Oh and as for Norway and it's prisons... it's a totally different culture.
Which more or less changes everything,
Take all the people from Norway and replace them with everybody from Alabama... keep the same laws, and I guarantee you the crime rate would increase and shit over there wouldn't work nearly as well. (Alabama being used because it's roughly the same population.)
The United States is a much more individualistic culture, which has it's own strengths and weaknesses. There is a reason why Scandinavian Style reforms mostly failed in the 90's and early 00's when tried by other European governments.
They had an interesting conversation about that the other day on NPR (well 2 months ago) about why Norway welfare work in Norway but don't work in France. The conclusion? Norwegians buy into the social contract more.
