Breivik verdict 'a relief': Swedish Utøya survivor

In the world of crime and punishment, there are some differences in how criminals are handled, for example solitary confinement for some convicts, etc...

I wonder if there is such thing as a 'publication ban' on some criminals, which would prevent the publication of interviews with the criminal, to prevent him from regularly issueing rallying cries to the genral public from behind bars in an attempt to recruit more killers to his cause.

Such a ban would appear to be warranted in his case.

His 21 years jail sentence is a waste of resources, he should have atleast be given a death sentence instead of treating him like an hero every where on the media smiling with no sign of remorseless but rather he's seeking attention to be popular. Is he better than the lives of those he took?

So, 3 months for every death. Nordic justice is a joke.

How does that deter people from doing it again????

Execute this animal !

have u seen where they are sending this disease of society?

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083,00.html

its a friggin' 4* hotel!!

talk about wasted money and a backwards view on justice.

translation - oh, u killed 77 people. well thats 100 days in prison for each and you get 3 nice meals a day, an amazing room with a fridge, TV, nice bed and a window, PLUS you can use our state of the art dental office any time.

pure

and

utter

BS

Liquidmonkey i checked the link u pasted,i think many people that are not a criminal will try to comit a crime just to go and relax their,that is not a prison,that is 6 stars Hotel

Hah, could you imagine the animals at San Quinton in jail in Norway? That would be a great TV show.

I hope he will be out with the ordinary decent criminals in the exercise yard as soon as possible!

I imagine most (if not all) of the barbaric idiots who are screaming for blood are from the US. I would like to make it clear that many of us here are more civilized than that. Just because this criminal is demonstrably sub-human does not automatically reduce us to that state as well. I am glad he has been found guilty and locked up. I am also glad that he has not manage to reduce us to bloodthirsty maniacs. I am also glad that much of the world is waking up to the fact that revenge is not justice. Justice is justice.

@ #10

right. you call it justice, i call it embarressing.

people are dying cause there is not enough money for health care.

kids cannot get educated because there is not enough money.

politicians keep cutting budgets claiming not enough money.

BUT

there is enough money to keep people like breivik alive, fed, housed, health care etc.

next time u wanna complain about not enough for nurses, police etc, u can thank yourself for supporting people like breivik.

in these extreme cases, it would be beneficial to everyone if breivik was just put down like the sick dog that he is.

Norge is the most beatiful country in the world, for killers. Where else do you get 4 and half month duty free holidays for every man you kill?

@Cukka

If your family member were victimised i don't think your comments will sound welcoming like you have written here. This kind of justice can only happened here in Europe and the Nordic part in particular. Keeping him alive is a total dissipation of time and resources. Why wasting the tax payers money to take care of this beast of a thing that is posing himself on the media seeking unnecessary attention. History will always repeat itself in the lives of those who fail to learn from the lessons of the past.

The maximum in Norway is 21 years.

However there are provisions for keeping him in for life if warranted.

It is certainly more than warranted for this bottom feeder, and he will never see the light of freedom again.

Now let's just ignore this axxhole from this point forward.

The government of Norway has just told this scum that his life is worth more than the lives of all his victims combined. 21 years for 77 lives; what a joke!

@calebian22, @JohnnyAppleseed, @Strictly.

Even though I support life imprisonment, I must comment that Norway's maximum 21 years of imprisonment can be extended indefinitely for as long as he is considered a threat to society. Breivik will not necessarily be incarcerated for 21 years only.

@acidcritic, @Smokebox, @matona1.

There will be neither less nor more crimes in Norway or any other country just because tougher punishments are applied. Violent criminals just don't care about their legal fate (being criminals endanger them to the extent they could be killed, why would they care about the justice system?), specially fanatics like Breivik.

@ Avidror

If Bernie Madoff can get 150 years, Breivik can get 770 years.

The important point about tough sentences and laws that allow for life without parole is that it prevents homicidal sociopaths from ever endagnering society again, which can occur if he expertly fakes an 'I'm a nice guy and I'm sorry' act that fools his handlers near the end of his 21 year sentence.

So contrary to your last point, tougher punishment CAN benefit society, for the simple reason that it would be guaranteed to keep at least Breivik off the street.

48 murderers, which all together killed 78 people in Belarus sentenced to life in prison. Breivik should be forty eight lives in prison.

I sincerely hope that some of the relatives of the deceased would meet with him 21 years later. I would have done.

@Reason abd Realism and @NetFox i totally agree with your comments.

@Avidror, Don't you think this sentence was treated with levity and too much leniency?

Seriously !! This is complete BS !!

Norway should now outsourse the handling of Breivik to California where we could take very good care of him by giving him "options" to choise from, like death by gas, hanging, electric chair, injections or firing squad.

At least he was considered sane, not to be sentenced to the health care instead of being locked away. And as others have already stated there's no guarantees he'll be a free man after 21 years. They may - and hopefully they will - prolong his time of imprisonment every fifth year.

11:02 August 25, 2012 by B Slick

Better in Zimbabwe. There's a problem with food. At the same time, it will turn and humanitarian assistance.

He wasn't sentenced to 21 years as some people seems to think, he was sentenced to 21 years + förvaring, which means that he will be inprisoned for 21 years and then 5 years, and then 5 more years and so on until he is dead. They will not release him after 21 years.

While in Norway, so then I want to to Breivik had such gifts constantly until his death.

Or better yet, that he was serving a sentence with other prisoners. I do not think that will live long in this case.

@Reason abd Realism, @Strictly.

I see your point and I agree with you. I'd like Breivik to be imprisoned for life. But I was writing about potential criminals being discouraged to victimize other people, not about actual criminals who have already victimized. That was my point: tougher sentences don't thwart those who are free and want to kill. At least not generally.

I looked at the smug face Breivik, and I want to give him a lead pill weighing nine grams.

@ Avidror

I do not agree with what you say about potential criminals.

For example, unlike most normal democracies, Sweden has a 'sub adult' category for people aged 18 to 22, and murderers in this category get far lighter sentences (even by Swedish standards) than so called full adults who are older.

This promotes gangs to use 18-22 year olds as assassins, bombers, and arsonists, and these assassins know that they will face a couple of years behind bars in group hug therapy administerd by a team of therapists if caught, and are likely handsomly rewarded by the gang leaders if they are not caught.

The other aspect of Swedish sentencing that is a colossal joke and insult to the families of murder victims is the fines levied against the murderer, which can be as little as 50,000 SEK for emotionally and financially ruining the lives of so many others. Larger fines would cost the state nothing, and would only be a burden to the killer, who deserves it. 1 Million SEK should be the absolute minimum.

Agree there is always some fraction of psychos out there, but Swedish sentencing is such a joke that even people with a conscience and at least some fear of the consequences of being caught for murder have too little to fear in Sweden, when compared with most other democracies. There is no nation in the world the goes easier on murderers, as far as I can tell, with the possible exception of Norway.

Meanwhile the maximum security prison facilities sit half empty, according to an article posted by TL today.

@Reason abd Realism.

And I do not agree with you. An 18-22 year-old Swedish criminal benefitting from a lenient criminal law doesn't mean that criminal would not commit the crime being the law tougher. The U.S. have the tougher legal punishments in the developed world but the highest rate of crime.

@ Avidror

The USA is not Sweden. The USA is plagued by a gun loving culture, with inadequate screening of gun purchasers, especially at gun shows, a 'stand your ground' mentality and 'shoot first and ask questions later' laws that glorify that, along with a more advanced drug problem due in part to the land border and easy access to coastal regions with central and South America, where the majority of drugs are produced in the Americas.

The USA also has greater poverty levels than Sweden, in urban areas that also have a lot of rich people living there, which is a mix that fuels crime, along with well over a million veterans suffering from PTSD.

The USA can be accused of over incarceration, with a privatized prison system that in some cases gleefully locks up teenagers that are merely guilty of marajuana possession and turns them into hardened criminals, so I'm not pretending that the USA's treatment of crime is ideal - far from it - but on the other hand the other extreme, namely the Swedish system of release at the earliest possible opportunity, trivial fines, and sentencing that is the shortest in the civilized world, is not appropriate with regard to the crime of murder in my opinion, and provides no serious disincentive to the subset of violent criminals who contemplate the consequences of their acts, or to crime bosses running gangs.

A recent example was the Swedish guy who murdered and then dumped the body of his friend into a sewer a few months ago. Police work revealed that he did a series of web searches to determine the typical sentences handed out to murderers in Sweden before he committed his own murder.

@ Reason abd Realism.

For sure the U.S. are not Sweden.

I agree with you: tougher punishments should be applied.

But I still consider that most criminals would have done it even knowing they would be subjected to tougher punishments. You write about a single case, which was a premeditated murder. Actually, most criminal cases don't happen in that way at all. Crimes usually involve alcohol or drugs consumption, blindness, rage, lack of preparedness or even spontaneity. Those kind of criminals, who are the majority of them, don't think about consequences.

It's not always about conspiracy and planification. And many of those who plan carefully how to murder could be the kind of people who don't care. For example, a drug dealer, even in Sweden, is a person who knows his job can derive on his own murder by a rival gang due to a settling of scores. But the drug dealer is still a drug dealer. He will not stop being so, so if he doesn't care about his own death, why would he be worry about a legal punishment?

Swedish guys who kill their own friends after searching for the punishments they'll be subjected to is a very rare occurence.

But I insist: I support life imprisonment, but as a means of punishment and containment of people who have already murdered, not as a deterrence against potential criminals.

@ Avidror

For my part, I insist that there is at least some subset of people who would not commit a murder if the consequences were more severe, which includes longer jail time and fines that are not insultingly trivial.

As for the ones who have damaged brains or sociopaths with zero impulse control, and who kill or commit violent acts 'spontaneoously', and without regard for the consequences, thn stiffer jail terms will not prevent their first crime, but we could at least take comfort in the knowledge that our tax money is keeping these violent maniacs off the streets a lot longer, which would make our society safer.

And to those who believe that killers can be rehabilitated, lthen 15 or 20 year or onger terms (as one might get for murder in the UK or South Africa) would give the system more time to 'cure' them. And in those cases where 'the system' has screwed up, and the killer is not fully cured, then at least he is 20 years older when he leaves prison, and so has less testosterone in his system to prompt him to his next spontaneous act of violence or murder.

13:59 August 27, 2012 by Reason abd Realism

Tell that to the relatives of those killed seventy-seven children. The punishment should be commensurate crime. The death penalty - is not enough in this case. The galleys, to penal servitude for life.

@ Netfox

In my earlier post number 17, I suggested a 770 year sentence, in other words life without parole. I personally wish that a police sharp shooter had put Breivik out of our misery before he harmed anyone, or even at the end of his shooting spree, but unfortunately that did not happen.

The more recent posts are part of a debate about the benefits to soceity of tougher sentencing in general with another poster. But myself and the other poster I think agree that Brievik should never be released. And in my case at least, I would certainly not oppose the death penalty for Breivik.

@ Reason abd Realism (#34)

I totally agree with your this opinion. :-)

@Reason abd Realism, #34.

For sure both of us think Breivik shouldn't be released; as you wrote, we were just debating about the benefits of tougher punishments.

I don't support death penalty, but at the same time I support lawful killings. If a police officer could have shot Breivik in time to prevent even a single of the 77 murders, the officer should have shot. Unfortunately, it didn't happen.

@ Avidror

A final popular argument against longer sentences that I do not agree with is that longer sentences prevent the criminal from returning to society and to make a contribution there. There is a lot of work (not chain gangs, but more civilized work, such as basic accounting, textile work, agricultural work, carpentry, etc..) that could be done within the prison system, and at least some criminals could be motivated to pay back their (non trivial) financial fines while behind bars, so that they would one day leave prison free of their substantial debt to victim or the family of the victim.

As for capital punishment, I support it for premeditated murder for people who are 19 or older when there is no doubt about the guilt of the criminal (not just 'beyond a reasonable doubt'), and the perpertrator is not mentally retarded. At the same time I am aware the society can sometimes carry out that punishment reklessly and unjustly. An excellent example of the miscarriage of justice that is typical of the maniacs who run the Texas death penalty system can be found in this long article published in the New Yorker a few years ago:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann