# How do European nations deal with ex-convicts **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 26, 2012, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679 "2012-01-26T04:08:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/21 "2012-01-28T06:28:02Z")
> [@BeaMyra](#): > > …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… If not for the tax breaks would your company even hire ex-cons? ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2012, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/22 "2012-01-30T18:28:24Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > But you have to factor in how much money you save. Well yes, that is the rational argument used here, if somebody is cold enough to question why we spend money on people (which few people do - nobody sees prisoners as being pampered in Europe, except people like Russians, who commit small crimes on purpose to get into Norwegian and Scandinavian prisons. Similar to previous decades, where homeless people would commit a small theft at the start of the winter to spend the cold time in a warm prison with regular food. That changed once homeless asylums were available). > [@](#): > > Even so, you have trouble getting ‘rehabilitation’ passed because of outcry over ‘bad behavior shouldn’t be rewarded’. Well, we try to decide politics less on ideology and more on results and facts. But that’s another part of different political culture. > [@](#): > > 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. > > [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/us/05homeless.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/us/05homeless.html) Which is old news - every study shows that prevention is cheaper than treating the effect. It doesn’t surprise anybody literate over here. That’s why cities pay money to people threatened with eviction from their rented home - it’s cheaper to pay the rent than rehabilitate people on the street. It’s cheaper to prevent crime than to pay for prison. Etc. But as you said, it probably won’t change soon for you. ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2012, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/23 "2012-01-30T20:09:28Z")
[QUOTE=Argent Towers] 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. [/QUOTE] This is true in the general sense, and for the country as a whole, but there are exceptions in the urban areas. One is, unfortunately and painfully, crime born from badly integrated immigrant communities. Norway has had a constant, and rather lively stream of immigrants since at least the 70’s. At first, these were mostly work-based immigration, but the last several decades, its been mostly refugee immigration. People feeing atrocious conditions, war-zones and Ogg knows what else. And we are failing quite spectacularly at integrating them. Many never learn to speak Norwegian, or speak it very badly. And I mean, I get it. Many of these people have traumas and mental disorders of one kind or another. Many of these people have suffered torture, which really can’t to good things for your mental stability, or your ability to learn new things. I suppose some of them just don’t care, but I choose to believe this is a minority. This of course, severely limits their access to work and education. Even more unfortunately, it seems to be hereditary. Many children born to immigrant parents grow up in immigrant neighborhoods, meaning that children born in this country show up for their first day of school not speaking a word of Norwegian. And by that time, it’s often too late, and they never catch up. The problem is worsened in certain parts of Oslo, where several schools will have a student body where 80-100% do not speak Norwegian at home or at all, rendering them even less able to help them. We honesty have no idea how to fix this. We’ve tried throwing money at it, but that only helps up to a point. The only thing that seems to make a noticeable dent, funnily enough, is a free kindergarten initiative for “children from homes where Norwegian is not spoken”, but it’s not enough. This creates a certain, relatively large group of young people, not fitting into Norwegian culture, and badly equipped for a productive life here, and many of these turn to crime, forming gangs, doing and selling drugs etc. On the other hand, many don’t, but work really hard to catch up and use the possibilities made available to them. We’ll get there eventually, I hope. Then there is drive-by foreign criminal behavior, with criminals crossing the border, going on a crime spree, and traveling back home to wherever. There is also what appears to be a human trafficking problem, with criminal gangs from (mainly) eastern Europe sending flocks of beggars, prostitutes and pick-pockets to siphon money from Norway to fund criminal ventures in their own country. We’re a bit at a loss as to how to deal with this as well. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2012, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/24 "2012-01-30T20:17:42Z")
> [@Septima](#): > > This of course, severely limits their access to work and education. Even more unfortunately, it seems to be hereditary. I assume you mean hereditary in the sense of “learning problematic behaviour from the family and neighborhood” not in the “genetic DNA” sense. > [@](#): > > Many children born to immigrant parents grow up in immigrant neighborhoods, meaning that children born in this country show up for their first day of school not speaking a word of Norwegian. And by that time, it’s often too late, and they never catch up. The problem is worsened in certain parts of Oslo, where several schools will have a student body where 80-100% do not speak Norwegian at home or at all, rendering them even less able to help them. We honesty have no idea how to fix this. We’ve tried throwing money at it, but that only helps up to a point. The only thing that seems to make a noticeable dent, funnily enough, is a free kindergarten initiative for “children from homes where Norwegian is not spoken”, but it’s not enough. How exactly to you throw money at it without seeing at least a part solution? I mean, it’s not difficult to figure it out, it just costs money to implement: you have integrated kindergardens and schools - that is, the ratio of foreign -kids and native Norwegian kids is adjusted; you get more teachers than usual, and target bilingual teachers from the foreign culture (in the case of Germany, were it’s mostly Turks, that would mean bi-lingual Turkish teachers in addition to the normal ones) and you offer extra language catch-up hours in the afternoon free of charge, until the kids have caught up to the normal language level. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/25 "2012-01-31T00:20:00Z")
> [@Norse](#): > > 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. You did say Western Europe, mind, but self-defense seems [ok in the Czech Republic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_Czech_Republic). No cite given, but I’ve heard it elsewhere. French prisons I’m told are pretty bad, similar to US. The film [A Prophet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prophet) shows some of the conditions. I can’t imagine it gets much easier post-prison. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/26 "2012-01-31T10:49:07Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > You did say Western Europe, mind, but self-defense seems [ok in the Czech Republic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_Czech_Republic). No cite given, but I’ve heard it elsewhere. Of course, you ignore the first paragraph in your own cite > [@](#): > > Policy in the Czech Republic is in many respects less restrictive than elsewhere in Europe (see Gun politics in the European Union). In some places in the US, gun laws are also quite restrictive - we had a thread sometime ago about how difficult it is to carry a gun in NY and Washington DC. But keep on nitpicking every single exception, because then it’s impossible to answer such a broad question like the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/27 "2012-01-31T10:57:28Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > you have integrated kindergardens and schools - that is, the ratio of foreign -kids and native Norwegian kids is adjusted; you get more teachers than usual, and target bilingual teachers from the foreign culture (in the case of Germany, were it’s mostly Turks, that would mean bi-lingual Turkish teachers in addition to the normal ones) and you offer extra language catch-up hours in the afternoon free of charge, until the kids have caught up to the normal language level. Let’s look at how it would go in my home town: the biggest groups which have kids not showing to school until compulsory age (6) are subsaharian immigrants and “moors” (mostly from Morocco and Algeria). The Chinese used to do it, but that hasn’t lasted even a generation. The moors have been around longer but they’re being a lot more reluctant. The black folk got here in-between, and their attitudes are also in-between; many women come on their own (as do many Chinese women). Both Chinese and blacks are more likely to enter mixed marriages than north-Africans. OK, so get kindergarten teachers who speak Arabic, French, and the myriad subsaharian languages. First, when I say “myriad” it’s not a joke. Second, where do you get qualified kindergarten teachers with those languages? Third, those kids are not going to kindergarten, are not trying to get into kindergarten (neither public nor private), and aren’t setting foot anywhere near a school until age 6. ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/28 "2012-01-31T13:35:46Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > You did say Western Europe, mind, but self-defense seems [ok in the Czech Republic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_Czech_Republic). May I point you towards the (now) bolded parts of what you’re quoting? > [@Norse](#): > > **Painting with a very broad brush** , one **generally** has to […] Such qualifiers normally indicate that there may be an exception or two to the stated rule… ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/29 "2012-01-31T13:42:49Z")
We castrate paedophile before releasing them from prison. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/30 "2012-01-31T16:38:52Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > OK, so get kindergarten teachers who speak Arabic, French, and the myriad subsaharian languages. > > First, when I say “myriad” it’s not a joke. That is certainly a different situation from Norway or the Turks in Germany. Though even in Germany, while the majority are Turks, other refugees or immigrants come from all over. So you always pick the language for the majority of immigrants and the rest, well you try the best, but you can’t have teachers for almost 200 languages on the planet. Even in the Sub-saharan countries themselves, people learn to speak 2-3 languages: mother tongue, trade language like Suaheli, official language (French, English, Spanish, Arabic) for school and official stuff. At the minimum, many learn more. So expecting the kids to cope with Spanish instead of French as official language shouldn’t be unusual for the families to accept. > [@](#): > > Second, where do you get qualified kindergarten teachers with those languages? Usually, from those immigrant people themselves - the second generation who have assimiliated (though with difficulty) help the next generation. Esp. in cases where wave after wave of new immigrants come in, this is the best approach. It also serves as positive role model to have immigrant teachers in school (as well as cops and state officials etc.) - yes, not everybody likes you, yes, it’s harder for you than for the natives - but if you do work hard and learn the language, you can become everything! > [@](#): > > Third, those kids are not going to kindergarten, are not trying to get into kindergarten (neither public nor private), and aren’t setting foot anywhere near a school until age 6. Why - are the kindergartens too expensive, or do the immigrant families not value education? I know that for example in Berlin (with a large immigrant population) school directors have a problem with many families not wanting to cooperate with the teachers at all. This of course makes the job very hard. They started a pilot project where they sign a contract with each family that the family will uphold their part - make the kid go to school, regularly meet with the teacher to discuss things etc. Partly it’s understandable resentment at actual second-class treatment immigrants get in real life, and from prejudiced officials and teachers, too. (Which too quickly develops into a vicious cycle: to the natives, all immigrants are lazy, violent, unwilling to integrate - the immigrants, experiencing ostracism and being talked-down to, and hostility and suspicion of being a criminal, react with hostility and aggression, causing resentment from the natives. And the youngsters growing up experience being outcasts and turn to immigrant groups that stress how their heritage is so much better and non-assimilation is the way to go.) Partly it’s because by its nature, mass immigration is mostly uneducated people who have bad economic chances in their home country, too, and come for low-skill jobs. Coupled with the bad reactions from the natives, they don’t trust that education will help anybody of their family, so why waste time when the 15 year old kid could be earning money? Partly it’s not only the immigrants, but also the social class - natives of the lower class generally don’t believe that their kids can succeed at education and opt for the lowest High School instead of the ambitious High School that leads to University entrance. So if the natives don’t see a chance, how can the immigrants believe it? Short-term, you can try to change the laws requiring each kid to have at least the last year before primary school in kindergarden, or an entrance test for school about language skills and determining the amount of additional language help that is both mandatory and free. And while teachers speaking the mother tongue are good for teaching a foreign language, a well-trained teacher can teach in the foreign language only, too. Yes, it will take more time, but it’s not absolutley required for success to have teachers for 20 different sub-saharan languages. Actually, done right - that is, with the right mix of children - this can be a motivating factor: if 20 children on the playground speak 5 different languages, then Spanish will be the easiest common one for communication, making it more urgent to learn it. (done wrong, it ends up like one arab girl in a german school where the rest of her classmates were Turks: she spent her energy learning Turkish, but couldn’t cope with German on top of that). ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/31 "2012-01-31T18:14:01Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Usually, from those immigrant people themselves - the second generation who have assimiliated (though with difficulty) help the next generation. There is no second generation of adults yet in most of Spain, for immigrants from Africa. > [@](#): > > Why - are the kindergartens too expensive, or do the immigrant families not value education? The immigrants from certain groups do not value education, others are against education and/or integration, others take several years to understand these concepts of “school for free but you need to fill in some paperwork, the social assistant will help you”; those who value education, aren’t completely beffudled by bureaucracy without bribes and who have an interest in integrating (Chinese, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans) do sign up their kids for kindergarten, do join classes for immigrants in our languages (again, these can be had for free; if you want a diploma the yearly fee from the official schools of languages is less than 70€). Normally those who are most against integration are also the ones who’ll make a fuss when their kids are expected to follow school rules, such as wear a school-provided uniform. Public kindergartens are a bitch to get into (lack of space) but they’re free. ---
**Author:** ![Aqua\_regis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d78d45/32.png) [@Aqua\_regis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aqua_regis)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/32 "2012-01-31T23:04:24Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Well yes, that is the rational argument used here, if somebody is cold enough to question why we spend money on people (which few people do - nobody sees prisoners as being pampered in Europe, except people like Russians, who commit small crimes on purpose to get into Norwegian and Scandinavian prisons. Similar to previous decades, where homeless people would commit a small theft at the start of the winter to spend the cold time in a warm prison with regular food. That changed once homeless asylums were vailable). In the Netherlands, where I live, there has ocassionally been some outrage amongst part of the population that prisoners are pampered, at least compared to the way the elderly in homes are cared for, or generally that “prison is more like a hotel than prison.” Some time ago in the “two in a cell” policy has been introduced, where a prisoners share a cell, though it might be voluntary, or maybe it was so in the introdcution period, and prisoners can’t choose anymore. I think it is restricted to those serving time for lighter offences. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/33 "2012-02-04T01:14:44Z")
I’m from Norway, and I’ve kept contact with a childhood friend who has had a largely unsuccessful criminal career to fuel his drug habit. Here is what he says: "If you are sentenced for something seriously dangerous to people around you, you don’t get a prison sentence, you get a detention sentence. Murder, arson, rape etc can land you that. That means you got to Ila (maximum security prison) for the first year. Hard men dread that. If you show you can get along with people and don’t cause any trouble there, you can get moved to a more standard prison after that year. If you make trouble, you stay in Ila. If you make trouble in the new prison, you can get moved back. You can eventually earn your way to places like Halden or even Bastøy. But that can take a decade or more. When your detention sentence is up, you get to talk to the review board. If they think you are still a danger, it is extenced by 5 years. Then you get another shot. This can happen any number of times. If you go to prison instead, a lot of Americans see the material goods and think its going to be like a vacation. It isn’t. A high priority for any prison is to instally a routine, and maybe even self-discipline among the prisoners. The lights go on at seven, its breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner…you get about two hours of your own during the day. You get a lot of opportunities for studying and college though. Your peers are criminals and its a lot like the most controlling boarding school ever." ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/34 "2012-02-04T03:14:53Z")
> [@Aqua\_regis](#): > > In the Netherlands, where I live, there has ocassionally been some outrage amongst part of the population that prisoners are pampered, at least compared to the way the elderly in homes are cared for, or generally that “prison is more like a hotel than prison.” Some time ago in the “two in a cell” policy has been introduced, where a prisoners share a cell, though it might be voluntary, or maybe it was so in the introdcution period, and prisoners can’t choose anymore. I think it is restricted to those serving time for lighter offences. If they truly are pampered, then committing a crime should be a one way ticket to better care, no? So are you having a lot of people taking advantage of that? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/35 "2012-02-04T06:42:08Z")
Answering from another country where certain kinds of prisoners are sometimes claimed to get pampered, no. Yes, you get schooling and 3-5 squares and housing in prison. But you don’t get your family (at most, if you’re a woman with a very small child, you get to have that one with you), you don’t get your outside friends, you get a very limited space to store your clothes in (so a lot less clothing than you can have outside, simply from lack of space), you get no privacy, you get no drugs other than the ones the doctor ordered… They’re pampered by comparison with medieval dungeons, not with being free. ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679/36 "2012-02-04T09:37:11Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > "If you are sentenced for something seriously dangerous to people around you, you don’t get a prison sentence, you get a detention sentence. Murder, arson, rape etc can land you that. That means you got to Ila (maximum security prison) for the first year. Hard men dread that. If you show you can get along with people and don’t cause any trouble there, you can get moved to a more standard prison after that year. If you make trouble, you stay in Ila. If you make trouble in the new prison, you can get moved back. You can eventually earn your way to places like Halden or even Bastøy. But that can take a decade or more. > When your detention sentence is up, you get to talk to the review board. If they think you are still a danger, it is extenced by 5 years. Then you get another shot. This can happen any number of times. > > If you go to prison instead, a lot of Americans see the material goods and think its going to be like a vacation. It isn’t. A high priority for any prison is to instally a routine, and maybe even self-discipline among the prisoners. The lights go on at seven, its breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner…you get about two hours of your own during the day. You get a lot of opportunities for studying and college though. Your peers are criminals and its a lot like the most controlling boarding school ever." Just to support the anecdote: This is very consistent with my impression of the Norwegian system (although I haven’t experienced it from the inside myself 😛 ). The main focus is on rehabilitation and, if that’s not possible, detention for the protection of society, rather than punishment. And experience seems to indicate that you don’t rehabilitate criminals by throwing them into a dungeon and mistreating them… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-european-nations-deal-with-ex-convicts/610679.md?page=1)