fengsel or recidivism-rate

Recognising that for some, the loss of liberty is punishment enough, one progressive incarceration facility on a Norwegian island, garnering the reputation of the world’s nicest, is demonstrating itself as one of the most effective for rehabilitating criminals and has the lowest rate of re-offending.
The experimental prison on the island of Bastøy is just off the coast from Oslo and was once infamous for a violent uprising in an earlier incarnation as a juvenile detention colony in 1915 but since 1982 has embodied a model that is diametrically opposed to its roots—with inmates accommodated in cottages instead of cells, work the prison garden and are afforded other amenities, including high-quality education and skills-building programmes and guards that are trained social workers. The penal system of the Scandinavian countries is the exclusive bailiwick of expert criminologists and not the emotionally-charged plaything of politicians. Inasmuch as confinement is its own indignity (violence only begets violence) and can be reforming—for some victims of criminals, and there are murderers and rapists at this minimum security facility, no amount of punishment meted out could ever be enough. What do you think? Bastøy’s success rate suggests that taking vengeance out of the equation and replacing it with respect and redemption might be the best way to fight crime.