“Well known” to whom and on what basis. For Norwegians our sentences and our prison system is serving just fine as a deterrent. Have you noticed the statistical facts given earlier in the thread? Norway has a very low recidivism rate.
Now in a globalization perspective there is some problem with thieves, burglars and such from poorer European countries finding Norway to be a place with better pickings and lower risks, but I’d vote for resuming border controls or getting international agreements on prisoner exchange before I voted for harsher prisons.
I agree to a certain extent, but in the US “life sentences” rarely mean life. They usually tend to mean something like 25 years to life with the possibility for parole much earlier depending on the state.
In many states you’re eligible for parole after you served just a third of your sentence, though “truth in sentencing” laws have reduced this and due to prison overcrowding there’s always tremendous pressure to kick people loose ASAP. That’s how you can get people who’ve been sentenced to 25 years to life out of prison after 8 and a third or less, though that’s less common now.
That’s why if you start combing through statistics you’ll discover odd facts like how in supposedly wimpy New York State violent offenders typically serve longer sentences than supposedly hard-assed Mississippi.
I remember someone arguing that if the general public could be convinced that those convicted of murder would never get out of prison instead of after 15 years, support for the death penalty would plummet.
I myself don’t agree with the argument, but it does have its merits.
The general media consensus in Norway is that the case has been dealt with in a way that doesn’t compromise the values on which we base our society. I’m sure there wouldn’t have been many tears shed in Norway if Breivik had not been captured alive, and of course there are Norwegians who are in favour of the death penalty or at least harsher punishment. But retroactive laws are prohibited by the Norwegian constitution, and nobody would want to change that.
If Breivik’s actions had forced Norway to change its fundamental societal values, it would have been a victory for him. That was what he wanted, after all.
Speaking as a family member of someone who escaped Utøya with only emotional scars, the emotions and opinions of the victims and relatives are all over the spectrum. It’s not hard to find newspaper quotes to back up either side of the argument. However, the only thing that would make any of them happy would be bringing back the people they lost.
Why it’s not necessary? It seems quite obvious to me. There isn’t any need to make bargains with an accused.
Why it’s not done?
1)Primarily because it’s not a feature of a civil law system, so introducing it would mean a major reform of the legal system and countries don’t usually change it on a whim.
If you want to introduce it in France, for instance, you’d have to revamp entirely the criminal procedure, because a prosecutor, in the current system, doesn’t participate in the inquiry nor bring charges. How could he then offer a bargain or even know enough about the case to tell what bargain to offer? Why would he offer a bargain having no part in the inquiry and not having to prove the case in court (a French prosecutor is perfectly free to argue that the accused is innocent)?
The concept just couldn’t work or even make sense without switching to a completely different system.
2)From a practical point of view, plea bargains have many flaws. It might be an incentive for the prosecution to bring more charges than necessary in order to begin the “negotiation” from a stronger position, it might result in very unequal sentences for the same crime (an accused gets a much reduced sentence because he agrees to charge the others), it prevents a case from being heard and judged by a court (supposed to be more able to figure out the truth impartially and justly), it might give an incitement to lie (Same as above :" I’ll say my friend is guilty if you take 10 years off my sentence"), it might result in an innocent pleading guilty to a lesser charge rather than taking his chances in court and risking a much longer sentence…
Generally speaking, it gives quite a lot of power to the prosecution at the expense of courts and the results of a plea bargain are unjust almost by definition. Either the accused was guilty, and then he gets a lower sentence than he should have for the crime he committed or he was innocent and got sentenced while he should have walked free (To simplify. But other scenarios result in a similar problem).
The obvious advantage of plea bargain is that most cases don’t go to trial at all, so it makes the criminal process much less cumbersome and costly. To take an extreme example, a case might go to trial in France despite everybody (including himself) saying that the accused is guilty (very common) or everybody (including the prosecutor) arguing that he isn’t (very unusual, but it happens).
Agreed. Moreover I’ve heard a lot of people say things like the Norwegians seem to be happy with this which I suspect is a gross oversimplification.
I suspect if you were to start interviewing randomly selected Norwegians on the street you’d find quite a few people who’d have been perfectly happy with the murder being executed.
I think a lot of Europeans tend to overestimate just how “right-wing”(for lack of a better term) most Americans are and most Americans tend to overestimate just how “progressive”(again for lack of a better term) Europeans are.
I’m reminded of a friend who lived in the Netherlands who e-mailed me polls taken of the Dutch public and translations of articles in the Dutch newspapers revealing that many Dutch were vastly more conservative than many Americans who think of it as a progressive utopia would believe and how many of them aren’t so happy with it’s lax laws on drugs and other illicit activities for a number of reasons.
It’s sort of like how the US has highly stringent laws protecting freedom of expression but poll after poll in the 90s regularly showed most Americans would have supported laws banning protests from both pro-lifers and pro-choicers.
So if we throw him into a dungeon and feed him bread and water for the rest of his days, will that bring his victims back to life?
I’m not sure it’s possible to rehabilitate Breivik, but I’m even less sure it’s possible to punish him. (How do you punish someone so self-centered and so convinced of his own righteousness?) All we can do is keep him away from anyone he can harm, and do what we can not to let him hurt our society any more. That means treating him, as much as possible, exactly like any other prisoner - no better and no worse.
And if that means some few kroner of my taxes each year for the rest of my life go to keeping him in those conditions… so be it.
(Incidentally, the governor of Ila Prison has said that they aim to get him into the general population eventually, which will be cheaper. But at the moment, it’s too dangerous.)
Simply put murders should not be allowed to be released, ever. If someone with premeditation maliciously slaughterers another human being, that person deserves to be either killed or imprisoned permanently because anything less would be a miscarriage of justice. I don’t give a damn about the recidivism rate of petty criminals, in this thread we’re talking about a mass murderer. Do you want him to be released after 21 years with the hope that we won’t kill again after spending a few years in a little apartment with a plasma t.v and high speed internet?
Like I said, we’re not talking about about petty criminals here (which you in true bigot fashion accuse of being mostly foreigners), we’re talking about a mass violent killer and YES his sentence is too soft, like it is with most violent killers in Norway.
Stating something does not make it true.
You’re right, there’s no way to resurrect the dead. But justice should be carried out on the man who caused their early and painful demise. 21 years in a “prison” with plasma t.v and high speed internet connections is not justice my friend.
He won’t be released, he won’t have a plasma TV, and he won’t have high speed internet.
I still don’t quite get this. This man is a Norwegian who killed other Norwegians in Norway. Why are others so invested in what sort of prison cell he has?
You should take care to post something more substantial than one liners.
- I don’t want to see him released, ever. He tried to kill two of my son’s friends. (They’re both okay.) But I also do not want to give him power. If we change our laws or our society to satisfy some base instinct for revenge - we have given him power.
Put him in prison under the same conditions as any other prisoner - and his power disappears.
And I am confident he will never be released.
- He doesn’t have any Internet connection, let alone a high-speed one. He has a laptop that has been modified so it has no modem or other connection possibilities; prison authorities have described it as “an electronic typewriter”. The police are considering taking even that away.
It hasn’t been officially stated whether he has a TV or not. He probably does, because Norwegian prisoners generally do. It’s a flat screen because a) all new TVs are flat screens and b) that gives the prisoners less room to hide weapons or drugs - and the guards like that.
I stand corrected on the TV issue. One thing that’s worth noting is that it’s far safer for the guards and better for general peace and harmony if the prisoners aren’t bored all the time.
So, in your opinion, what would constitute justice in this case?
Treat him like other prisoners? The gravity of his crime should result in more stringent punishment. If an arsonists sets fire to ten houses, isn’t he punished more severely than the arsonist who burns one house? Why then does a killer who kills dozens get the same punishment as a killer who murders one or two?
Death. But that isn’t a possibility in Norway, so the next best thing is life in solitary confinement. Make the cell feel like a grave, so his body can experience what “life” is like for his victims at the present.
The arsonist who sets fire to ten houses is given a longer sentence than the arsonist who sets fire to only one, but lives in the same conditions while serving that sentence.
The murderer who kills multiple victims is given a longer sentence than the murderer who kills “only” one, but lives in the same conditions while serving that sentence.
Why do you want him to be so powerful that we should make special laws, in violation of our own constitution, just for him?
Erm, there are different types of prison my friend. Low level, maximum security, etc.
Why? Because he’s committed the biggest terror attack in the history of Norway. I think if anyone ever qualifies to be in the impetus of change of Norwegian criminal law, it is he.
I think that the arsonist should be forced to serve his sentence in a cell that is on fire.