and it doesn't seem to help deter crime.

Prison centered around rehabilitation is the way to go as far as I'm concerned. Think of criminals as dysfunctional elements of society. We expect our citizens to act in ways that accord with society's goals and values (in a more human and less clinical way of course, but I'm just using stark terminology to take distracting, emotional associations out of the equation), but a criminal isn't acting in a desirable way. Whether it be gang-related activity, murder, rape, financial fraud, etc, these people are introducing stimuli into our society that we deem harmful and counterproductive.

Rather than deal with them emotionally (i.e. vengeance), I think it would make more sense to rationally consider what stimuli to introduce to them to bring them in line with our current concept of a functional member of society. Giving prisoners access to education, reasonable living conditions that don't give the impression that society is dehumanizing them, fair treatment that likewise doesn't dehumanize them, individualized rehabilitation methods (i.e. don't treat gang bangers with the same rehabilitation methods you would a serial rapist or a Wall Street insider trader).

I guess what I'm saying is to approach your attitude to criminals with compassion, but treat their rehabilitation with dispassion. It'll take trial and error and learning to figure all of this out, and sometimes individuals just can't be helped and really do need to be kept from society, but in the long-term this approach will make far more sense than just throwing criminals into overcrowded prisons to make them even more hardened criminals.

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Isbjørn

Oh, didn't catch that. Yeah, that's... questionable.

x2

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Chula Vista

I'm talking specifically about Bard and this dude.

2011 Norway attacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We're not talking about your run of the mill criminal here. These are 100% pure psychopaths.

Both should have gotten the death penalty.

In my opinion.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”