How do European nations deal with ex-convicts

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Over in this thread there is a discussion about how politics in Europe tends to be to the left of politics in the US.

Granted there are over 20 distinct countries in western europe, so what applies for one isn’t going to apply to all. But how do European countries deal with people who have committed crimes who then need to be reintegrated into society? One of the things I liked about the Bush admin was the second chance act of 2007, which funded employment programs, substance abuse programs, mental health counseling, etc for people reentering society.

In Europe they have far fewer people in prison, so I don’t know how big of a problem that is over there. The population of people who have been arrested and/or convicted is far lower.

I’ve read 6% of the US population have been convicted of a felony at some people in their lives. I’m assuming the misdemeanor rate is 10-20% (as a guess). So that is a lot of people who would have trouble finding jobs.

It recently came out that 1/3 of all people under 23 have been arrested. I tend to assume that is because of the fact that we are becoming a society less tolerant of any kind of behavior seen as a threat to the public order.

It really bothers me the way we have criminalized youthful stupidity and mental illness in this country (about 25% of people in prison are seriously mentally ill). I’m hoping Europe in general has a more enlightened attitude, but I have no idea.

How do European countries deal with their criminal populations who have served their sentences and want to reintegrate? Is discrimination during employment legal in most european countries? What about housing?

2

In the Netherlands criminals start reintegration while in prison. They would typically be offered support in dealing with any debt they might have, as well as following training sessions on how to deal with aggression and that sort of thing.

Once they actually leave things are a little harder as they are expected to organise things like a place to stay, ID, a job etc for themselves. There is a system of “Exodus houses” to support them if they need it, as well as service points where they can just ask for information on how to do things and where to go etc.

People with actual mental health problems don’t (usually) get a prison sentence, they are institutionalised and treated until they are deemed safe/fit to reintegrate.

How effective all of this is in actual practice I have no idea.

One thing I wonder though: prison sentences are typically much shorter than in the US, so perhaps spending less time “outside society” contributes to faster reintegration? I also think (but this is based entirely on tv + that one Louis Theroux, so possibly distorted) that the prison environment itself is very different. I would say… less harsh and perhaps a little more beneficial/educative? (But I am no expert, maybe my perception here is totally off.)

3

Norwegians have some of the most humane prisons not only in Europe, but of the world.

And these humane prisons lead to less recidivsm.

In general (leaving aside the problems of corruption and lack of understanding of human rights in the Eastern Europe, former communist countries), Western Europe countries look at crime from a general perspective, not only from “how long in prison?” perspective:

what causes crimes? Psychological problems - get more therapeutic help; low income: get everybody a basic income people can survive on; lack of alternative career choices: get everybody a free education and a chance at a decent job (though the middle class upward move possible in the 50s and 60s is slowly crumbling, too, as the middle class is eroded away);

what helps against recidivsm? Offer education and therapy in prison, so that those who missed chances outside get a second one; have groups that offer jobs or training after prison; start with low sentences for small crimes to not ruin the whole life; don’t put first-timers with hard-core criminals (don’t juveniles with adults).

In general, try to prevent crime, try to prevent recidivsm.

Added to that another law structure: State attorneys, judges or sheriffs / chief of police are not elected by the citizens, so they don’t need to appear “hard on crime”, rather, they are expected to be good at their job; there are no different levels of cops between city, county, sheriff etc., just one cop with 2+ years of training for one whole state, and after incidents of brutality at demonstrations in the 60s, the police was re-structured and training changed to make the cop a “friend and helper” to which citizens could come for help without fear. Generally, that is still true. After demonstrations in the 80s, another change was deliberate de-escalation. A lot of work is being visibly present to prevent things, know the part of town they are assigned and be at hand for people to talk to.

There’s also less cause to be convicted to prison - there’s no war on drugs, so drug policy is result-oriented towards how to help the addicts, so people don’t get convicted for possesion of one joint to 30 years or similar.

And society is less armed - people don’t routinely own guns, so less crimes are committed with guns, so less violent crimes. (Note I don’t say no violent crimes - people use knives; teens beat others to death; some people shoot cops at a traffic stop. But those are exceptions, not daily occurences).

4

We just wait for them to commit another crime and lock them up again.That’s our system.

Maybe we could cut out the middle bit and just put them in for a lot longer and stop pretending to rehabilitate them.

Or maybe we could genuinely try to rehabilitate them, don’t see either happening any time soon.

5

I totally agreed with you up to this point, but I believe that you’re wrong here (or at least you’re using a very broad brush to paint your picture):

Gun ownership (per 100 residents)
#1: USA (88.2)
#4: Switzerland (45.4, mostly military issue guns)
#8: Finland (32.0, mostly hunting rifles and shotguns)
#10: Sweden (31.6, mostly hunting rifles and shotguns)
#11: Norway (31.3, mostly hunting rifles and shotguns)
#12: France (31.2)
#13: Canada (30.8)
#14: Austria (30.4)
#15: Iceland (30.3)
etc., etc., etc.

IMHO, the big difference is not how many guns? It’s why do people own guns? European private guns (except in Switzerland) are mostly aquired for sports shooting and/or hunting, not for self defense. That’s the differnce, not the number of guns per 100 citizens.

6

While you may be right, your stat does not address the question regarding the number of people owning guns. Gun Ownership per 100 people is calculated by number of privately owned small firearms divided by number of residents. That reflects the prevelance of guns, but tells you little about who owns them. For example, a country where everyone owns one gun is very different from one where 5% of people own 20 guns each.

7

And military issue guns aren’t owned by the person who has them at home; they’re owned by the Army. Oops, the Swiss count just went down so fast it got dizzy!

Spanish prisons include training programs, funded partly by the prison and partly by non-for-profit organizations. Many of the teachers are volunteers; I recently read a double interview where the two people featured were a retired lady who volunteers teaching computer skills in a prison (computer skills which she herself learned when she joined the volunteer program), and one of her students, a basic-education-only dancer who’s in for drugs and who wants to set up a small business using these computer skills (a different volunteer is helping her with this).

There is a possibility of commuting prison for rehab programs, but I understand from someone who works in such a program that the length of time is a biiit too short for the programs’ taste; they think it would work much better if they got more time, as often the person leaves at a stage where he’s not craving the drug irresistibly any more but hasn’t learned normal behavior patterns yet; no job-searching skills, for example. There’s other rehab programs conducted within the prisons themselves.

I understand one of the “lacking points” is programs which will help people relocate, there’s only a few; if you go back to the exact same environment where you got in trouble the first time, you will most likely get in trouble again.

“Third degree” prisoners are “partially imprisoned”; they can leave the prison to go to work or to school and will not be under direct control of guards while there. The whole purpose of the third degree is to help people get back on their feet. They must sleep in prison every night except during a permit. A permit is what the name implies, a few days the prisoner gets where he can go anywhere he wants.
My cousin got an “inverted third degree”: he’d been caught selling happy pills and his lawyer realized he didn’t comprehend the consequences of his actions at all. Normally, a minor first offense would have been conditionally waived; he would have gone in only if and when he got a second one. The lawyer asked the judge for this “inverted third” instead, on the theory that it might shock Cousin Idiot into awareness. So, he slept at his mom’s every night, and every morning a police van would take him to prison, and he’d eat all three meals there, and work there, and have classes and rec time there, and come back home after dinner. And yes, it worked - scared him into his wits.

8

Well how are the criminals in Scandinavia different from the ones in America? Are there whole ghettoes in multiple states in Norway where multitudes of boys grow up with no fathers, surrounded by hustlers and thugs who are there only role models? Is there a vast underclass of second and third generation out-of-work blue collar people, often marginalized ethnic minorities, living in burned out, post-industrial shitholes? Somehow I doubt it.

When I think of crime in Norway, I can’t bring myself to think that there’s a criminal culture in the same way that there is one here in America. I’m more inclined to think that the crime is a bunch of random, isolated and mostly nonviolent activity, not part of a larger pattern.

9

No, there’s not. And we “socialist” Europeans believe that that’s because we have a decently designed social safety net, public health care and decent public education - even at college and Uni level - for all, financed by taxes. Thus we avoid the growth of abject poverty and slums/ghettos which are breeding grounds for crime.

10

Americans aren’t interested in rehabilitation. Most of us live by the “pull yourself up by your own bootstrap” mentality.

It’s hard to justify giving things to convicts if we don’t give them to people who are crime free. They used to give convicts a chance to get college degrees. This has been stopped pretty much everywhere as it’s too hard to justify the expense.

It costs a fortune to house criminals, much less try to rehabilitate them. And you aren’t going to help anyone who doesn’t want help.

Going to prison isn’t a shame anymore in the United States. It’s become in some crime trades just part of the cost of doing business. The fact that about a third of all African American men over 18 have a felony record tells you something.

Realistically how do you tell a drug runner or a crack addicted prostitute to live on minimum wage when they are getting $25 for a few minutes for a sex act or to run drugs for five minutes.

In my company we do hire ex-cons and I can count on one hand (and have two fingers left over) how many have lasted over one month. They don’t. They do try and I believe they are sincere, but it really isn’t going to happen.

When you have people who are told what to do 24 hours a day, seven days a week and then expect them to know how to behave without being told, once they’re released.

However the fact there are a few ex-cons that can make it, means that it is possible to change IF they really want to.

The only way we can get true rehabilitation for ex-cons is to open the programs offered to everyone. This way there won’t be an outcry to stop them on the grounds of fairness.

11

^ all of which means nothing unless you have a cost-benefit analysis as between average time to re-offending/re-inprisonment vs. cost of rehabilitation programs.

12

Spain definitely ain’t nowhere near Scandinavia (at least by European-scale measurements), but here “marginal people” aren’t likely to have no father or male role model around, they’re likely to have a father, grandfather, and a slew of uncles and cousins who have chosen to live in the fringes. Most of our petty criminals come from the family next door and got involved in drugs. Our organized crime includes both local groups (often families) and imported groups (who may also be families).

Here married couples who don’t want to live together any more get a separation much more often than a divorce; divorce usually means that one of them wants to remarry or that they’ve decided they hate each other; custody and visitation arrangements aren’t always followed but in most cases they are arranged directly between the couple and do get followed (divorce makes people revert to poo-flinging monkeys in every country, from what I can tell… or maybe it’s the need to fling poo at your ex what leads to divorce court). Unmarried couples who split and have children in common get custody arrangements similar to those of separated couples. Having a father that’s completely out of the picture is extremely unusual, both because of these social structures and because getting RU or an abortion is easy (the biggest problems with this are that not every young girl knows she can do this, and that if you’re unpartnered and pregnant you have a real hard time convincing the doctors that no, you do not want an abortion damnit; I even know a woman who encountered this when she had to go to the ER for something else - her pregnancy was from IVF). And even if there is a missing father or no known father, our close family structures mean there’s going to be grandfathers, uncles, cousins, or acquired versions thereof (neighbors or friends of the parents who get adopted by the kid).

13

This was wrong when you said it last year, and it’s still wrong today. Most European states, including Germany, have various police forces at the municipal, state, and national levels. In Germany most policing is done by the state police, though many cities have municipal forces which are uniformed and/or armed. There are also the federal Bundespolizei and Bundeskriminalamt, the former of which employs some 30,000 police officers.

14

Which is what I meant that “people don’t routinely own guns” - those that do hunting or belong to shooting clubs live either in rural areas or are a small number of the citizens.

If you ask 100 people on the street in Europe whether they have a gun, or feel the need to own one for protection, you’d probably get a few who belong to the sport shooting club - and even they will tell you it’s not for protection.

What answers do you get if you stop 100 people in the US on the street and ask the same thing? There was just a few days ago a thread about how somebody who lives in a dangerous neighborhood in the US needs a gun because he can’t walk the dog otherwise and because somebody shot at his window. Obviously, many more people own guns and believe in guns solving criminal problems in the US than in Europe.

15

You are aware that I am generalizing in answering a question as broadely as this - several different countries in Europe with different laws (from the big EU/ non-EU and East/West divide on to the state level), different cultures and different enforcments?

Yes, the BKA exists - but they don’t patrol the street, they solve major crimes (mostly equivalent to the FBI). Yes, the Bundespolizei and GSG9 can be seen in the border area. Yes, some cities have local forces for parking offences.

But the major encounters between the average citizen and a cop will be state-level trained cops. The Schwarze Sheriffs were withdrawn precisly because they were badly-trained, aggressive rent-a-cops and people were more worried of them than of criminals.

The average citizen who sees a cop in state uniform expects a trained professional who is ready to help the population. Not some bully with a taser demanding “respect my authoritah”. Not somebody badly trained in 3 weeks because he belongs to the Sheriff. Not somebody hired by a Sheriff elected on popularity.

To forestall further nitpickings: Again, this is generalisation because it’s an extremly broad question.
I’m NOT claiming (I never do, but that doesn’t stop your people from twisting and misinterpreting my words) that there are no bad cops, that all rehabiliation works or similar 100% / 0% perfection. Obviously, people screw up - but that makes headlines because it’s not supposed to happen. Obviously, some 5 or 10% of criminals can’t be rehabilitated because they are sociopaths, or too aggressive to get along or whatever.

But the main picture is different in many aspects of the culture.

16

Another difference: not only are the prisons built different, they are run differently:

  • no private prisons

  • guards have 2 years training.

  • the meme that “if the normal male goes to prison, he will be anal raped by a 200 pound black dude named Bubba” doesn’t exist as strongly*, because guards will be expected to put a stop immediately if this were going on.

Again, it’s not a case of “never happens” but “happens rarely and causes an outrage if revealed” - there was a case recently of a teen in juvie prison being bullied and harrassed by other teen inmates until he killed himself, and it caused an uproar in the media and an investigation as to why the guards didn’t stop this.

  • the guards are not only well-trained, they are state employees, making them less suspectible to bribes.

  • Prisoners still have their human rights***, both under EU law and local law. So prisoners have successfully sued for having a cell of 8 sqm because that’s the size that courts use to determine necessity**.

This also means that punishments are forbidden, like using pepper spray on the inmates.

As already said, prisons are also sorted, into juvie and adults, and severity.

In the (dumb for several reasons) series “Flashforward”, the team “visits” the High Security Prison … in Munich, where a Nazi criminal is kept. They show a typical US High Security place outside: rolls of barbed wire, two fences, guard doing duty with a german shepherd dog around a courtyard…

Only the prison in Munich is Stadelheimand is for small-time criminals (up to 1 1/2 years) and pre-trial stay. It has one concrete wall (with towers at the edge) andis surrounded on three sides by a cemetery with lots of trees. Bordering on one side is a real forest.
Given that members of the Weisse Rose movement were executed there, it would be doubly unsuited for Nazi criminals.
The newly built women’s prison in Munich, a short way down the road, looks more modern.

Serious criminals with long-term times in Bavaria go to Straubing - which lookslike this.

  • there is however, no difference between jail or prison - all prisons are administered by the state. So stunts like Sheriff Arpaio would be forbidden doubly, because of cruelty against people/ violation of human rights and dignity; and because a local chief of police can’t run his own prison

  • Prisoners don’t get better conditions because all citizens get access to health care and education.

Also, people on general don’t bedgrudge these things as luxury, but rather, education as necessary to get people out of the bad company that lead them to crime in the first place.

Again, to stop people twisting my words, of course we have a dumb group of the population who lives on the manipulation of the tabloids, and with exceptional crimes, they get riled up and demand harsh punishment for the offender. But the general population believes in rehabiliation.

And of course in real life there are prejudices against ex-cons. But at least theoretically, people acknowledge that once somebody served their term, their duty is paid and they have become a different person. (That’s also why a lot of crimes can no longer be persecuted by the law once enough time has passed: a theft at age 20 if you lived straight and honest for the next 20 years is no longer relevant because obviously you’ve become a different, straight person since then.)

  • to avoid the nitpickers: because of the strong influence of US serials and movies, people know more about Hollywood law rules and Miranda rights than the relevant German laws (because the average citzen rarely gets arrested)

** what is neccessary for each person to have and what is luxury according to §1, Sentence 1 of German constitution - “Human dignity shall not be violated” is judged on by courts for example for people who receive Welfare = Hartz IV; for people who get part of their pay docked because of debts, or for people who get part of their property confiscated because of debts. The courts must then decide that eg a radio is essential (right to information, §5) but a TV luxury - until they changed and decided that today, a TV is necessary, too.

*** This is mostly a development of the prison reforms done in the 1960s and 70s, for which the ground was prepared in the 50s and early 60s by psychologists, philosophers and jurists studying the effects of harsh prisons on criminals and seeing that it was more bad than good.

17

Not allowed to comment on that.

  1. Education is free or low-cost in Europe
  2. Increasing the chance of a decent job and career after the first prison term costs much less than keeping people in prison because they keep being criminals, long-term.

Most prisoners here want help. They realize that crime and the bad company isn’t as good as alternatives.
Or do you have hard evidence that most prisoners in the US reject help? Other than religious conversion, I mean.

It does not tell me that people aren’t ashamed of going to prison! Most observers say it tells them that the whole system, starting with the cops up to courts, are heavily skewed towards whites and against blacks - so for the same crime, statistics show that blacks are x% more likely to go to prison than whites, or receive a harsher sentence.
It also tells that blacks live in worse economic conditions, which means that they often see crime as the only thing that pays, which is supported by economic data and sociological studies on how much more difficult it is for blacks to get good jobs.

Realistically, by having minimum wage that people can live on in the first place. Not all of your states have it, right? And those who have it often it’s too low or doesn’t apply everywhere.
Also,most drug runners don’t livevery well on it.

And are there any supporting structures - social workers or similar - to assist them after they get out? Did they get any schooling or therapy on how to make a new life in prison?

Um, why not? After all, many of your people tout the horn on how the military makes “real men” out of mess-ups … by telling people 24 hrs. a day what to do.

Why, are the programs currently limited?

18

I believe that we can agree on that viewpoint :cool:

Painting with a very broad brush, one generally has to apply for a license to own a gun in a Western European country, and listing “self defense” as the reason for buying a gun effectively guarantees that your application will be rejected.

19

In Spain there’s a public agency which helps anybody find new jobs and/or stay up to date wrt training; the unions offer similar services. You don’t need to be unemployed; you don’t need to belong to the union offering the service, if it’s a union. You just need to go there and sign up for assistance. You can’t get any course you fancy, of course; there’s only so many slots, and each course has its own “target group” (but 10% of the class can be “out of target”).

There’s also a public college system which includes a long-distance university, and where tuition for a year in a major requiring no labwork is under 12€/credit. The amount of credits for a full-time student would be around 60/year, so total tuition on a full load would be around 720€/year. The cost of books is a joke compared with American ones; four years ago, my brother bought every single recommended book for his 3rd year of PoliSci and it came up to less than 100€ - and he was complaining like they’d pulled his teeth off. In Spain, any college will have copies of recommended books available for the students in the library, you don’t have to buy them.

Here, education is seen both as an individual right and as a benefit to society; a better-educated population (not necessarily one with more high degrees) is, well, better all around! Denying this right to people who are in prison, specially to those who previously dropped out, would be seen as a penalty in itself - and how do you justify it? We take away the right to work for the government of people who have been found guilty of “abusing their position as government workers”; will we take away the right to learn how to be a mechanic or use a computer from those who had to retake several school grades due to undiagnosed dyslexia, or who dropped out of compulsory education when their parents decided it was time for them to marry and get an adult job?

20

The argument is ‘Person ABC did something illegal, why should they get perk XYZ when I have to pay for it’.

XYZ = college education, 3 meals a day, health care, a place to sleep with heating/cooling, etc.

Sucks that we don’t instead consider creating a society where everyone has access to education, food and health care (rather than fighting over the scraps our plutocratic overlords send our way, and making sure the inmates are the last to get any scraps). But I don’t see that changing.

But you have to factor in how much money you save. Even so, you have trouble getting ‘rehabilitation’ passed because of outcry over ‘bad behavior shouldn’t be rewarded’.

As an example in Seattle they found that it costs less to give homeless drunks an apartment to live in rather than have them live on the street. You can spend $50,000 a year on police, jails and medical care or you can spend $13,000 (a little more than that) to house them in apartments.