Norway shooter may end up living in luxury

So here it goes.

I just talked about this in a guest lecture yesterday.

I said that when people around the world learn how the alleged mass murderer in Norway will live his life behind bars (they do not have the death penalty, like the vast majority of the civilized world), American media would broadcast it loudly, and Americans would call for harsher punishment.

It has started. In this article, the writer asks, "Could accused Norway killer land in luxurious prison?"

From the article:

The documentary photographer Alex Masi writes that the cells in Halden are equipped "with an en-suite bathroom, a flat-screen TV and various comforts. They measure 12 [square meters--about 129 square feet] and are divided up into units (10 to 12) which share a living room and kitchen," much like a college dorm.

Time Magazine described the cells as resembling an Ikea showroom, complete with "stainless-steel countertops, wraparound sofas and birch-colored coffee tables."

The art budget for the facility came in at more than a million dollars, Masi says, while the cells are brightly painted and lack bars on the windows. Inmates take specialty cooking classes or choose from many other courses at an in-prison high school. They can jog around the 75-acre wooded facility or even climb on the prison's rock walls.

Clearly this would not fly in the US. But then, our prisons are massive failures. Norweigian prisons are not.

Plus, we send people to prison as punishment, not for it. That is, the punishment is the loss of freedom; we don't send them there to be raped, abused, or to "make them break rocks."

This guy deserves whatever is coming to him. But that is up to Norway to decide. We need to stay out of it.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/accused-norway-killer-may-land-luxurious-prison-173329040.html