Web watch: Why Scandinavian prisons are superior

30/09/2013

As Attorney General Greg Smith SC aims to reduce incarceration and recidivism rates in NSW, it's worth reading this article in the Atlantic Monthly contrasting the American and Scandinavian approaches to prisons. Some issues are applicable to Australia, such as the electoral roots of mandatory sentencing, "tough on crime" policies and their disproportionate impact on Indigenous people. The problem lies in how "others" are perceived:

In 1993, Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie (a major influence on Scandinavian penal policy) ... concluded that the more unlike oneself the imagined perpetrator of crime, the harsher the conditions one will agree to impose upon convicted criminals, and the greater the range of acts one will agree should be designated as crimes. [M]andatory sentencing ... not only results from, but widens social distance. The harshness of the punishment that fearful voters are convinced is the only thing that works on people who don’t think or act like them becomes a measure of the moral distance between these voters and people identified as criminals.

Read the article here.

30 September 2013