Story here. It’s amazing. Since they started this experiment a few decades ago, Finland has gone from the highest imprisonment rate in Europe to the lowest, and the crime rate has not increased. And it costs less than the old system, too. They now have 2/3 of their prisoners in such facilities. (Of course they acknowledge some prisoners just are not safe to let out of high-security detention.)
And there’s a low recidivism rate. But the most amazing thing is, the free neighbors of these facilities don’t seem to have any NIMBY resentment.
Violent crimes have a huge variance though, even if you just look at murder. Sure, Ted Bundy isn’t a candidate for this system, but someone who snapped and killed a cheating spouse’s partner in the heat of the moment has some anger issues, certainly, but I’m not sure they’re beyond rehabilitation.
Start someone like that out next to me, that’ll work fine I think.
But someone who has been in a US prison for a few years? I am not at all sure I’d want them living next to me no matter how reasonable they were when they entered prison.
The US doesn’t quite have this, but Federal prison camps aren’t worlds apart. There’s little to no perimeter fencing, a fairly small number of guards, and the housing is more like dorms than cells. It probably wouldn’t be a challenge for a prisoner to just wander off. They generally don’t, since when they were captured they’d end up in a less pleasant place. Obviously we aren’t sending violent offenders to these places.
I agree. I just don’t think someone prone to snapping and killing someone should have the ability to leave. Or even someone prone to snapping and beating someone up.
The difference is, in a Finnish open prison you get to “wander off”; the only stipulation is you have to come back by a certain time. I don’t think federal prison camps are that loose.
Don’t we already have something like that with trusties at most county jails and state prisons, as well as halfway houses? I’m not so sure that our system is all that different for the same set of inmates.
I’m also guessing that the Finnish inmates in the open prison aren’t violent criminals either.
It’s not like this is a new idea. The United States has plenty of prisons like this. I worked in prisons where the prisoners had jobs - they’d commute to work every morning, do their job out among the public, and then commute back to prison each evening after work. A surprisingly large number of prisoners go in and out of prison unsupervised on a regular basis.
Sounds like a cross between a halfway house and a temporary/ work-release facilty to me. Both of which exist in NYS - imates may leave every day to go to work or school or job training (at locations that have nothing to do with the prison) and return to the prison or they may sleep as few as two nights per week at the prison. Although many are close to release, I know of one inmate who was in a work release program for nearly 20 years.
I’m far from considering myself knowledgeable about outcomes from incarceration, but I have to think that a prisoner being released into a society with far greater income equality than the United States would have a far, far greater impact on recidivism than the conditions in a prison.
For example, if country A presents convicts with reasonable prospects of reestablishing a normal life after release, I would think that would lower the propensity to return to crime, and also possibly make the prison experience different in general. If country B basically guarantees that a former convict will remain in the underclass, then what hope is there no matter how pleasant the prison experience may be?
Yes, and from the article, as pointed out above “they’re the last step of a prison sentence before inmates make the transition back to regular life”. So many of these guys were in harsher prisons before attending this open prison. This therefore is not an argument for too cosy a prison system.