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Chinese react with disbelief to photos of Norwegian prison
Translation from a Chinese magazine:Norway's unrepentant mass killer, Anders Behring Breivik, is now under arrest. And he should count himself lucky for -- if entirely undeserving of -- a penal system in that country that is among the cushiest in the world. There's no capital punishment, and the longest jail term allowed is 21 years (a caveat: if a prisoner is deemed to still be a threat, his sentence can be extended in five-year blocks indefinitely, though it's highly unlikely, according to Norwegian officials). In Norway, rehabilitation is the guiding principle, not punishment -- a somewhat difficult notion to swallow given the gravity and callousness of his crimes. "Both society and the individual simply have to put aside their desire for revenge, and stop focusing on prisons as places of punishment and pain," one Norwegian prison official told the Daily Mail. "Depriving a person of their freedom for a period of time is sufficient punishment in itself without any need whatsoever for harsh prison conditions." Norway's newest jail may hold rapists and murderers, but Halden Prison -- the country's second largest and most secure facility -- looks more like a posh sleepaway camp. In fact, architects say they purposely tried to avoid an "institutional feel." When it opened in 2010, some news accounts called it the "most humane" prison in the world. According to Time magazine, the prison is spread over 75 acres "of gently sloping forest. To avoid an institutional feel, exteriors are not concrete but made of bricks, galvanized steel and larch; the buildings seem to have grown organically from the woodlands." The prison boasts a state-of-the-art gym, complete with a rock-climbing wall. Guards don't carry guns and are encouraged to be outgoing and friendly toward the inmates -- they eat together and play sports in mixed teams to create a sense of family, according to officials. The following comments were made by Chinese: If prison is too comfortable, then everyone will want to go there, and society's law will become even more ineffective. If the Heavenly Kingdom's prisons were this comfortable, the crime rate would definitely go up. What kind of world is this... Other country's convicts are living easier lives than I am!!! How is that like a prison sentence? It's clearly a vacation! After 30 years of being lost, I have finally found a goal in life: Illegally immigrate to Norway and blow up several buildings. Being kind to the killer is being cruel to the kind innocent people! Norway's type of so-called "being civilized" is just trampling on the respect for the lives of the kind and innocent! Posted by: gromky 2011-08-07 |
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