> Why do people outside Norway keep bringing it up anyway
You've got it backwards. I only brought it up after the person I replied to finger-wagged America about how it needs to be more "ethical" in how it treats criminals; I wasn't trying to tell Norway what to do. The same type of person that tells Americans how we need to deal with firearms despite not living here or being familiar with our culture or rights.
The purpose of my example is that I believe just as it's possible to be cold and cruel to criminals that are locked up, it can be quite cruel to victims' families to give the criminal excessive creature comforts after they've violently snuffed out their familymember's life. I mean for god's sake we have to set some limit or else we might as well just turn them back out on the street again.
In addition, in most first-world western countries, many folks are detached from death and violence so that when we hear of a murder, we have a very abstract view of it. Why don't you actually watch a 10-year-old boy be stabbed to death[1], and for one minute try and imagine the fear and pain of that boy in his last moments, the heartache that will destroy his whole family, and if you're such a big fan of restorative justice, why don't you imagine this guy living next to the playground of your children's school when you let him out? Now if it's possible, try to amplify the brutality of that single murder by a factor of 77 in the case of Anders Breivik and try to justify to yourself all the creature comforts he's given.
I'm not saying we need to go back to biblical "eye for an eye" punishment, but on the same token we can't be excessively lenient on criminals who have no hope for restorative justice either.
[1]: https://forum.deathaddict.com/threads/cctv-captures-a-man-st...