It’s great to see Norway do the rational think and replicate the success of the Portuguese system instead of the catastrophe of the American.
I think our society would greatly improve from more mercy, and I miss that from growing up in Norway.
It seems many in the USA instead of trying something different when their opinions fail double down, because they believe conviction and force will somehow defeat actual evidence that it is just a terrible idea.
It's been a long slog in Norway too, though, and there's still substantial pressure from groups that peddle outright lies about the dangers of drugs. Norway has long had some of the worst drug policies in Europe, in part because there is significant split in Norway between on one hand a focus on a human justice system, and on the other hand a puritan lutheran and evangelical community that sees all drugs (including alcohol) as a moral failing.
So punishments and pressure on police to take drug related crime extra seriously has for a long time been disproportionate to the impacts them have relative to other crimes.
Alcohol culture still needs some improvement though, lots of unhealthy aspects. Every-weekend binge drinking, unable-to-express-unless-drunk, drunkeness-absolves-responsibility relatively common.
Christians are the ones most preaching moderation, which might continue to attract some youngsters who see all the ridiculous things going on re alcohol and don't want to be part.
Can be hard to explain sometimes that one does not drink for reasons other than religious or medical - the concept is a bit foreign.
Thankfully the puritans are loosing foothold day by day. In 30 years their influence will be seriously reduced. Most kids born today won't even have grandparents that are personally religious and practicing.
Yeah unfortunately here we use the drug laws to effectively reintroduce slavery. Its legal under US law to use prisoners as slave labor. As we used to say in the 90s people in the 'hood don't have planes. By the 2000s rather than the CIA cocaine and heroin smuggling we saw Wallstreet move in and the rise of the Oxycontin era where Wallstreet shareholders have been directly benefiting both from selling opiates to the masses and then from their slave labor when they land in a private prison after converting from oxy to heroin addiction.
Not true at all. The amount of goods produced by people in jail is a negligible part of the economy. Prisoners do work, sure, but that's to pass the time.
We imprison far too many people in the US for minor drug offences, but it's definitely not in order to reintroduce slavery...
I don't think anyone is saying that prison labor is in any way reintroducing the economic impact of 18-19th century slave trade. But, as a country, the US:
1) Incarcerates people at a higher rate than any country besides Seychelles
2) Abolished slavery for all persons except prisoners:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted..."
Between local, state, and federal prisons, we're looking at roughly 500,000 imprisoned for drug-related offenses[1]. Yes, the labor of these people is a trivial portion of the overall economy, but it still produces huge profit for those running the show: CoreCivic has a market cap of ~$2.6 billion. They exist to extract value from the lives and labors of the people who their institutions keep under lock and key.
There is a direct incentive for these corporations to increase the number of prisoners in the system, and they leverage their power to pursue that incentive, lobbying for and even drafting legislation that enforces three strike and mandatory minimum rules.[2] They are actively pushing governments to imprison more people, and profiting from the resulting state sanctioned slavery.
>Not true at all. The amount of goods produced by people in jail is a negligible part of the economy.
It's still a hugely profitable business on its own for those involved, so that comparison is kind of beyond the point. Pimps profits also make for "a negligible part of the economy" but their profession is a thing.
>Prisoners do work, sure, but that's to pass the time.
A quick search reveals that all of the inmates doing that job are volunteers.
They get to spend time outside prison and interact with people who aren't prisoners or guards. I could imagine volunteering for that if I was a prisoner. That doesn't make using prisoners as cheap labor OK, especially for dangerous jobs, but it doesn't surprise me at all that prisoners would rather do that than sit in a cell.
>A quick search reveals that all of the inmates doing that job are volunteers.
It's easy to make volunteers out of people if:
1) Their living conditions are so bad in your hellish prisons that that most alternatives seem like heaven.
2) you control their living conditions and can make their life hell if you want to "motivate" them to volunteer.
3) A crappy legal system hands them some of the harshest terms in the world in some of the more BS prisons, and having them volunteer for such work can give them more "points" towards getting our earlier.
What I'm getting at is, volunteering for an inmate is not necessarily the same thing as volunteering is for a free man -- or even the same thing as a prisoner in a place without medieval prison conditions and vindictive attitude towards prisoners volunteering.
How do you quantify the goods and services that come from prisoners? It's not like they're stamped with (made in prison), but more likely would be marketed as (made in US).
I think our society would greatly improve from more mercy, and I miss that from growing up in Norway.
It seems many in the USA instead of trying something different when their opinions fail double down, because they believe conviction and force will somehow defeat actual evidence that it is just a terrible idea.