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Sweden Is Closing Many Prisons Due to Lack of Prisoners
rtoz writes "Sweden is taking steps to close many prisons due to lack of prisoners. This year alone, four prisons and a detention center got closed in Sweden. The percentage of the population in Sweden prison is significantly lower than in most other countries. ... Though the Swedish Government is taking steps to close the prisons, the crime rate in Sweden has increased slightly. It seems they are planning to take steps for preventing crime rather than focusing on jailing people involved in criminal activities."
Well, tragic that the prison industry is too profitable in the US to follow suit, anyway.
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All those precious moments of a Cold War youth, and all I have to show for them is that I saw them go down the memory hole.
The most disturbing thing to me is that, on a different site, that comment could be construed as both, serious AND insightful.
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Drug use is not the problem, nor is it something that needs to be prevented. In fact, you get rid of the bullshit, it practically prevents itself.
The vast majority of all drug use is not harmful to society. Let's face some facts here. Alcohol is far more dangerous to health and safety than most drugs have ever been combined. Let's also be realistic and set aside marijuana into another category; Use and Distribution. Only its distribution is associated with crimes beyond the act of distribution itself. Crimes associated with use are less prevalent and damaging than crimes associated with alcohol. IIRC, several campuses have outright admitted they wished there was more weed usage than alcohol usage for that same reason.
An artificial economy created by prohibition is responsible for the crimes. If an addict could get meth/heroin/coke cheaply at a pharmacy along with the opportunity for help that would eliminate most of the problems.
We never did learn any lessons from prohibition of alcohol did we?
California has a problem with overcrowded prisons. Sweden has a problem with prisons being unoccupied.
I sense an opportunity for a good capitalist.
No, keep your filth right where it is.
What the US should be doing is disarming its law ENFORCEMENT agency and let it become again a police force.
What the US should be doing is let less and less people go to prison. And those that go, shoudl go to be rehabilitated into civil society. In other words the US should be inspired by european moral values and not the shitty "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" bullshit ideology that underlies its entire judicial system. Designed only to put people into prison for minor deeds.
He's clearly referring to heavy drugs. Meth addicts will do stupid things for their next fix.
That's the whole point. If the "stupid" thing a meth addict has to do is panhandle for 20 minutes, walk to Walgreens, by a little baggie and kit, that's far less damaging to society.
All of those "stupid" things are completely eliminated when you get rid of drug prohibition.
Do you need to stupid things, pay exorbitant amounts of money, enable organized crime, slink in the shadows, etc. to get some fucking beer? Or do you go down to the liquor store, slap down a few bucks, and get fucked up in your own home peaceably?
there is a difference between a police officer with a ford sedan, a pistol or 2 with a couple of extra clips, taser, baton, pepper spray and bullet-proof vest, and a police officer with an armoured personnel carrier, machine gun, hand grenades and storm trooper outfit
The US suffers a "inefficiency of scale" problem -- the idea of acting like a citizen.
... and we don't get micromanaged like what happens in European countries ...
...
Many of the continental European countries are more tightly bound in the human spirit and sense of identity and culture than the USA.
The USA suffers from "what's in it for me?" freeloaders and "what's in it for me?" capitalists and "what's in it for me?" politicians --- all of which miss grander and greater human concepts.
Although people in the USA generally have a lot of freedom and very little oversight
pros and cons, everyone wants the cake and eat it too
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
[i] Sweden has shown the ability to rehabilitate around twice as effectively as the USA(20% recedivism vs 60% here, ergo 80% effective vs 40%)[/i]
I think an important point being overlooked in this discussion is an analysis of the conditions that drove the inmates to crime in the first place. How many crimes are committed by someone trying to callously shortcut the rules of society vs. someone down on their luck or just trying to survive? Perhaps there's nothing particularly special about the rehabilitation methods performed by the prisons, but instead, Sweden's done a top job of addressing the underlying issues.
Also - and I have to bring it up - stupid-ass drug laws. If we can't legalize the mostly harmless recreational drugs out there, can we PLEASE stop locking people up for minor drug offenses, and instead fine them, like traffic violations (which are actually, you know, dangerous) and other civil infractions? Fines would actually help regulate the 'problem' while RAISING MONEY instead of needlessly locking up harmless people (destroying their lives in the process) which then becomes a gigantic drain on society due to the fact that we've now made them effectively wards of the state. It's fucking idiotic, man. Catch a guy smoking a joint? Slap him with a $150 ticket. No criminal record established, just show up and pay your fine and everything is golden. Don't slam his face into the pavement and seize his house and pull his children into state custody and ruin his reputation for the rest of his life, ensuring that when he finally gets out of prison, he'll turn to crime, because you've eliminated any and all chances that he'll magically fall into being a useful member of society after you've branded him for life. Nobody wants to hire the guy that just spent months in lockup on drug charges. The system we have here now does not 'rehabilitate' anyone. It brands them with a criminal record that they can never live down, often for minor charges. OF COURSE they turn to crime - even if what they were doing was harmless and not immoral in any way. They were convicted and served sentences and were told by everyone that they were a criminal and did criminal things. Why wouldn't they turn to crime when released? Everyone thinks they're a criminal anyway.
Perhaps the difference is that Europeans do not go overboard, in every aspect. In general we do not have a lot of drug addicts and we surely do not throw them in jail after their 3rd strike. We also try to help them out as far as we can with treatments and support so they generally do not have to fall back to crime to 'just get by'.
You can go to a doctors and they will make sure you get the treatment you need.
Reminds me of the 'If Breaking Bad happened in Canada' pic. Which is not to say we don't have problems, we just try to make sure our jails are full of murderers and thugs and the like, not some poor kid that had a tough break.
And mind you, we also treat our prisoners differently and hold then in a different environment.
I think that fixing the crime and prison problem in the US and many other countries is not just a question of laws and regulations, but about changing your society as a whole.
You're behind the times. GCHQ have their own slashdot.
Of course, who knows which one you're reading at the moment...
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Sad thing is the whole 'treatment over punishment' thing was originally an American system that other countries copied because it was working fairly well, but then the US abandoned it favor of righteous suffering.
The problem of the US prisons is pretty well exactly that of England before the American Revolution - private prisons that make a profit out of a government that they ask, with inducements, to send a lot of people their way for minor crimes. The only real difference is the US taxpayer is supplying the profits instead of the prisoners paying a lot of it.
This is a problem, but the bigger problem is that the US system is focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Rather than trying to bring these people back into society and make them productive and upstanding citizens, we push them to the margins. We make finding a job after prison exceedingly difficult and only the most menial and low-class jobs will accept former criminals. We strip citizens of the right to vote, which devalues them. We have very lengthy sentences (To punish those evildoers!) for fairly harmless crimes, which is devastating to families and pushes people into poverty needlessly. Depending on the crime, we put them on lists and track them for life which makes their post-prison lives difficult.
Sweden, on the other hand, focuses on bringing people who have strayed from the path back into society. Their methods work. However, if anyone in the US wants to employ their methods, they are seen as "soft on crime" at worst. At best, they can't get the funding needed to enact meaningful rehabilitation programs. It is far cheaper (in the short term) and easier to put people in cages compared to education and rehabilitation.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Isn't it more likely prosecution is difficult because there is frequently no evidence and no eyewitnesses, just one persons word against another? In those circumstances it *should* be hard to get a conviction.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace