As pointed out in the article - if the goal of prison is to change people (and it should be), Bastoy seems to work. Also notice that relative to population, the U.S. has about 10 times as many inmates as Norway...and 89% of of them are in for are less than a year, as opposed to here where that number is 2%.

I'm sure a few people here on the UT will jump up and down and scream about it - that prisoners should be shot 1 day after trail and forced to live in a 6foot x 3foot dark room for 200 years for littering and that prison is supposed to be dark cruel place so that the offender will NEVER do anything to go back to jail because it was soooo horrible. To that I say take a look at the numbers and tell me what appears to be working better - and the recidivism rates here are much worse too.

Most disgusting thing here in the USA is that we run for-profit prisons - so many in the USA want high recidivism rates and ridiculously long sentences. Frankly I'm blown away that the USA allows such a thing - talk about a built-in corruption machine....perfect example right there.

>http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/24/world/europe/norway-prison-bastoy-nicest/index.html