Anders Breivik declared sane

The Norwegian system, unlike others, is fully committed to rehabilitation of criminals: you are not punished but helped to go back to an honest life.
In this view relatively short sentences and comfortable prisons are part of the rehabilitation process.

How many really bad criminals are capable of rehabilitation, though? And I am not talking only of psychotic terrorists like Breivik, I am talking of brutal criminals who make killing people a way of life. Mob enforces, bosses, drug lords and their underlings, human traffickers, etc. Rehabilitation is a fine concept but many are simply beyond redemption.
 
Psychoses are a treatable physical ailment.

It is poor policy in a rehabilitation system for you to assume that some people cannot be rehabilitated and to throw away the key. You may as well execute them and save the cost of their incarceration. Where do you draw the line? At three murders or four do you decide that they will never rehabilitate? What about three murders and an armed robbery?

If you follow the principle that criminals can be rehabilitated you should follow the same policy for everyone.
 
They probably are, but how large is their share of all criminals really? Public debate is too focused on severe cased because they're the only ones that create sufficient publicity.
 
What would that prove?

That Breivik is not impervious to bullets.

But yes, it seems stupid to me that people expect Norway to just give up on the way they have been dealing with criminals for years and go the way of capital punishment.
 
Psychoses are a treatable physical ailment.

It is poor policy in a rehabilitation system for you to assume that some people cannot be rehabilitated and to throw away the key. You may as well execute them and save the cost of their incarceration. Where do you draw the line? At three murders or four do you decide that they will never rehabilitate? What about three murders and an armed robbery?

If you follow the principle that criminals can be rehabilitated you should follow the same policy for everyone.

We don't need to follow the same policy with everyone. That's one reason why we have a justice system, to determine who can be rehabilitated and who can't. There's no need to create an objective rule, like 3 murders and you're out. We can subjectively analyse each case.

A guy who temporarily lost his mind due to extreme conditions (say he found his wife in bed with someone else) and killed on the heat of the moment sure deserves punishment, but he can be rehabilitated. A cynical mob enforcer who chose his way of life and had plenty of time to reflect on his actions but carried on anyway, certainly can't be rehabilitated. Unless you believe in fairy tales and Hollywood movies.

They probably are, but how large is their share of all criminals really? Public debate is too focused on severe cased because they're the only ones that create sufficient publicity.
My opinion is that most professional violent criminal cannot be rehabilitated. There are exceptions (which is why we judge each case individually), but really, many are beyond redemption.
 
My opinion is that most professional violent criminal cannot be rehabilitated. There are exceptions (which is why we judge each case individually), but really, many are beyond redemption.
My faith in the abilities of psychological treatment isn't that high either, I'm just saying one shouldn't gear the whole legal system for the minority of criminals that's really "beyond redemption".
 
i'm not saying there's no left wing terror, but i'm sure you know how bad an example this is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

You're just saying there were also right-wing terrorist actions, which is true. But how does that change the nature of what the Red Brigades did? They committed about 14,000 acts of violence, including at the very least 75 murders. Some of their members were pure psychopaths on pair with Breivik.
 
I for one am glad that Breivik will get exactly what he wants the least: effective lifetime confinement in a rehabilitation-oriented, relatively "nice" prison system crafted by the sorts of people he killed so many of. He wants to be a martyr, and he'll get the opposite kind of treatment.
 
I for one am glad that Breivik will get exactly what he wants the least: effective lifetime confinement in a rehabilitation-oriented, relatively "nice" prison system crafted by the sorts of people he killed so many of. He wants to be a martyr, and he'll get the opposite kind of treatment.

It's quite poetic, really.
 
It's not about "proving" anything, it's about not wasting any more resources whatsoever on this man, other than a hot piece of lead and a quick trip to the landfill.
I always love the "resources" argument about people. Because it's always made by people who would be on the losing side of that calculus if it was ever seriously applied.
 
Stupid Americans waste so much time on endless appeals and wasted time. An efficient Norwegian system could execute him minutes after the trial and at a fraction of a cost of liftetime imprisonment.
 
Stupid Americans waste so much time on endless appeals and wasted time. An efficient Norwegian system could execute him minutes after the trial and at a fraction of a cost of liftetime imprisonment.
Effective. Just like the Nazis!

(That Godwin was worth it.)
 
Stupid Europeans waste so much time with trials. An efficient, glorious, democratic Korean system could find him guilty and execute him in minutes at the fraction of the cost of a trial.
 
Appeals are completly unneccessary in Brevik's case. The trial will prove how strong a case there is against him and in a perfect world, he will dragged out kicking and screaming and made to stand up against the prison wall and a few gunman will hasten his entrance to hell XD
 
Appeals are completly unneccessary in Brevik's case. The trial will prove how strong a case there is against him and in a perfect world, he will dragged out kicking and screaming and made to stand up against the prison wall and a few gunman will hasten his entrance to hell XD


Sure. But for every case that is as certain as this one, there are a couple of 100 that are more in doubt. If you follow the rules that are designed for that 1 in 100 case that it certain, then in the other 100 cases you're as likely to kill an innocent person as a guilty one.
 
I'm pretty sure through legislation you can get around that problem. I quite like the Israeli system, they have only executed one prisoner in that state's entire existence - they kill the ones who genuinely have done the crime and has been proven beyond doubt. It was Adolf Eichmann. If Israel can do it, why can't the rest of the world?
 
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