Don't lock 'em up - prison doesn't work

It is an understandable response to crime - lock 'em up, throw away the key. The problem is that this visceral desire to punish doesn't do much to deter and, so it seem, fails in its most obvious objective, reducing crime:

Current policy debates suggest that state prosecutors may have been a key force behind the historic rise in US incarceration. This paper investigates how state prosecutors of differing political affiliations influence county-level incarceration. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation generated by close elections, I find that Republican prosecutorial offices sentence defendants to longer incarceration spells as compared to their Democratic and Independent counterparts. This increase in incarceration length is driven by longer sentences for both violent and property offenses, and translates into a persistent increase in incarceration. These sentencing and incarceration enhancements do not lower crime at the county level, indicating that, in terms of public safety, the marginal return to the tough-on-crime stance may be close to zero.

OK, it's just one study (and one that's a little too politically-loaded for my taste) but it concurs with findings from less partisan studies that consistently show incarceration, "tough" sentence and rigorous sanctions regimes have negative effects on recidivism. Here's the UK government's findings:

Short-term custody (less than 12 months in prison, without supervision on release) was consistently associated with higher rates of proven re-offending than community orders and suspended sentence orders (‘court orders’)

For this group of criminals, prison just doesn't work. Indeed it doesn't just not reduce crime, it increases the chance that one-time criminals become career criminals. Norway has pretty much the world's lowest rate of recidivism (less than 20% compared to the UK's 70%). The Norwegian approach to imprisonment is part of the reason:

The thinking is that justice for society is best served by releasing prisoners who are less likely to reoffend. The Norwegian penal philosophy is that traditional, repressive prisons do not work, and that treating prisoners humanely improves their chances of reintegrating in society.7 This is achieved by a “guiding principle of normality,” meaning that with the exception of freedom of movement, prisoners retain all other rights and life in the prison should resemble life on the outside to the greatest extent possible.8 Within the walls of Halden, one of the newest maximum-security prisons in Norway, are cells with flat-screen televisions and mini-fridges, long windows to let in more sunlight, and shared living rooms and kitchens “to create a sense of family,” according to Hans Henrik Hoilund, one of the prison’s architects. Prisoners are not left to their own devices upon release, either. There is a safety net. The government guarantees it will do everything possible to ensure that released prisoners have housing, employment, education, as well as health care and addiction treatment, if needed.

I know you're all horrified but shouldn't we look to what seems to work rather than lock more and more young men up in overcrowded, ill-managed, drug-riddled prisons? If community sentences work (i.e. mean less recidivism, less crime and safer communities) we should use them more and, if short prison sentences don't work, we should use them less. We also need to create the space and time to straighten out those who we do lock up and if this means prisons being a more pleasant environment then that's what we should do.

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Quote of the day - tax fraud as a thought crime

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Quite amazing:

Despite this new evidence providing the artist had paid his taxes, Nerdrum was sentenced in June 2014 to one year in prison for tax fraud after the case had been appealed twice “because he had admitted to considering evading his taxes,” says Molesky.

All-in-all a strange story involving Icelandic citizenship, allegations of state corruption and the mixing of paint by an artist with the splendid name, Odd Nerdrum. Plus an arcane "when is a painting a new painting or an old painting" debate. It does appear that the artist paid his taxes in full through a scheme that could be used to avoid taxes.

Governments, dontcha just love 'em!
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Why you can't buy French cheese in Norway (a case study in pro-EU ignorance)

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Some readers will recall the Great Norwegian Butter Crisis:

With the sense of national crisis deepening, the national daily Aftenposten ran a two-page spread with instructions on how to make your own butter. It's all a big disappointment for the domestic goddesses of the north for whom butter is a standard Christmas staple.

"I need butter today to make my lussekatt buns and my Christmas biscuits," grumbled one elderly Norwegian. "I brought up my four children under German occupation but this is nothing like that."

And the readers who got beyond having a great old laugh at the Norwegians will have learned that the reason for the butter crisis is Norway's deranged (this is genuinely the only way to describe them) agricultural protection policies:

"The problem is more to do with a lack of competition in the market," he said. "Tine is a monopolist in the market as a result of outdated postwar regulatory regimes in a concentrated market with high entry barriers."

Put simply Norway requires its milk producers to sell to one producer of dairy products and then slaps a complicated bunch of quotas, limited, controls and regulations of the industry. All this before lumping on a huge tariff on imports.

Hence the abject ignorance and stupidity of this remark (from the Director of Britain Stronger In Europe):




For, had Will Straw known about the Great Norwegian Butter Crisis, he would have been a little slower in suggesting that the lack of Camembert in Oslo was down to the French not wanting to sell the stuff to Norwegians:

Cheese imports from the EU that were hit by the tariff, including Gouda and cheddar, became almost three times more expensive when the tariffs took effect January 1, driving many brands out of the Norwegian market. EU politicians claim the punitive tariffs have damaged trade and not least Norwegian consumers, and kept European cheeses out of the Norwegian market at a time when Europe needs all the trade it can get because of its economic crisis.

So there you have it - the problem was caused by the decisions of idiot politicians in Norway rather than idiot politicians in Brussels. And, if Will Straw wants to make the case for staying in the EU, then he really ought to get his facts straight.

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In which the medical profession reminds us how monumentally stupid it is

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Seriously these doctors are utterly ignorant, they have not the first conception of human behaviour:

Norway's biggest medical organisation wants to ban the sale of cigarettes to adults.

In a drive towards a smoke-free society by 2035, the Norwegian Medical Association (NMA) is pressing the government to back its proposal for a ban on tobacco sales to citizens born after the year 2000.

What could go wrong here? Right now it's anyone younger than 16 which I'm guess means they can't buy fags anyway. They do however have friends who are 17 and can buy fags. And since the stupid doctors don't intend to ban possession of cigarettes, this secondary market (doubtless a pretty profitable one) still exists and won't go away until the last of those 17 year olds has died in about eighty years time. All this, of course, is without the capacity of Norwegians to pop to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, the Baltic States from where they can bring back - perfectly legally - loads of cigarettes.

Fortunately Norway has some politicians with a modicum of common sense:

Yet despite the NMA's hopes, health spokespeople for the Conservative, Labour, Centre and Christian Democrats parties in the country told Aftenposten the idea was not currently feasible.

Indeed the idea will never be feasible. In other news teen smoking in most places - including Norway and the UK - is at its lowest ever level. Something that's down to vaping and nothing to do with public health at all. Not that the health fascists and nannying fussbuckets will ever admit to this.

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Trolls. Proper trolls.

None of this Internet troll stuff. We're talking the real thing - a whole essay on the real thing courtesy of Medievalist.net:

“Mucus was hanging down in front of her mouth. She had a beard but her head was bald. Her hands were like the claws of an eagle, but both arms were singed, and the baggy shirt she was wearing reached no lower than her loins in back but all the way to her toes in front. Her eyes were green and her forehead broad; her ears fell widely. no one would call her pretty”

This is what we want - fewer spotty oiks or self-indulgent masked Internet warriors - although this might put ideas in one or two folks' minds:

...calling someone a troll carried also a stiff penalty. Knutson and Riley remark, “Personal honour was taken very seriously, and to slander someone or spread false rumours could be expensive or even deadly”. In his book, Trolls: An Unnatural History, John Lindow recounts that calling someone a troll was considered vicious slander akin to accusing a man of bearing children, anally penetrating another man, or insinuating he was a mare, bitch, witch or whore. In The Saga of Finnbogi, Finnbogi’s young sons tease an old neighbour and call him a troll. The neighbour promptly kills them even though they are only aged five and three. This causes Finnbogi to take vengeance on the man and slay him. So remember, next time at the bar…thinking of calling that annoying drunk a troll? Just don’t.

Do go and read the article -more fun than the latest moan from some social justice warrior or headline-seeking politicians about trolls on Twitter!

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Why agricultural protectionism is stupid....

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All of it - tariffs, quotas, bungs to farmers not to farm, subsidies for growing, protection of "local" specialities, fines for overproduction and the whole rigmarole of corrupt rent-seeking. And by way of example - the Norwegian butter famine:

As a result of the perfect storm of: a) a craze for a popular "fat-rich, low-carb" weight-loss diet, b) a shortage of animal feed that caused a drop in milk production, c) a butter monopoly that controls 90 per cent of the butter supply and d) is protected from foreign competition by trade barriers that prohibit imports from European countries, there is now a butter shortage in Norway as the festive baking season approaches.

In a world crammed full with butter there's a shortage in Norway because the government wants to keep out nasty foreign butter. There's even butter smuggling!

As Tim Worstall puts it:

In order to get people to farm, thus providing local food (you know, local is good, right?), in a place which is snow and ice for half the year it is necessary to put up huge trade barriers to food coming in from places with more grass and more cows.

 

These trade barriers raise the internal price of milk and butter, which is the whole point of having them so as to encourage people to farm in such a frozen wasteland. However, now that you’ve got these incredibly high prices for milk and butter you find that every roadside verge supports a cow or two as the locals cash in on the incredibly high prices. Thus you now need to fine people for producing too much milk.

 

The fines reduce the amount of milk produced, there is now a shortage of milk and butter and you need to lift the import restrictions so that the citizenry can have a butter biscuit at Christmas time.

 

Barking mad. But that's government for you!

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