COMMENTING on a shared link to a Time slideshow offering a tour of Norway's Halden prison, the "world's most human prison", one of my Facebook friends says, "If you prefer comfort to liberty, go to Norway and commit murder. You could get 21 years in what looks like a nice dorm." A good number of Americans, it seems, are agitated by the possibility that Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass-murderer who gunned down scores of kids at an isolated summer camp, might end up at such a luxe detention facility. In this segment on Norway's "heavenly prison", the folks at Fox News seem sort of boggled by the idea that prisons might be anything other than the squalid overcrowded rape pens where human offal in America is sent to fester out of sight.

It certainly does look nice!

After her review of Alden's amenities, Alana Goodman of Commentary comments:

[T]his isn't a white-collar, minimum-security facility. This is a place for hardened criminals, and it's typical of the Norwegian prison system as a whole. It's one thing to favor rehabilitation for the majority of inmates, but it raises ethical questions when spending 20 years in a place like Halden could be the worst fate facing a mass murderer and political terrorist.

It does raise ethical questions. The maximum sentence in Norway is 21 years, though this can be extended indefinitely in five year blocks as long as the prisoner is deemed a "high risk" for repeat offence. Is this enough for a monster like Mr Breivik? And even if he spends life in prison, doesn't it offend our sense of justice to imagine a man responsible for such enormities whiling away his time jogging in the crisp air and putting on musicals in comfortable confinement?

I say, yes, it does offend our sense of justice. It offends mine. But I am very wary of my own instinct for retribution, and of yours. The idea of balancing some cosmic scale, of restoring the moral order to equilibrium, is deeply appealing. But there is no cosmic scale to balance. The moral order is not some sort of pervasive ethereal substance that threatens to undo us if monstrous offence is not met with equally ferocious punishment. If we are able to approach the matter rationally, which is hard, I think we will see that a society's main imperative is to guarantee the safety of its members by taking the criminal out of commission and then by punishing wrongdoers to the extent necessary to deter similar future crimes. I think we can be sure that Mr Breivik will not be left in a position to kill again. So the main question, to my mind, is whether a comfortable (and possibly relatively short) detention is sufficient to deter similar crimes. Though I do think the severity of punishment has some effect on the frequency of crimes, I doubt the severity of Mr Breivik's punishment will have anything at all to do with the future incidence of elaborately plotted massacres.

In general, my reaction to Norway's lenient, rehabilitation-focused justice system is not that the Norwegian sense of retributive justice is underdeveloped and defective, but that America's is. Norway has one of the world's lowest murder rates. America is worst in the developed world. Maybe we could learn something. Perhaps we should wonder why our detention facilities aren't more like Halden. Of course, we couldn't afford it, as we imprison such a disgracefully huge portion of our population, and in often sub-human conditions. This piece by Louis Theroux on Miami's main jail should give us pause. An excerpt:

The place has to be seen to be believed. Up to 24 inmates are crowded into a single cell, living behind metal bars on steel bunks, sharing a single shower and two toilets. Little of the bright Miami sun filters through the grilles on the windows. Visits to the yard happen twice a week for an hour. The rest of the time, inmates are holed up round the clock, eating, sleeping, and going slightly crazy. But what is most shocking is the behaviour of the inmates themselves. For reasons that remain to some extent opaque—perhaps because of the bleak conditions they live in or because of insufficient supervision by officers, maybe because they lack other outlets for their energies, or because of their involvement with gangs on the outside, or maybe from a warped jailhouse tradition—the incarcerated here have created a brutal gladiatorial code of fighting. They fight for respect, for food and snacks, or simply to pass the time. With around 7,000 inmates, the Miami jail system is one of the biggest in America—a so-called "mega-jail". Most of these inmates are on remand—awaiting bail or being held until their trial dates—usually for fairly minor offences.

Usually for fairly minor offences.

Were the mass-kid-killing Mr Breivik thrown into this lion's den, there's a good chance he would not come out alive. And I think a lot of Americans would cheer that result. But clearly there is something wrong with a lot of us such that so many of our jails and prisons are like this. And maybe there is something wrong with relishing the idea of Mr Breivik's lawless death at the hands of wilding prisoners.

Nothing can be done to bring Mr Breivik's victims back to life. The most compelling, non-mystical case for vengeance is that it offers some consolation to those wracked by desolation and fury at the murder of their loved one. But the point of a criminal justice system in a civilised society is not the mental peace of those collaterally wounded by crime. All evidence supports the proposition that Norway's criminal justice system is both practically and morally superior to America's. If America's abominably cruel and unjust system delivered results even remotely comparable to Norway's enviable level of civil peace and order, then there might be some reason to take seriously American animadversions against Norway's short sentences and humane prison. But we don't. We're not even close. So Americans should just shut up and watch. It could do us some good to see how a civilised society handles such a horrifying crime.