How would your ideal prison system be?

[Dr. MB]

Ideally prison would be used as little as possible. In the rare cases where it would exist it would be run similarly to Norway or Sweden.

Norway’s prison system is way too soft. That guy who killed 80 people (most of them being children) got only a 21 year sentence and basically gets to live in a college dorm

You're using the most extreme example to justify putting people who've done far less bad things in worse conditions.

Also he's a special case and his sentence is probably gonna be extended indefinitely.

Sure, but their legal system should still be prepared to handle men like that. Obviously there's very few people who have committed murder on the scale he did, but I'm sure there's plenty of people in Scandanavia who have committed premeditated murder on 2+ people and should also be punished more severely than being forced to live in a college dorm for 21 years. Also, I'm pretty sure there was a story about how this guy complained how it was "inhumane" for him to not be able to play COD in prison, and the court actually ruled in his favor

I mean the only real function of prison in my opinion should be to keep people who are a danger to society from being a danger to society. There's no need for extra punishment beyond that, doesn't matter if you're a mass shooter or serial killer. I don't really care if he's playing video games every day as long as he's not shooting anyone.

Adequate punishment is very important for disincentivizing people from committing these atrocious crimes. If you're some vile bigot who really wants to kill a bunch of minorities, you might think it's worth it to act on your urges if you'll only get such a light punishment for your actions. If you could be executed for doing that, than people will be much more disincentivized to not do so

And yet Norway still has far less violent criminals than the United States does, where prison conditions are more severe and where the death penalty actually exists

That’s due to plenty of other factors

I'm just saying our current system doesn't seem to be working very well as a deterrent. Might be worth trying another approach.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Not for all crimes, but I think more mandatory community service as a punishment  for lower tier crimes could be a good idea. Community service gives those folks a chance to interact with a community and persue a goal; I think often the reason people commit crimes is because they are so disconnected from society.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Let's start around where the Scandinavians are, and then see what we can improve from there.

[Pres Mike]

More frequent use of the death penalty

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There is no such thing as an ideal prison system as prison is a response to crime which is a problem of social deviance, and social deviance can never be ideal.

What I would say as far as the United States goes, however, is that reformist efforts should be focused on removing the sort of barbaric practices (forced labour, corporal punishment etc) that most stable, liberal democracies got rid of a long time ago. So long as such things are in place, progress on other matters will be limited.