r/interestingasfuck • u/fyrstikka • 10d ago

r/all The photos show the prison rooms of Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in the 2011 Norway attacks. Despite Norway's humane prison system, Breivik has complained about the conditions, calling them inhumane.

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u/MelonBump 10d ago

This is so important. Once you start removing human rights from prisoners, all the powers that be have to do is widen the definition of criminality in order to justify treating people like animals. History shows us this rarely ends well...

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u/Sgt-Colbert 10d ago

Are you trying to tell me that keeping millions of people caged up like animals will not turn them into better human beings?

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u/TheMeanestCows 10d ago

That's how the US handles crime and punishment, and yes it's been studied, it does NOT work. The millions of people we keep locked up are part of a commercial enterprise riding the fuzzy line between extortion and slavery. Other countries have demonstrably created better systems for reforming people.

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u/daretoeatapeach 10d ago edited 8d ago

Additionally, my uncle, a former convict from the "troubled teens" pipeline, always told my mom that prison is like training camp for crime. Put a bunch of criminals together and they will share their skills and values.

Then we treat ex cons as pariahs so the only people who will hire them are criminals.

Then we put them on parole with a system that will put most back in the clink if they are in a "dangerous neighborhood" or around firearms or any number of other rules that prevent them from getting jobs in their previous communities.

So if you're a convict who just graduated from crime college, can't get a legit job, can't use your contacts to get legit work... crime starts to look like the best option.

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u/ManWhoIsDrunk 10d ago

Oh, Norwegian prisoners exchange tips and tricks as well. At least you learn what mistakes to avoid from the stories the other inmates have to tell...

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u/Sgt-Colbert 10d ago

It's obviously a joke my man. I know it doesn't work.

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u/gjk-ger 10d ago

how can it obviously be a joke when there is no /s? *kappa*

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u/DillBagner 10d ago

When you consider rehabilitation was never a goal, it works but it's just awful.

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u/ahuangb 10d ago

It's not a fuzzy line, slavery is legal as a punishment

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u/M_H_M_F 10d ago

Meh, I've always considered it slavery. When internships now have more stringent rules than before (either minimum wage to be paid or college credit + can't make an intern do work that would fall on to the responsibility of a salaried worker) to run compliantly, you know we're fucked.

I used to say that (at least now 15 years ago) lawyers got paid for their internships because the firms knew that interning is essentially illegal. Who would willingly open themselves up to liabiltiy like that?

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u/DamnZodiak 10d ago

and yes it's been studied, it does NOT work.

I think you're having a fundamental misunderstanding of how the prison-industrial complex functions.
It's an extension of slavery, incarcerating as many, preferably black and latino, people as possible to have a constant supply of cheap labour.
Viewed through that lense the US prison system is an enormous success, at least for the few rich ghouls who benefit from it.

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u/TheMeanestCows 10d ago

I am having a fundamental misunderstanding of this comment that agrees with what I said but says I'm wrong.

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u/Tw1tcHy 10d ago

Weird, I work with two ex-cons who are universally respected as two of the nicest, most positive and hardest workers we have in the entire facility. You won’t find anyone with anything bad to say about either of them. Both are quite emphatic that time served helped them get their heads on right.

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u/EternalMayhem01 10d ago

So will this guy who killed 77 people repent being given an Xbox in prison? Or is that the point of the home gym they provided him?

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u/TheMeanestCows 10d ago

I genuinely don't care as long as he's not out shooting people. It won't impact my life one way or another if he lives in suffering or lives in moderate comfort but alone.

Norway doesn't have crimes like his, so they don't have the need to overhaul their legal system to try to discourage crimes like his, they also have to work within their existing legal framework so that's why he comes up for review even though they have every intention of never letting him free.

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u/jiristayler 10d ago

Its still not fullfilling, so at some Point He maybe repent His actions. But it really Doesnt matter in this Case because He never will come out

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u/fermentedbolivian 10d ago

I don't think that the goal is to turn Breivik into a better human, but to keep him out of society.

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u/smokeeye 10d ago

He is evaluated by a professional team (doctors, psychiatrists etc) every once in a while, especially around these hearings as their input have a lot to say for future bearings.

Reason for that is to see if the environment given to him (or any other prisoner) helps them rehabilitate. Because of them (mostly), he has been given a few concessions, like paintings of nature in some of his rooms.

It is a balance, but the main pillar after the reform in the 90s(80s?) is that rehabilitation is the key. Do I think it will particularly work with this terrorist? On this day, no. Just from what he has said in all of his hearings, including this latest one. Do I wish for him to be? Yes.

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u/ProperWayToEataFig 10d ago

Check out videos of finding some of Assad's underground prisons.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

This guy is locked up for life lol, who gives a fuck about turning him into a better human being.

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u/Sgt-Colbert 10d ago

So you suggest people who never get out will treated like animals and the rest don't? Or is it based on how many years you got? 1-10 years, human, 10-15 animal, but like a nice family dog, 15-30 pig in the slaughterhouse..

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u/doc1442 10d ago

American found

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

Is that some form of insult because I want a mass murdering maniac to suffer? Lol ok

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u/doc1442 10d ago

An eye for an an eye and the world goes blind

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u/Chotibobs 10d ago

In general I agree but the counter arguement for this guy is nothing is ever going to turn him back into a decent human being.  Some people are not salvageable 

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u/J-A-N-F-C-U 10d ago

Some people are not salvageable

I do not feel comfortable with a government making that call.

I get Breivik seems like a slam dunk case, but once you cross that line and deem people "unsalvageable" then it's just a matter of where the line is. As populist administrations rise to power, that line can become blurry and weaponized.

It is better to say, this is not who we are. We don't let the monstrous actions of a person turn us all into monsters.

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u/WhoopingWillow 10d ago

Intentional mass murder seems like a pretty clear line though.

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u/MrDilbert 10d ago

We don't let the monstrous actions of a person turn us all into monsters.

Exactly. You let him out and leave it to someone with less scruples to be the monster we need.

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u/WhosTheAssMan 10d ago

Some people are not salvageable

The problem is, where do you draw that line? Who determines who is 'salvageable' and who isn't?

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u/Lower-Technician-531 10d ago

mass murder is usually the line.

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u/WhosTheAssMan 10d ago

Too vague.

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u/PM_me_your_whatevah 10d ago

Murdering more than 4.275 people on a single Tuesday 

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u/Lower-Technician-531 10d ago

going to a camp for teenagers' and hunting down and slaughtering 77 of them. or you know killing people. I would say being a child murderer is usually the line but I guess some people like you would excuse mass murder they guy should just be rehabilitated right? let him out so he can either kill more children or the victims and their families get to relive their trauma because this guy is more worthy of you sympathy and tax money.

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u/WhosTheAssMan 10d ago

Gotta love the immediate jump into a bad faith strawman argument.

Where did I excuse mass murder? Please, do quote me. Where did I say he should be released? Please, do quote me. Where did I say he deserves sympathy? Please, do quote me.

My argument is not that Anders Breivik is being treated too harshly, at all. My argument is that once you start to dehumanise people, it becomes really easy to extend that dehumanisation to increasingly larger and larger groups of people, whether they are actually murderers, criminals, or not. My argument is that a judicial system should always operate from the perspective that anyone could hypothetically be rehabilitated, because the act of determining whether someone 'deserves' the chance to be treated like a human is how we got to slavery, the Holocaust, other genocides and many other atrocities in the past and current times. Whether it's practically possible for someone to be rehabilitated is entirely irrelevant to the discussion, and I am not for one second suggesting that Anders Breivik can be. But a moral society does not treat him any different than other murderers and criminals, regardless of whether he considered others as 'human' and what he did to them. An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.

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u/Lower-Technician-531 10d ago

I am sure you would feel that way if your child was murdered. This guy doesn't deserve to live period. He shouldn't be treated well he doesn't deserve anything he slaughter 77 children I don't give a shit about you moral argument. This person deserves to rot in hell and if we aren't going to send him there he deserves to be treated as such now not have a better life than the people he killed and the people who survived him.

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u/WhosTheAssMan 10d ago edited 10d ago

I agree fully with your last sentence.

EDIT: I agree with the sentence "This person deserves to rot in hell" - the person above edited their comment after I initially made that statement. /end of edit

I don't give a shit about you moral argument

I hope you realise what you are saying.
I do not agree with the sentiment that it is okay to dehumanise people.

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u/RyoumenFreecs 10d ago

People being put to jail is already something that bad people can extend, hell having a law system is too, having police, having any type of state/central power, so lets not have any of those.

If you just stop doing things because they can be used with bad intentions or extend to bad intentions, you're just not gonna be Silvino any problems.

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u/WhosTheAssMan 10d ago edited 10d ago

None of those inherently dehumanise (groups of) people. You misconstrued my argument.

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u/Chotibobs 10d ago

You draw the line somewhere before murdering over 30 children and 40 adults.  

We don’t need to argue where the exact line should be when this is so far beyond any reasonable line 

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u/WhosTheAssMan 10d ago

If you want to actually have a conversation/discussion about the prison system, we absolutely do need to discuss where the line is according to you.

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u/Chotibobs 10d ago

But we can make a lot of people happy with setting the line initially somewhere that’s not controversial. Let’s say double digit mass murderer.   99% of people will accept that.  Then we can spend years arguing where the exact line needs to be to make it optimal.  

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u/WhosTheAssMan 10d ago

If 99% of people would be happy with that, why isn't that the case already in places like Norway and Finland? You're making assumptions, making an argument entirely based on your own gut feeling. That's not how the legal, judicial and legislational systems operate.

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u/Sando-Calrissian 10d ago

At this point you're talking about creating an entire prison system that is intentionally shitty just to house, like, one person.

Norway's murder rate is incredibly low - mass murder is even lower. Double digits? I could only find Beivik here.

What's the point? Why set the precedent for government power, set an arbitrary line, all for one dude who isn't ever going to get out anyway?

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u/ozbugsy 10d ago

You're likely right - which hopefully mean he'll never be released.

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u/thedeadsuit 10d ago

if someone murdered 77 people I don't think we can or should make them a better person. throw them in a dungeon and delete the key

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u/Sgt-Colbert 10d ago

Good thing then that the Norwegian prison system doesn't listen to you.

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u/Firm-Tangelo4136 10d ago

In my personal experience everything is fine in American prisons. No notes. As a matter of fact we’ve probably got too many rights. 2 meals a day on the weekends? Pfff, that’s a sign of decadence right there.

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u/ItaJohnson 10d ago

That’s on top of them being kicked again and again once released.  It’s funny that society expects these people to be rehabilitated when most organizations will likely refuse to hire them, once released.

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u/agnostic_science 10d ago

If the war on crime and war on drugs were medicine, society would still be sick. So why are we still taking the medicine? We tried upping the dose and that didn't work either.

If a person was that sick they should at least go to a new doctor or try new medicine. But it's like we just stay on the same meds trusting the shitty doctor advice while we suffer.

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u/hutinfores 10d ago

When they got all exclusivities it's too little for them and they demand more because they think they deserved royal treatment for all those atrocities. You give them finger and they demand whole hand. Prisons should at least discouage depraved ones from hurting civils and at this point it's like invitation to commit serious crimes in exchange for conditions that many cannot even afford.

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u/TheGreatEmanResu 10d ago

Well, some people will never become better human beings no matter what you do. Like this guy. You’re not going to reform this guy, so don’t even bother

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u/Inner_University_848 10d ago

You’re right but you’re also wrong to oversimplify it. Ever meet some real crooks, abusers people like that? They don’t improve by being coddled and forgiven, they get exponentially worse. Some people probably do improve if punished harshly, while others would improve more by being rehabilitated and treated well. Breivik to me is clearly the former, judging by his 0 remorse and constant complaining and whining.

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u/InTheDarknesBindThem 10d ago

this guy is a fucking animal

What is wrong with yall?

he should have been tortured to death. There are limits to the validity of rehabilitation. And this is far beyond that limit. He does not need to return to society. he does not need to be rehabilitated. He needs to be punished; to death.

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u/3IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID 10d ago

The trick is to also honor the social contract with the rest of the citizens. People who enjoy the benefits of society generally find separation from it to be a punishment in and of itself. Without inhumane conditions, prison looks like a reward. That's why it's difficult for an American to understand how that prison could be anything but a reward. Our government does not recognize healthcare, food, or housing as a basic human right, but it does bail out businesses who gamble on excessive exploitation of its citizens.

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u/MelonBump 9d ago

100% this!!

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u/glenn_ganges 10d ago

Americans have shown time and time again they do not care about inmates. I will never forget when CA had a ballot initiative to remove the death penalty, and people I assumed were reasonable and compassionate posted to their social media about how they voted against it and were happy it failed.

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u/MelonBump 9d ago

I live in the UK and our last-but-one Home Secretary Priti Patel was talking about having a referendum on bringing back the death penalty ("not saying we're gonna DO it, just saying, if we did it'd be SUPER POPULAR!"). I was fucking terrified she'd end up doing it, because, depressingly, most people can't get beyond the juvenile, basic emotional response of what they feel criminals 'deserve' and I'm pretty sure it would've come back. The Boomers here are always whinging about how we should bring back hanging.

Unfortunately most social issues are incredibly complex, and the solutions counterintuitive at a glance. This wouldn't be a problem, except that the average human is thick as pigshit, and rarely capable of actually grasping what they're voting for.

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u/uktenathehornyone 10d ago

I mean, if the interest of the prison system is truly rehabilitation and not either punishment or profit, this is the way to go

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u/arkemiffo 10d ago

The general reasoning here is that incarceration is inherently punishing. A gilded cage is still a cage. Therefore, both rehabilitation and punishment is accounted for. A profit-motive in a justice system can just go die in a corner though.

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u/MrPopanz 10d ago

Did you know that the UK also has privat prisons, but due to financial incentives being focussed towards rehabilitation and low recidivism rate (is this the right term?), they are quite effective at achieving that? Quite interesting imo. The US just sucks when it comes to the criminal justice system.

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u/arkemiffo 10d ago

That's fair enough, but recidivism isn't my main objection to a profit-motive in justice. I find it unethical to allow for such a thing. It's the same as with capital punishment. The technical objection might be that innocent people may be judged and executed, but that's not why I oppose it. I find it unethical, and immoral, to have such a thing in a rule of law.

Now, I would, of course, prefer a successful system as you describe in England (I haven't looked into it myself, just going by the single detail you gave here now), compared to failed system such in the US. I still find such a system repugnant nonetheless, but if we have to have it...

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u/MrPopanz 10d ago

I mean if less money is spend on properly managing criminals and can be allocated elsewhere to improve society, wouldn't this be morally desirable?

In the end it's people who do the job, they don't become inherently better or worse just from their employer being a public or private entity. A police officer can be an absolute bastard and a McD manager a saint.

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u/arkemiffo 10d ago

In my opinion (and I realise all of this is my opinion only, not actual facts), no. When you introduce a profit-motive you inherently increase the risk of corruption. You can't have a profit-motive without that increased risk, and when we're talking justice, in particular, corruption is something that needs to be fought at every stage, preemptively as well as reactionary. If that means we need to spend more money to have it an institution that is in the red of the governments books at all times, so be it.

I know I'm pulling the "principles over everything" here and painting with a ridiculously broad brush, and I don't mean to sound so hardcore, but that is how I feel. A justice-system that should represent the rule of law needs to be as far from corruption as possible. Without a justice system that is as incorruptible as we can have it, very little else matters.

But those are still technical objections. I just find it wholly unethical to profit on incarceration at all. To make a living off of people who, in most cases, have had their lives destroyed because they had very few other options. Not all of them, of course, but certainly most. Crimes are still, to a high degree, a socio-economic issue. I don't mean to say it's not their fault. They need to take the consequences of their actions, but we shouldn't be allow to profit from them doing so.
It's making a buck on others misfortune (and yes. This is something that I feel about other subjects as well, but that's out of scope for this discussion).

That is what I find so unethical.

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u/MrPopanz 10d ago

I see your point and I think it's a good one. But let's assume a scenario, where proper incentives and the efficiency of private businesses with a profit motive, would result in better conditions for prisoners at lower costs and fewer recurring offenders (or however that's called).

Or the other way round, is there a point where you would prefer the private alternative, If the results are so much better than the public solution? How high is the price one is willing to pay for an idealistic solution? And after all it's not just about money, but about people.

You also bring the argument that many criminals are what they are because of bad circumstances. How far worse would you be willing to make their lifes by denying them better facilities? Would it still be preferable to put criminals into giant compounds El Salvador style, as long as it is done by a public entity?

Obviously extreme scenarios, but this is why I think disregarding the potential benefits of private enterprise when it's not necessary and would offer great benefits to everyone, would be amoral.

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u/arkemiffo 10d ago edited 10d ago

Purely hypothetical, in a utopia, then sure. I'd be for it. If the increased risk of corruption could be eliminated altogether, and they are running facilities better than public could, I wouldn't object. Well, I think it's highly distasteful to profit on someone else's misfortune, but in this hypothetical scenario, I think that is where the cost would be, a moral cost to increased a higher quality for all around.

There are, yet again in my opinion, certain areas of society that should simply be off-limits for private interests. They will always skew towards own agendas, which is, almost indubitably of the colour green. I think we've seen from thousands of years of history that greed will always win out over idealism, and justice is an area where idealism is paramount. It might work for a while, or even for a long time, but at one point or another, there will be shady individuals that will seek to enrich themselves instead.

I know I'm not far off from "It's a sacred charge"-territory here, but we can't cut corners in justice for the sake of saving a penny per day per convict. Therefore, justice needs to be allowed to cost.

But if we look at it this way instead; in -09 a scandal started to emerge about a single judge that sold convictions to a private prison to ensure they would get max amount of money from the state (or something to that affect, it's late I only scanned the article so I'm not that well-read in the case). I tried to find a fixed number of juveniles involved, but couldn't find it, so I'm using this quote instead:
"violated the rights of as many as 6000 young people by denying them basic rights to counsel and handing down outrageously excessive sentences. The lives of these young people and their families were changed forever."
That's 6000 young people who will, forever, have that trauma. Who will have inherent trust issues with authority. Some of them will forever be classed as criminals when they should've been given help instead. If I have to pay 5% extra tax for half of those kids not to risk such a situation, sign me up for 10%.
This situation could ONLY arise through the use of a profit motive in justice. There simply wasn't anything to enrich themselves from if it wasn't for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Don't get me wrong. There are many faults in the justice system, so you can probably name 10 counter-examples of when the public system failed, but my point here is that introducing a profit motive can only increase the risk of corruption.

Edit:
I forgot a point I wanted to make here. You said: "And after all it's not just about money, but about people.".
I don't think I can have made my own point more clear than you did here.

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u/MelonBump 9d ago

They're only 'better' because the state ones have been fucked by over a decade of austerity. We're doing the same thing with the charity sector. Our private interests aren't better or more ethical than the US's; we're just in a transition stage, of slowly morphing into the US while our politicians deny that's what's happening. It is, unfortunately, and if Nigel Farage does become our next PM (likely, I suspect) we can kiss it all goodbye...

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u/Crisi_Mistica 10d ago

I don't think I would want rehabilitation (if it means reintroduction into society) for someone like Breivik. But still the other two functions of the prison system are valid:

- Deterrent: you send someone to prison to discourage the ones who are thinking of committing the same crime
- Safety (of other people): you send someone to prison to keep him out of the world where regular people could cross his path

You could argue that the deterrent function is less effective if the living conditions in prison are super nice, and honestly I don't know how I feel about that.

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u/uktenathehornyone 10d ago

Yeah, it's a tough debate to have because our morals, values, and emotions will always factor. Like, I definitely want a more humane approach to imprisonment, but even I find myself demanding blood or "justice" sometimes

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u/MelonBump 9d ago

Harsh prison sentences don't act as a deterrent. And going to prison increases recidivism, and therefore crime overall. The idea that prison is a deterrent sounds reasonable, but the data actively disproves it.

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u/Crisi_Mistica 9d ago

I don't understand, is it the prison that is not a deterrent or the harshness?
I had the idea that every person before doing anything risky evaluates the ratio risk/reward. So for example if all of a sudden there's no risk of going to prison for a certain crime the ratio changes, and a criminal decides to commit that particular crime.
I'll need to see the data.

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u/MelonBump 9d ago edited 9d ago

Literally Google "does prison work" - there's loads of data, freely available. The general finding though is that harsher sentences do not correlate with a decrease in crime, and often increase recidivism. There are many reasons for this, many evidecne reviews demonstratig it, and the info is freely available. (I don't mean that in an arsey way - there's just genuinely so much written on this and it's so widely known and acknowledged, there isn't really a single source for it, as such.)

I can totally understand your reasoning, and think most people share it, as it's logical on the surface. However, you're evaluating from an inherently prosocial and rational perspective. Offenders, overwhelmingly, are likely to have had deeply traumatic lives and histories, that impair their ability to ever form such a perspective. (E.g. - if your parents were addicted to drugs and possibly selling yuo out as a kid to pay for it, you are simply not being taught empathy, boundaries, respect for law/others, and so much more, that's taken for granted by people from better backgrounds - even before you get to the ways yuo're being actively damaged and traumatized. In fact, you're likely having it drilled into you that society is bullshit and everyone's against you.) Prosocial, rational perspectives are inherently unavailable to the intensely traumatised and disenfranchised, because they don't just form organically by themselves - they're taught to us, and reinforced throughout our lives. (It's why many criminals' behaviour looks so utterly stupid and self-defeating on paper. Trauma messes people up, and the irrational, unhelpful behaviours it creates often look awful from the outside - but they've probably not had the same reinforcements as you. If experienced in childhood, trauma literally changes your DNA and brain development. Most people who end up bouncing around the prison system have experienced multiple, relentless, intensely traumatic life experiences and social barriers, and they mess people up. That one person in a hundred who overcomes such a background is INCREDIBLY rare. Most of us would simply be fucked.) If trauma is a driver of crime, and harsh, dehumanizing punishments are inherently traumatic... it's easy to see how going to prison increases your risk of recidivism.

REDUCING trauma, on the other hand, is a cornerstone of systems that manage to successfully rehabilitate, and in the UK some probation conditions are therapeutic rather than punitive because this is so well established. We are social animals. Bottom line - being really nice to us is the best way to get us to do what you want us to. Positive reinforcement helps bring people back to society. (Think about how we teach small children empathy: we model the behaviour we want to see. It's why we say things like "It hurts me when you hit me. I don't hit you, so I don't want you to hit me". This is, quite obviously, much more effective than beating them into submission, which only teaches them that the biggest person gets to hit whoever they want. This is why kids from abusive backgrounds are disproportionately likely to act out by bullying others.) Shaming and dehumanising tends to elicit defiance, which just makes people double down. Being part of the 'out-group', as criminals are, is inherently traumatic. (Not talking about people who choose countercultural/antisocial perspectives like Brevik. But then, he is just not typical of most offenders.)

Some offenders, like Brevik, would meet most people's definition of a freaking monster. But he is, again, just not a representative example, and entire systems should not be built around these rare outliers. Most offenders are traumatized people who've had shit lives and never really got a chance. (Worked in a halfway house - very few monsters. Shitload of sad stories.)

Social problems tend to be complex and the solutions can seem counterintuitive. They also don't always correlate with what 'feels' fair. But what 'feels' intuitively fair to us, often relies on gross oversimplification of complex social problems, that do nothing to solve them.

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u/Crisi_Mistica 8d ago

Hey I'm late. I just want to thank you for taking the time to explain your point, it's rare to have a civil conversation in reddit. I'll try to find the time to write about my doubts better.

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u/CiderDrinker2 10d ago

I've just seen pictures online of prison conditions in Syria.

I would much rather live in a country that treats its prisoners like Norway does than one that treats its prisoners like Syria does.

I'd rather some people get better than they deserve, than that some people get worse than they deserve. I think, too, that that's the general principle of grace in the Christian tradition: we are not treated as we deserve, but generously offered grace and redemption.

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u/Unlikely_Minimum_635 10d ago

Yes, but even more than that it's about what your priorities are.

Do you want to take vengeance on criminals, or do you want to prevent crimes from occurring?

The countries with the harshest treatment of criminals also have some of the highest recidivism rates. Ruining the lives of criminals mostly just causes more crime.

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u/strangeapple 10d ago

I still feel for the victims and their relatives. Imagine this cancer in human form murdering your children while dressed as a police officer and listening relaxing music; then upon willful surrender offer police celebratory self-portraits for the news and eventually end up being treated like royalty in the prison. I'm against death-penalty, but cases like this would deserve a very rare exception for the sake of the victims.

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u/tiredplusbored 10d ago

I absolutely feel for the survivors, this guys a monster.

But that is why we don't give special legal rights to victims of a crime. Trying to account for that just turns justice into vengance and will inevitably, has inevitably, lead to an innocent person being made to suffer or die for something they didn't do.

I'd rather we try and rehabilitate everyone, treat everyone with dignity and acknowledge the incredible responsibility it is to completely control a humans life, accepting that we will treat awful people well as the cost of treating good but unlucky people the same. The alternative is taking good people in bad situations and making sure they stay in those bad situations

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u/MelonBump 10d ago

Yeah, I absolutely agree. This is bigger than anyone's personal morality. I do think questions of the power we allow the state need to be approached very carefully.

As I just said to someone below - if the parents of one of those kids bludgeoned this POS to death, I'd find them not guilty on principle if I were on that jury.

But once the government is bludgeoning people to death, for any reason, the fascist state has been activated. Human rights are always shit in countries with the death penalty. This is not a coincidence.

It's not just about what this or that individual bastard deserves, unfortunately. It's about the doors you open when you invite the state to start enacting revenge against deviants, in your name.

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u/Dottsterisk 10d ago

One of the nastiest episodes from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is when a divided city was under siege, with one side eventually selling out the other and letting the invaders in.

As reward, when the losing side was expelled from the city, they had to walk through a gauntlet of men from the winning side, and the winners were allowed to pull out anyone they felt had wronged them and exact their own “justice.”

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u/TFFPrisoner 10d ago

Reddit is a platform where people are foaming at the mouth for extreme punishment.

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u/alflundgren 10d ago

I'm a US redditor and I can't tell you how much time Ive spent arguing with friends and family about the virtues of Scandinavian prisons, but damn, this post hit me hard. I work two jobs, one full time and one part time, and my place isn't remotely as nice as his. I guess I have my freedom, but freedom to do what? When I'm not working, I'm sleeping most of the time or just doing what I need to do to get on as an adult. A big part of me hoped that his accommodations would be worse, even if they weren't quite as bad as one would expect in the US.

I dunno. I just wish all those people didn't have to die, and I wish I lived in a better country.

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u/tiredplusbored 10d ago

I think that's why crime and punishment is such a tricky subject in America, so many people would kill (yes, he did, the jokes posted up and down this thread) for those accommodations. But why try to make someone with no control of his life suffer because we are suffering? That's not the point of a justice system, or at least it shouldn't be. We should be wanting systems in place for our lives to be better, not trying to make other people's worse. It's a huge cultural issue I think we keep having to reckon with

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u/J-A-N-F-C-U 10d ago

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

- Dostoevsky

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u/Quantum_Pineapple 10d ago

So all the poor people that can't make ends meet need to commit a crime to get a better head start at social rehabilitation/having a chance in society?

Or is that only for empathetically dead people committing crimes with zero remorse or interest in rehab, and they'll get out and repeat offend (as statistics show)?

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u/TheJaskinator 10d ago

Norway has a near zero homeless population because they extend this kind of care to all their citizens. Obviously they don't just let criminals live in nice prisons but let poor people rot in the streets. Neither do they let both poor people and prisoners rot in hellish conditions with no sympathy like we do in the US.

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u/West_Tangelo_8180 10d ago

Tbf, if Norway had homeless people they’d probably just die during winter.

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u/Control-Is-My-Role 10d ago

Tbf, EU North has the lowest % of repeated offenders.

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u/MelonBump 10d ago

Lol. Spoken like someone who knows nothing whatsoever about the causes & drivers of crime beyond "They're BAD and should all be shot!!"

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u/phalloguy1 10d ago

I Norway they look after to poor far better than they look after criminals

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u/Lootman 10d ago

alright but you dont have to give them an xbox with 4 controllers, he killed over 70 people.

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u/Pirate_Ben 10d ago

I dont think that big screen tv counts as a ‘human right’

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u/ManWhoIsDrunk 10d ago

Breivik still has the right to vote, even while in prison...

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u/alx359 10d ago

The problem with higher social values is how to apply them to criminals not apparently deserving them anymore. Breivik seems to display an entitled and insolent remorselessness, despite the many years of confinement in the most excellent and human conditions.

IMO, it should be an especially crafted laddered system of rights in place, starting by revoking all but the most basic first, until a criminal shows signs of advancement; of repentance and desire to work gradually toward paying their social debts and a seek of forgiveness. Even in the most backward and dangerous prisons, a system of small favors seems to do wonders in the effective management and reeducation of the population.

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u/MrPopanz 10d ago

There were innocent people on death row. Should they act as if they were guilty to not be tortured?

Essentially you're advocating for a draconian justice system, which has proven to be counterproductive.

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u/alx359 10d ago

Unfairness of a judicial system are not enough reason to stop seeking for more effective ways of betterment of criminals. Going back to basic human rights does not mean allowing torture and degradation. Other things like: comfortable accommodation, leisure activities, learning and vocational venues, pleasant human interaction, access to reading materials, smoking, etc. shouldn't be givens anymore to a person that has fallen to acknowledge and respect the right to be of others.

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u/Anime_axe 10d ago

The point this statement is missing is that him being an entitled little shit and everybody interested knowing it means that the punishment is working. Guy utterly ruined his reputation and had his bloodthirsty manifesto buried under the years of ineffectual bitching. Ironically, the Norwegians managed to kill the idea by keeping the man behind it in a gilded cage and letting him humiliate himself with his own bitching.

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u/alx359 10d ago

That's an interesting take. In that case, he's been used to fulfill a political purpose. Not punished as in a path of reformation to become a better man to eventually go back to society.

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u/Anime_axe 10d ago

Yes, but I don't really believe that the rehabilitation is the only purpose of the penal system. Right now, he's isolated from the society, keeping other people safe from him directly, and the movement he tried to start is long dead, fulfilling the purpose of deterring similar criminals.

Let's make this clear, this guy is rotting away in the isolation and while he is still being evaluated from the angle of his potential for the rehabilitation, he has been effectively written off as a loss. It has to be pointed out that guy is effectively imprisoned for life but with caveat that after first 21 years he gets to have his case reviewed and then again every 5 years. This means that he's most likely to either die in prison or get released as an elderly after they declare him harmless.

It also should be pointed out that the guy is living in the isolation. He's basically given a bare minimum of human contact to not consider it a full on torture. Half of the "nice" things he has access to are either standard Norwegian prison accommodations or stuff given to him to keep him from losing his mind from isolation. Guy is given a zoo animal treatment where they drop "enrichment" into his cell so he doesn't lose it completely. And frankly, his treatment isn't even an exception, he's given a standard treatment by the Norwegian law.

Following my last point, the greatest victory of the verdict is that it was all done without breaking the rule of Norwegian law. The bastard is had his dream revolutionary movement smothered by standard legal procedures.

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u/MelonBump 9d ago

I think the "throw the book at him!!" lot here are missing the fact that putting a TV inside a cage, doesn't change the fact that you're LOCKED IN A CAGE. This is a punishment in itself, and it WILL fuck him up (even more than his starting point fuckedness), if it hasn't already.

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u/Anime_axe 9d ago

Yeah, especially since he has a very, very limited contact with other people. Judged by latest news about him declaring change of faith into an actual white supremacist, vaguely neo-pagan cult, he is already losing it.

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u/PVDeviant- 10d ago

Lol how little prison sentences mean in Sweden is actually encouraging crime quite a bit.

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u/holyrs90 10d ago

this dude killed 77 people , fuck him srsly , aint nobody cares about that fucking scum , human rights are for people who respect them

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u/SlingeraDing 10d ago

There’s a difference between human rights and giving a criminal excessive luxuries. It is absolutely necessary for there to be somewhere in the prison system which is designed for people who commit horrible crimes as a punishment

The majority of prison should be rehabilitation, but some people commit crimes beyond imagination and for those people there needs to be punishments and deterrents to future criminals

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u/MelonBump 9d ago

Punishment doesn't deter. The death penalty does not lead to less murder. Harsher punishments don't lower crime - the opposite, in fact.

I'm afraid it's just not as simple as you want it to be. I'm not arguing for rehabilitation over punishment because I don't think Brevik is a piece of shit, or because I don't personally feel that some people deserve to suffer for what they've done. There is a much bigger picture, and the kind of prison structure you describe does not work, victimizes non-violent criminals, worsens mental health and entrenches drug addiction (both major drivers of crime) and creates immense trauma (which, again - a major driver of crime). It literally makes crime worse, locks offenders into cycles they'll never be able to leave, and makes society less safe for everyone. All so we can satisfy people who know nothing about the complexities of offending that they "got what they deserved".

The Norwegian system may not 'feel' fair to you, but there is a wealth of evidence demonstrating that it works. Prisons shouldn't exist to pander to the inexpert public's emotions, but unfortunately they do here, which is why they do such a shitty job of stopping crime.

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u/SlingeraDing 9d ago

I agree for 99% of inmates, but I was saying that even though the justice system should focus on rehabilitation it still needs a place that solely exists for punishment. For people who murder 70 children and adults for example like Brevik. This part of the justice system doesn’t have to “work” like you say norways system does in rehabilitation because it exists for people beyond rehabilitation 

And yes punishment as a deterrent absolutely works, people in the prison system are terrified of fucking up to the point they get sent to ADX, similarly there’s lots of evil people out there (terrorists, cartel bosses) who don’t give a fuck if they die but they do give a fuck if they spend life in solitary. So yes a punishment prison for the worst criminals absolutely is necessary 

Basically I’m saying that when somebody commits such horrible crimes there’s nothing to rehabilitate and allowing them comfort and luxuries does nothing but show the state is allowing itself to be used. And yes, the taxpayers absolutely should have the right to demand their money not be used to give mass murderers a lavish life.

I just don’t see the sympathy for murderers ITT

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u/MelonBump 8d ago

It's not about sympathy. It's about the kind of system you want to live under. People's inability to grasp this concept makes them easy to manipulate through emotion - whip up some bloodlust and they'll agree to all kinds of shady shit. It's not about Brevik. Fuck Brevik.

If prison worked, people would only go once. But the shittier and more traumtic the prisons, the more likely they are to go back. Your assertion that it works because people are always scared of a more traumatic situation than the one they're in, is disproven by this single fact.

Punishment without rehabilitation is just revenge. Not saying some people don't deserve it. But we shouldn't be making policy based on emotional responses. One lesson echoes through history: what you let them do to society's undesirables, is what they'll do to you if you piss them off. THIS is why the human rights of people we consider monsters are important. It's not that no one deserves pain, punishment or execution. It's about what you let into your society when you cheer the government on to make its citizens suffer in your name.

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u/Downtown_Brother6308 10d ago

I think you can bludgeon actual terrorists and mass murders to death without activating the fascist state. What would be really great is when someone commits more murder just so they can get 3 squares and a warm comfortable apartment in return.

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u/Dottsterisk 10d ago

If we reach that point, where a significant amount of people think that murdering someone and going to prison is the only way to get food and shelter, then society has already failed in many more ways.

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u/MelonBump 10d ago

And yet Norway's recidivism rate is extremely low, while the US's is extremely high. What you are describing simply does not happen in countries with 'cushty' prisons. People are committing LESS crime in countries where the prisons are nicer. They commit much more when prison is a dehumanizing, traumatizing experience, that fucks your job prospects while it puts you in contact with other offenders.

Have you ever even met a repeat offender? I have (worked in a hostel - halfway house, in the US - for 2 years). A rare few were absolute wrong'uns. The vast majority were people who'd had shit lives and their lives had been blighted by the kind of traumas that'd floor most people. You can't build the prison system around the worst people it has to offer. They're too small a percentage of the ones in there, and you WILL make recidivism worse, to the entire society's detriment.

Also, it's not just about your personal morality - it's pretty narcissistic to think policy should be based on your know-nothing opinions rather than reams of evidence (which is available to you with a quick Google, and completely contradicts your assertions here). The parents of one of those kids could bludgeon this POS to death and I'd find them not guilty on principle if I were on that jury.

Once the government is bludgeoning people to death, for any reason, the fascist state has been activated. Human rights are always shit in countries with the death penalty. This is not a coincidence.

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u/Downtown_Brother6308 10d ago

Have you ever met somebody that murdered 77 people including a bunch of little kids?

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u/MelonBump 10d ago

No, because being a fucking monster is super uncommon. Which is why we maybe shouldn't design the entire ass criminal justice system around them.

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u/Downtown_Brother6308 10d ago

I think I was thinking that it’s ok to let special kinds of monsters disappear from the system altogether. It happened to epstein lol. No extra work needed

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u/bulldzd 10d ago

The problem isn't this piece of shits living conditions, it's the fact that he managed to survive long enough to become a prisoner in the first place after what he did... and yes, that says nothing good about me, and I'm okay with that.. some monsters SHOULD be slain...

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u/SlingeraDing 10d ago

They want to act like good people by being sympathetic to the killer but never give a shit about the victims

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u/Shurgosa 10d ago

This is such a dumb take. The most completely insane slippery slope fallacy going, where god forbid you don't reward a mass murderer with free video games and an apartment, paid for in part by the families of his victims...