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Why Norway's prison system is so successful

Relatively few people in Norway go to prison, and those who do usually only go once. How does Norway do it?

IN NORWAY, FEWER than 4,000 of the country’s 5 million people were behind bars as of August 2014.

That makes Norway’s incarceration rate just 75 per 100,000 people, compared to 707 people for every 100,000 people in the US.

(Just as a point of comparison, Ireland’s rate is around 83 per 100,000).

On top of that, when criminals in Norway leave prison, they stay out. It has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The US has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within five years.

Norway also has a relatively low level of crime compared to the US, according to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The majority of crimes reported to police there are theft-related incidents, and violent crime is mostly confined to areas with drug trafficking and gang problems.

Based on that information, it’s safe to assume Norway’s criminal justice system is doing something right. Few citizens there go to prison, and those who do usually go only once. So how does Norway accomplish this feat? The country relies on a concept called restorative justice, which aims to repair the harm caused by crime rather than punish people. This system focuses on rehabilitating prisoners.

Take a look at Halden Prison, and you’ll see what we mean. The 75-acre facility maintains as much “normalcy” as possible. That means no bars on the windows, kitchens fully equipped with sharp objects, and friendships between guards and inmates. For Norway, removing people’s freedom is enough of a punishment.

at-halden-its-sometimes-hard-to-tell-the-inmates-and-guards-apart Welcome to Halden prison Welcome to Halden prison

Like many prisons, Halden seeks to prepare inmates for life on the outside with vocational programmes: wood-working, assembly workshops, and even a recording studio.

Halden isn’t an anomaly either. Bastoy prison is also quite nice.

As Bastoy prisoner governor Arne Wilson, also a clinical psychologist, explained to The Guardian:

In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking. In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer.The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings.

All of these characteristics are starkly different from America’s system. When a retired warden from New York visited Halden, he could barely believe the accommodation. “This is prison utopia,” he said in a documentary about his trip. “I don’t think you can go any more liberal — other than giving the inmates the keys.”

In general, prison should have five goals, as described by criminologist Bob Cameron: retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, restoration, and rehabilitation. In his words though, “Americans want their prisoners punished first and rehabilitated second.”

Norway adopts a less punitive approach than the US and focuses on making sure prisoners don’t come back. A 2007 report on recidivism released by the US Department of Justice found that strict incarceration actually increases offender recidivism, while facilities that incorporate “cognitive-behavioral programs rooted in social learning theory” are the most effective at keeping ex-cons out of jail.

The maximum life sentence in Norway shows just how serious the country is about its unique approach. With few exceptions (for genocide and war crimes mostly), judges can only sentence criminals to a maximum of 21 years. At the end of the initial term, however, five-year increments can be added onto to the prisoner’s sentence every five years, indefinitely, if the system determines he or she isn’t rehabilitated.

Norway Massacre AP / Press Association Images AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

That’s why Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and mass shooting, was only sentenced to 21 years. Most of the outrage and incredulity over that sentence, however, came from the US.

Overall, Norwegians, even some parents who lost children in the attack, seemed satisfied with the sentence. Still, Breivik’s sentence, as is, put him behind bars for less than 100 days for every life he took, as The Atlantic noted. On the other hand, if the system doesn’t determine Breivik “rehabilitated,” he could stay in prison forever.

To those working within Norway’s prison system, the short sentences and somewhat luxurious accommodations make complete sense. As Are Hoidel, Halden Prison’s director, puts it:

Every inmate in Norwegian prison is going back to the society. Do you want people who are angry — or people who are rehabilitated?

Read: Moment man exonerated after 27 years in prison will bring a tear to your eye > 

Read: There are currently 3,739 prisoners in Ireland – and we can’t take many more > 

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    Mute John Smith
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:47 AM

    President Higgins loves FARC terrorists and Fidel Castro and hates democratically elected people like President Trump.

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    Mute OpenBorders
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:56 AM

    Donald Trump is a headache, so Higgins’ position is a respectable one. Now hurry along or you’ll be late for Mass?

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    Mute Boganity
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:56 AM

    That’s quite a distance you covered in one sentence

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    Mute jane
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:04 AM

    OpenBorders, such tolerance you display, yet again, with people who have a differing religious view than yourself. Well done.

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    Mute John Smith
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:11 AM

    @Boganity it’s important to highlight Higgins affections for tyrants and terrorists.

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    Mute Boganity
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:14 AM

    It would be if he did but we are a democracy based on a war of independence which means one mans terrorist is an another mans freedom fighter.

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    Mute Brendan Cooney
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:17 AM

    Ah I see the neo Nazi brigade are up

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    Mute John Smith
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:29 AM

    All those who oppose Fidel Castro and FARC terrorism are neo nazis seemingly.

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    Mute OpenBorders
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:33 AM

    Now you’re getting it John.

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:57 AM

    Boganity. The diffrence is we in 1919 were fighting a foreign power and for our own democratic state. Colombia has been a stable and prosperous democracy for decades in which these Narco Terrorists attempted to overthrow and replace it with a hardline Communist State.

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Feb 12th 2017, 12:45 PM

    @Mick Jordan: You mean we were fighting for our independence from the power we were a part of for eight hundred years. It certainly wasn’t a foreign power when our laws, traditions and everything else we have continued to adopt tho this day. North Korea however would be a foreign power as woyld America under the present regime.

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 1:41 PM

    Chris. A foreign power is a foreign power irrespective of the amount of time it was imposing it’s laws and rules. The UK was a foreign power in India yet many of its laws and it’s parliamentary system stems from the UK model.

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Feb 12th 2017, 3:23 PM

    @Mick Jordan: How could Britain be called a foreign power when Irish politicians were included in the British government and hundreds of thousands of Irishmen were signed as volunteers in the British armed forces. We were a devolved administration much the same as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is today.

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 5:07 PM

    @Chris Kirk: Like I said Chris. India is a Prime example. Hundreds thousands of Indian Troops fought in the British army in both WW I and WW II but like us London made all major decisions irrespective of local opinion. Just like they are in the case of Scotland and the North with Brexit both had a majority to remain but London has over ruled them.

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Feb 12th 2017, 8:56 PM

    @Mick Jordan: Nonsense Mick, how could India be a prime example when it only had a history of being linked to Britain since the eighteenth century through the East India Company. Ireland was linked to Britain since the twelfth century when the Pope issued a papal bull to King Henry II. Ever since then it came under succesive English rule. Even Scotland wasn’t ruled by England until the start of the seventeenth century when James I (James VI of Scotland) came to the throne. India never sent its politicians to the British parliament and was nothing more than a colony for the purposes of trade and exploitation by the British (including Ireland).

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 9:29 PM

    Chris. The comparison remains the same. Just because both countries are ethnically white European. Ireland has been rebelling against English then British rule since Stongbow landed here. Of all the subject people’s of the English/British the Irish were (according to English Commentators throughout the historical time periods concerned) the most hostile and troublesome. From the 13th Century to the 16th Ireland was virtually independent. Only after Henry VIII split from Rome did England once more take an interest in Ireland in trying to bring Ireland and it’s Rebellious Earls to heel.

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    Mute Jason Maguire
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:45 AM

    FARC off.

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    Mute Tommy Byrne
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:25 AM

    No better buachiall to make an empowering speech and bring some peace to the region

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    Mute David Mac Shite
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:28 AM

    Seriously?

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    Mute Alanine Pipeline
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:31 AM

    No shite – not seriously. Sober up!

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    Mute David Mac Shite
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:44 AM

    His empowering speeches tend to be interspersed with Gaelic and Poetry thus confusing the Columbians.

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    Mute Boganity
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:48 AM

    It’s all about Ireland’s position in the developing world: https://youtu.be/tQogLMNu9n4

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:29 AM

    Lets call FARC what they are, Narco Terrorists. Not Guerillas’s or Freedom Fighters etc.

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    Mute joe o hare
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:36 AM

    @Mick Jordan: the Colombian government are what f.g and f.f hope to achieve in terms of high levels of moral integrity, anti corruption and respect for those less well off in society.

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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:48 AM

    Joe. Describing FARC as Guerillas’s is like calling the Cali Cartel “Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs”.

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    Mute Boganity
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:54 AM

    So you would deny a third world country their right to independence based on their using the only source of resources available to them

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:02 AM

    Boganity. Colombia is quite prosperous and has been a stable democracy for decades despite the Narcotics Trade. If anything it was and is the most destabilising thing in that country. FARC murdered poor farmers and local peasants that refused to co-operate in growing and producing Cocaine as have all the other Narco gangs. So get down of that high horse before you fall off.

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    Mute Boganity
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:07 AM

    Yours is a great story by every standard except the facts: They could not have sustained a 40 year insurgency without popular support

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:24 AM

    I would suggest looking into the history of FARC from an independent view. It may have begun with high ideals but it degenerated into Narco Terrorism. It murdered civilians for no other reason than failure to comply, Kidnappings, drug dealing and the list of simply criminal activities goes on.

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:35 AM

    Btw Boganity you say that FARC couldn’t survive for 40 years without popular support. One could also say the same of Joseph Koney and his Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa. They have been on the go for 30 years but nobody is claiming popular support for them.

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    Mute John Smith
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:45 AM

    Did that YouTube video not stop Kony? #Kony2012

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:52 AM

    Not at all. He and his terrorists are still around.

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    Mute John Flood
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:31 AM

    I wouldn’t say a harsh word about the President, but I do question all the travel. What sort of annual budget does he receive?

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    Mute David Mac Shite
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:40 AM

    I wouldn’t say a harsh word against the president…. followed by harsh words.

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    Mute Boganity
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:01 AM

    And a questioning of the cost of democracy, its great that he’s using our money to seed someone else’s democracy given that ours was paid for in blood.

    r

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    Mute tom
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:24 AM

    Champagne Socialist don’t care about anything other than own ego and self importance just like Labour party

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    Mute OpenBorders
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    Feb 12th 2017, 11:34 AM

    What’s wrong with the word ‘the’?

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    Mute tom
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    Feb 12th 2017, 12:34 PM

    Islamic editing. Chopped off

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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    Feb 13th 2017, 2:56 AM

    @John Flood: A bag of beans, coffee from where he is lol.

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Feb 12th 2017, 12:38 PM

    He should change his tailor, the suits make him look like a bag of spuds.

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    Mute John Smith
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:36 AM

    The President will be right at home amongst communist terrorists.

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    Mute Boganity
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:55 AM

    Communist ? You have NFI !

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    Mute OpenBorders
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:58 AM

    He’s not visiting Putin, he’s in Colombia, did you even read the article?

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    Mute Mary Murphy
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    Feb 12th 2017, 3:57 PM

    Can we find out why Leo Varadker is on this trip too???

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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    Feb 13th 2017, 2:55 AM

    @Mary Murphy: Incase he says anything about McCabe?

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    Mute Brian Farrell
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:34 AM

    Farcing amazing. Well done POI.

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    Mute Peter Buchanan
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    Feb 13th 2017, 7:02 AM

    Any chance that they would kidnap him ?

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    Mute Gus Dennis
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    Feb 13th 2017, 9:40 AM

    According to the BBC WORLD SERVICE broadcast last night.Ireland has contributed €millions to Columbia.Is the Health service crisis over?

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    Mute Curt Corbain
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    Feb 12th 2017, 10:25 AM

    Higgins has a hard on for these South and Central American Marxist countries, let him live there.

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    Mute Alan Kennedy
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    Feb 13th 2017, 8:18 PM

    Our president needs a girdle.That’s some Ned Kelly he’s sporting

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    Feb 13th 2017, 8:33 AM

    Hà ha ha ha. What a nob

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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    Feb 13th 2017, 2:54 AM

    About FARCing time lol. Sorry…
    But why?

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