After describing Norway’s luxurious prisons and short prison sentences, Will Wilkinson suggests that we should consider making our justice system more like Norway’s in order to bring down our murder rate:
Norway has one of the world’s lowest murder rates. America is worst in the developed world. Maybe we could learn something. Perhaps we should wonder why our detention facilities aren’t more like Halden [a Norwegian prison]….
All evidence supports the proposition that Norway’s criminal justice system is both practically and morally superior to America’s. If America’s abominably cruel and unjust system delivered results even remotely comparable to Norway’s enviable level of civil peace and order, then there might be some reason to take seriously American animadversions against Norway’s short sentences and humane prison.
Wilkinson should teach this lesson to the Dutch: if only they stopped building dykes all over their country, maybe they wouldn’t need to worry so much about flooding! After all, we Americans are far less aggressive with our dyke-building, and we don’t have nearly the level of flood anxiety that they have.
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