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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

#171

Post by mjn »

berntb wrote: post #165
darkbot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A bit earlier than 1989; the Left Party split with the Soviets in the 1960s, and became frequent critics after that. They were one of the loudest European left parties condemning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#172

Post by nzp »

DanTheManPR wrote: post #151
nzp wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does Minnesota's system work for me as a member of the public? I can walk all over my neighborhood feeling perfectly safe, and even my children can freely go out in public, walking for a radius of a mile or biking for a radius of four or five miles in any direction, without risk or fear. I'm genuinely curious, I'm honestly not trolling, is this state of affairs remarkable in the US these days? Is this really an…

It's not remarkable in most small towns and rural areas. Big cities are more of a mixed bag - there is always "the bad part of town" with very high crime rates, but the middle-class suburbs (where a great many HN users live) usually have rates of violent crime comparable to western Europe. Naturally the prison population comes almost entirely from those bad neighborhoods, and so our insane incarceration rates are mos…

Thanks!

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#173

Post by berntb »

mjn wrote: post #171
berntb wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A bit earlier than 1989; the Left Party split with the Soviets in the 1960s, and became frequent critics after that. They were one of the loudest European left parties condemning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example.

You only had a complaint about one point of all those? :-)

It is funny when you show someone completely wrong with lots of examples -- and just get a down vote. If I have a thesis in life by now, it is that idealists lie, not only to themselves,

About your claim that V broke up with the East European dictators:

V had camps, got alcohol, money etc from those dictatorships after they "broke up". They took some principal decision in the 1980s about not having enough resources to analyze and criticize "everything everywhere"... And so on.

I lost my saved newspaper clippings from the period in a move (not much was ever written about all this in Swedish media). But you can easily add more. Like that Ohly had an anti Semite as favorite blogger (until it was pointed out to him), etc.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#174

Post by willyt »

Safety is not the same as feeling safe.

In Britain, about 10-15 years ago, they changed all the emergency services sirens to the same sound as the police have always used. You used to be able to tell the difference between an ambulance, a fire engine and a police car from the sound, now you can't. Also, these days a typical emergency medical response consists of 2 vehicles, a mobile ER doctor followed up by an ambulance.

So my point is that in a densely populated area, like London, it now sounds like the police are all over the place all the time. Actually it's usually a medical response to an elderly person having a fall or heart problems or such like but, because they all sound like police, people assume the worst.

If I were a politician and I wanted to introduce a rational and humane policy for treating the problem of criminality, like they have in Norway, the first thing I would do is change the sirens for all new fire and ambulance vehicle purchases so you can tell the difference from police. Then seed the media with the idea that there are less police sirens than there used to be. People would think crime had dropped precipitously and your policy would feel like it was a success as well as actually being a success.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#175

Post by gnerd »

dalke wrote: post #170
gnerd wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Pie…

Yes, puritanical is an adjective but the Puritan movement is a proper noun as it is the name of a movement. That is the point I was making. In English the phrase 'proper noun' does not mean I was implying the word puritanical was a noun, it means I was saying it is not a name (which we capitalize and call proper nouns), and therefore I was using it as an adjective. I hope that clears up your confusion.

As for the "addict gene", again, this was supposed to be a synonym phrase for a notion of hereditary weakness, I was not implying it has a genetic basis or that genetics was known before Crick. The phrase "addict gene" was quoted because I have heard it in Sweden (in modern times) when discussing these issues.

I'm hardly an expert on Swedish history, just a person who asks questions when I travel. What I know of Swedish history could be written on the back of a postage stamp. I'm afraid I wasted more time on Roman history in school (as you can imagine, Swedish history doesn't come up very often).

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#176

Post by mnsc »

mnsc wrote: post #27
berrypicker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will find this offensive, but it's mostly because of immigration. Sweden has a one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe, with more and more immigrants coming in every year, and crime is increasing relatively fast. It's not just correlation: serious crime (violence, theft) is overrepresented in immigrant groups, especially African and Asian immigrants, who are also less likely to serve pr…

We in sweden also have Victim Cardigans. A type of clothing that is worn by those people who types "SD2014" in internet comment fields. This item allows the wearer to dodge discussions because the wearer is a victim of the "PK-maffia" a hypothesized shadow organization that enforces only politically correct viewpoints regarding immigration and disallows the wearer from expressing harsh "truths". In reality Sweden has…

test

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#177

Post by mnsc »

mnsc wrote: post #176
mnsc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We in sweden also have Victim Cardigans. A type of clothing that is worn by those people who types "SD2014" in internet comment fields. This item allows the wearer to dodge discussions because the wearer is a victim of the "PK-maffia" a hypothesized shadow organization that enforces only politically correct viewpoints regarding immigration and disallows the wearer from expressing harsh "truths". In reality Sweden has…

test

test

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#178

Post by dalke »

gnerd wrote: post #175
dalke wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. Pie…

Yes, puritanical is an adjective but the Puritan movement is a proper noun as it is the name of a movement. That is the point I was making. In English the phrase 'proper noun' does not mean I was implying the word puritanical was a noun, it means I was saying it is not a name (which we capitalize and call proper nouns), and therefore I was using it as an adjective. I hope that clears up your confusion. As for the "ad…

Genetics was most certainly known before Crick. Indeed, the terms "genetics" and "gene" were coined over a decade before Crick was born, and the first research was by Mendel about 50 years before Crick's birth.

I have not heard of a specifically Swedish addict gene, and I've lived in Sweden for over 6 years. Searching now, I found no mention of that concept, including searching for "missbrukare gen". Surely some may have said it, but it's not a widely held belief that's part of the debate on substance abuse.

And of course this part of the thread started because you made a statement about puritanical Swedish religious beliefs of the 1800s, when it appears that religious beliefs in Sweden during that time were decidedly anti-pietism/anti-puritanical.

What I conclude from all this is that you feel that your generalizations are correct, even though your details are not, and you make statements without worrying about checking those facts, or feeling that you need to explain the reasoning behind your generalizations.

Perfectly fine for you do to that, but it's not the conversation I wanted, or want, to have.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#179

Post by gnerd »

dalke wrote: post #178
gnerd wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, puritanical is an adjective but the Puritan movement is a proper noun as it is the name of a movement. That is the point I was making. In English the phrase 'proper noun' does not mean I was implying the word puritanical was a noun, it means I was saying it is not a name (which we capitalize and call proper nouns), and therefore I was using it as an adjective. I hope that clears up your confusion. As for the "ad…

Genetics was most certainly known before Crick. Indeed, the terms "genetics" and "gene" were coined over a decade before Crick was born, and the first research was by Mendel about 50 years before Crick's birth. I have not heard of a specifically Swedish addict gene, and I've lived in Sweden for over 6 years. Searching now, I found no mention of that concept, including searching for "missbrukare gen". Surely some may…

What I conclude from this is you don't know what a proper noun is in English and you are offended at conclusions drawn from my experience in Sweden, which are of course anecdotal and therefor not applicable to everyone in Sweden, why would you assume I was asserting the opposite?

I guess you didn't do much searching if you couldn't find this study[1] from Lund University or this study[2] from Gothenburg University.

From your sophmoric questioning and pedantic ramblings it seems your mind was made up before you even heard the answer.

> Perfectly fine for you do to that, but it's not the conversation I wanted, or want, to have.

Well to be fair I wasn't trying to have a conversation with you, and again, to be fair, you didn't do anything to add something to the general conversation besides your mild nationalism. Classy.

[1] http://www.research.med.lu.se/en_projektdetaljer.php?Proj=65...

[2] http://www.psy.gu.se/english/current/news/newsdetail//gene-i...

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