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Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

theguardian.com

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Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#161

Post by njharman »

yesplorer wrote: post #74

China exceeds the Unites states by more than 1 billion people in terms of population yet the US jail more people than China?! This seems shocking to say the least.(at least to me) Yet the US is supposed to be less of a 'policed state' than China.

I find it shocking that any person living in US (not sure if you do) finds this shocking. Did you not notice; the drug "war", militarization of police, commercialization of prison system, stupendous expansion of seizure laws? Did you not think those have repercussions?

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#162

Post by darkbot »

draugadrotten wrote: post #140
jeltz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same is true in Sweden only worse. I would need a good source for this, since some newspapers in Sweden are rather right-wing with even some quite extreme libertarian columnists.

Gothenburg University JMK surveys all all journalists in Sweden, and last time: 41 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) 15 procent Vänsterpartiet (communist, extreme left) Public Service Radio Sveriges Radio: 54 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) Public Service TV Sveriges Television: 52 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) http://www.journalisten.se/nyheter/svenska-journalister-fore...

Get your facts straight. Miljöpartiet is NOT considered left-wing, but centre-left, closer to the conservative-liberal block than the labour part.

Vänstetpartiet is a classical leftist party, there's nothing "extremist" about them.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#163

Post by patmcc »

madaxe wrote: post #96
aet wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next time you call the police. Please recite that little speech to the responding officer.

"Responding officer"? You mean, the phone drone whose job it is to go "sir, burglary is a civil matter, you will need to pursue it yourself"? Already have.

If you live somewhere where the police literally tell you "burglary is a civil matter", you need to either start a revolution or move to a civilized country.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#164

Post by idupree »

draugadrotten wrote: post #152
Xylakant wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're glossing over my main point: Picking a single number without context or interpretation from a statistic is devoid of any meaning. The statistic measures "reported crimes" as a total value, not even per capita. That's a very long shot from "committed crimes". It's really just only what people report, if it's a crime or not. The number of reported crimes is most likely below the number of actual crimes for most…

I agree that crime statistics are highly context sensitive and must be handled with caution. Sweden's rape statistics are a good example. Sweden has more rapes per capita than most countries, it's even the second highest in the world. However, that's because Sweden's definition of rape is including so much more than any other country. Ask Julian Assange about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Sweden Th…

Wikipedia's citation in that section[1] says that Swedes are more likely to report crimes, but have a similar actual amount of crimes.

"Sweden stands out within the entire area of crimes against the person in particular, because the registration of crime is more extensive than in the majority of other countries in Europe. This forms the background to, for example, the fact that ten times as many cases of assault are registered in Sweden as in Greece."

"But in the victim survey that exists that permits basic comparison between levels of exposure to sex crimes in ten European countries, Sweden does not top the list, as in the reporting statistics. Instead, Sweden is around the average mark, which is also the case for assaults and threats, despite the fact that compared to other countries, we have many such crimes reported. However, the fact that we are not any worse than many other countries does not mean that the situation is good. If any rape is committed, the level is too high."

[1] http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/news-from-bra/arch...

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#165

Post by berntb »

darkbot wrote: post #162
draugadrotten wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gothenburg University JMK surveys all all journalists in Sweden, and last time: 41 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) 15 procent Vänsterpartiet (communist, extreme left) Public Service Radio Sveriges Radio: 54 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) Public Service TV Sveriges Television: 52 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) http://www.journalisten.se/nyheter/svenska-journalister-fore...

Get your facts straight. Miljöpartiet is NOT considered left-wing, but centre-left, closer to the conservative-liberal block than the labour part. Vänstetpartiet is a classical leftist party, there's nothing "extremist" about them.

So we should accept your "facts" with a "straight" face...? :-)

At least the V party stopped being Stalinists early -- directly when Moscow told them that Stalin was bad...

At least the Vänster party started early to harshly criticize the dictatorships in East Europe -- in 1989...

Let us talk about money and cultural exchange with dictators? Or about suppressing the information from the few surviving volunteers that went to Soviet in the 1930s? (Which did continue after 1989.)

At least V isn't changing opinions always whenever the wind changes -- not even after 1989 have they ever supported a democracy against a dictatorship!

And so on.

That is normal and "not extremist" in your definition?!

Thanks for a good laugh.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#166

Post by mrow84 »

vidarh wrote: post #136
mrow84 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please add a bit of explanation as to why you are so confident that this interpretation of the role of the police should be regarded as categorical fact? Particularly in the case of UK, if your knowledge allows, given that we operate, at least in principle, an explicitly Peelian system of policing, in contrast to, for example, our European neighbours.

Consider the UK police treatment of demonstrators. It's one of the most brutal in Western Europe, and in many countries the very idea of a practice like kettling brings out images of fascist dictatorships. I'm Norwegian. In Norway, government officials are often found participating in May day demonstrations, and it's a public holiday. Imagine my shock the first May day I experienced after moving to the UK, with polic…

I too think that kettling is provocative and unnecessary. There is a balance that we have to strike as a society between, on the one hand, protection of property and freedom from violence, and on the other, freedom of speech and expression.

Personally, I would rather we allowed more of the latter at the (potential) expense of less of the former, perhaps with some civil compensation scheme for any who might be affected.

I also think that we should allow much more disruption than we currently do - that is often one of the ways protesters make themselves heard. If protests were allowed to make more of an impact then people might feel less inclined to cause trouble. Unfortunately any impact on the great economic machine is seen as almost taboo in some, rather influential, quarters, which makes moves in that direction less likely.

Another part of the puzzle is community leadership, whatever 'community' means in the particular context. The leadership doesn't need to be centralised, but if people don't engage with the police in situations like that then things can get out of control. Though again this is another area where I think the police are often at fault: following orders rather than engaging with people.

All that said, I don't agree with madaxe's statement: "(the police) are categorically not there to help you. They never have been.", and to be frank I don't see how your example shows that it is so.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#167

Post by [deleted] »

angularly wrote: post #59
darkbot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

d-intl.com is run by a bunch of paranoid and outright crazy neo-fascist. It's extremely racist and have close ties to the Norwegian terrorist Ander Bering Breivik as well as to the violent English Defence League(EDL). It's not by any means a decent source for anything.

Well thats just like your opinion, and not true at all. The problem in Sweden is the same as in Denmark only worse. The media is controlled by leftists to a degree that almost no rightwing views are ever presented. In Denmark 80% of journalists vote to the left, and we only have one or two papers who present the 55% of the population who vote on the right wing. The same is true in Sweden only worse.

[deleted]

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#168

Post by gnerd »

jeltz wrote: post #129
gnerd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much the opposite. In Sweden, even alcohol is a controlled substance and you may recall pressure being put on NL for allowing foreign people to consume cannabis in coffee shops (mainly in Amsterdam), well that pressure was from Sweden who saw the practise as a way for Swedes to get around their laws by flying to Amsterdam for a weekend (although just across the border in Copenhagen, a Swede can buy cannabis at C…

> It is a throwback to notions from the 19th century, puritanical christian Sweden where the notion was that Swedes have an 'addict gene'. 19th century Sweden was not "puritanical Christian". The ideas of absolute temperance entered through influences from the Anglo-Saxon world, local temperance organizations mostly advocated alcohol use in moderation. I believe that the idea of Swedes being especially prone to addit…

As the other poster mentioned, I was using puritanical to mean strict religious ideas and not the Puritan movement. You will notice I capitalised Sweden but not the word puritanical as it was not a proper noun.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#169

Post by touzen »

berrypicker wrote: post #143
touzen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your economist being right wing is relevant because most libertarians refuse to acknowledge the positive effects of equality. Noting that a source is biased is a valid point. I agree that pointing out that Kaczynski is an insane serial killer who forced a bunch of papers to publish his anarcho-primitivist manifesto by threatening to keep bombing people (WTF?) doesn't prove he's a poor mathematician. However, we're no…

> libertarians refuse to acknowledge the positive effects of equality You just made this up, or, you don't understand the difference between trying to force equality and equality itself. Equality may have positive effects, trying to force it upon people does not, this is a well-documented phenomenon Example, colleges - entry requirements are lowered in top colleges for Black students, who, in turn, have higher drop o…

1) Equality doesn't "just happen". It's something that must be actively pursued. Basically all equality is "forced".

Also, the type of positive discrimination that you describe is irrelevant to this discussion. Your ramblings on "forced equality" were in response to my view that you shouldn't discriminate job applicants because of their ethnicity.

The absence of discrimination is not the same thing as positive discrimination.

2) Whether or not my ideas are socialist (I think "progressive" is a better word) is irrelevant here. The truth is, I can back my claims with credible sources. You cannot.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#170

Post by dalke »

gnerd wrote: post #168
jeltz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a throwback to notions from the 19th century, puritanical christian Sweden where the notion was that Swedes have an 'addict gene'. 19th century Sweden was not "puritanical Christian". The ideas of absolute temperance entered through influences from the Anglo-Saxon world, local temperance organizations mostly advocated alcohol use in moderation. I believe that the idea of Swedes being especially prone to addit…

As the other poster mentioned, I was using puritanical to mean strict religious ideas and not the Puritan movement. You will notice I capitalised Sweden but not the word puritanical as it was not a proper noun.

"puritanical" is an adjective, not a noun. :)

I also noticed that you referred to an "addict gene" as a 19th century notion, but the term "gene" wasn't coined until the 20th century.

In any case, no I wasn't aware of a 19th century Sweden based on strict religious ideas. Could you tell me more? My understanding is that the state was working to suppress Pietism in the Lutheran church, and persist with rationalism.

Pietism and Puritanism are similar, and Pietism is a forerunner to the modern evangelical movement in the US, which is why I didn't think that 1800s Sweden had those same sorts of strict religious ideas about one's daily life.

Rather, there were strict religious laws, yes, but they were strict in asserting how Lutheranism was the official church and that there is no other church. Quoting Wikipedia:

In order to curb Pietism several Royal Decrees and Acts of Parliament were proclaimed in the 18th century, which forbid Swedish citizens to practice any religion besides mandatory Lutheran Sunday Mass attendance and daily family devotions. Without the presence of a Lutheran clergyman public religious gatherings were forbidden. It remained illegal until 1860 for Lutheran Swedes to convert to another confession or religion. From then, and unto 1951, it was legal to leave the Church of Sweden for the purpose of becoming a member of another officially recognised religious denomination.

I'm interested in Swedish history, though I don't know all that much about it, so I look forward to your explanation.

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