At Least 91 Dead Now
What an evil, evil scumbag who should just be shot. But he won’t be; he won’t even be put in a cell for the rest of his life. The maximum sentence for any crime in Norway is 21 years.
And since prisons can hurt the tender psyches of these poor souls the kindly Norwegians have started putting murderers in places like this
It was July 2006 and I was visiting Bastoey, an open prison 45 miles south of the Norwegian capital. It is home to about 115 detainees, including murderers, rapists and other felons, who enjoy activities not usually associated with prisons.
In summer, they can improve their backhand on the tennis court, ride a horse in the forest and hit the beach for a swim. In winter, they can go cross-country skiing or participate in the prison’s ski-jumping competition.
…”The biggest mistake that our societies have made is to believe that you must punish hard to change criminals,” explained Oeyvind Alnaes, Bastoey’s then-prison governor. “This is wrong. The big closed prisons are criminal schools. If you treat people badly, they will behave badly. Anyone can be a citizen if we treat them well, respect them, and give them challenges and demands.”
I think they should consider reviving this old custom
Norway abolished the death penalty for civilian crimes in 1905. The last execution took place in 1876 when murderer Kristoffer Nilsen Grindalen was publicly beheaded on a scaffold built–according to custom–near the scene of the crime.
Oh and guns are, of course, highly regulated in Norway.
Morality, Politics | Mr. Bingley | 
July 23, 2011 9:42 am
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In Norway, crime does pay.
”The biggest mistake that our societies have made is to believe that you must punish hard to change criminals,”
Hardened criminals can never be reformed, only locked away from decent people or put down like the rabid animals they are.
“Anyone can be a citizen if we treat them well, respect them, and give them challenges and demands.”
The amount of self-serving naiveté in that one sentence is mind-boggling.
The news now is that he was a “right-wing, fundamentalist Christian.” I’m horrified and disgusted – both because someone calling himself a Christian would do this, and secondarily because I KNOW what ugliness this will bring out towards those rest of us who call ourselves Christians.
I just want to go and cry for days over this whole thing. Just another ugly event in a hideously ugly summer.
21 years works out to less than three months per victim. As I said on Twitter, now we know what human life is worth in Norway.
The “fundamentalist Christian” label may just be wishful thinking on the MSM part, nothing supporting that yet. How did he get to the island? Cause he must have been loaded for bear. That takes a lot of ammo not to mention three weapons to carry. He had to stop to reload and unless he had a lot of training that is not a fast process even if he had magazines pre-loaded.
Clearly he had this planned out, Major Dad. Probably had a lot of magazines on him.
But it would be like combat, where he’d have to fire and maneuver. No one shot back at him, so he had plenty of time load.
God, that’s sickening to think about, walking around and butchering children like that. There is no level of Hell too low for this monster. Norway needs to re-establish death by beheading, and then use a dull blade.
“But it would NOT be like combat….”
My bad.
I propose live fire drills.
Good practice for the military
Outdoor activity
Plenty of cardio
All upside.
Reasons for putting people in prison:
Rehabilitation
Deterrence
Punishment
It seems they only have one of these three reasons accounted for. I think the third reason should always be considered.
Twenty-one years for slaughtering almost 100 children is not appropriate in any measurement.
Civilized societies understand the concept of the punishment fitting the crime.
“Twenty-one years for slaughtering almost 100 children is not appropriate in any measurement.”
Twenty one years for eighty five children works out to just less than three months for each execution style murder.
Norway certainly doesn’t understand.
More’s the pity.
Prison has only one purpose, punishment. Deterrence is a happy by-product. Rehabilitation is a sentimental fantasy.
I prefer “containment” over “deterrence”, myself.
Some crimes can be subject to rehabilitation. Petty theft, jay walking, etc. Murder, rape, etc., are too serious for rehabilitation.
“Right wing fundamentalist Christian”….Everyone is conveniently forgetting that as soon as this started happening a bunch of smelly jihadi’s claimed responsibility. If that doesn’t foment some thought people need to be hit with bricks.
It’s often said in the U.S. that if a person goes to prison for hurting/killing children, the other inmates look down on such a person to the point of causing harm to that inmate. . . I wonder if that holds true in other countries.
Given the ages of the victims we can’t have expected them to fight back againt this deranged monster but the more I have read about the response of the local police force I’m thinking that it was pretty piss poor. Over an hour to get to the waters edge? Wait for the SWAT team? Come on! Then when they do get out there the guy surrenders. Somebody needs to lose their job as head of police.
Skyler, people aren’t sent to prison for petty theft, jay-walking, etc. They’re fined or spend a short time in the local jail. The problem is people who see the ‘rehabilitative’ aspects of such punishments (though it’s much less effective than your local law enforcement would have you believe) and come to think that murderers are nothing but jay-walkers writ large (forgetting, conveniently, that they’re writing in blood).
[…] BIngley pointed this out on Friday, The maximum sentence for any crime in Norway is 21 […]
If only someone in the crowd was packing…
Laura, even the police had to call their supervisors to be allowed to touch their weapons.
Shockingly, it seems it’s quite easy to murder people when they are disarmed.