[Sparhawk]

Of course it has merit - it works in Norway, Denmark and a large portion of Europe in general ( France and Great Brittan possibly not included - I have no idea how their prisons are ).

I think it is really important to observe prisoners in different light compared to what we want to do to them;

Rehabilitation is not for all prisoners, but it is certainly for the majority of the prisoners. A murder that takes place in affect is not likely to be repeated unless the same circumstances are present - thus rehabilitation takes place to teach the prisoner to either avoid the circumstances or to tackle them in a different manner than bringing out an axe and chopping his wife and her lover to death ( just a gooey example here ).
Rehabilitation is needed for young people caught up in drugs, gangs, crime in general etc - it makes no sense to drop a 21 yr old kid in a hardcore prison for 10 yrs because he sold drugs or joined a gang.

That said there is also the element that does not need rehabilitation - they are the people who are simply TOO DANGEROUS to be among other people - prisoners like Anders Breivik from Norway, Peter Lundin from Denmark or the serial killers in the US. ( there are many others... ) and yet even though these people will NEVER be let out of jail - there needs to be a kind of compassion or rather humanity in our treatment of them. Why? because making our treatment of prisoners inhuman is punishable if a single guard does it - but if its done by the system then it is not responsible?

The system is accountable just as the single guard is.


We are left with the question - is a luxury cell a bad thing or a good thing?

I think the cells vary a lot more than what times are reporting - keep in mind that media often needs the chock effect to sell.

In Denmark a cell is typically a 3 meter high room - with a small barred window in the top of the cell, a VERY simple bed and a desk and then there will be a tv. In case of long prison sentences the prisoner can have a PS3, Xbox or whatever to play on - but not access to the internet etc.
If a person is mentally ill like Peter Lundin ( who killed his mother in the US and then after serving his sentence came back to Denmark and then killed his new GF and her two small children ) The system is set up to ( in this case ) protect the rest of us from him - he cannot be rehabilitated and therefore he is locked away ( there is no timeframe on his punishment he is under the care of the system instead ).