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Comment by vmateixeira | Hacker News Reader

They're allowed to browse the Internet and go to the Gym? Sounds better than most hotels I've been.

Are you saying that life in a prison should be worse than living in a budget hotel? Why?

What I'm saying is that with so much public service to be done, why put them on a 'pleasant' place? They certainly have there roads with snow to be unblocked, pastures and streets to be clean, poor people to be fed...

Why should there be any link between forced labour and prison?

Yes. Because prisons are not "correctional facilities" they are instruments of punishment, yielded by the state in the same way other compliance enforcing institutions are. All authority in human societies are fundamentally based on violence, or the threat of it.

Now if prisons were in fact "correctional facilities" with the resources skills and programs required to train inmates how to function in a modern civil society the answer would be "maybe".

Prisons are exactly what the society that has them wants them to be, no more no less. If Iceland wants them to be correctional facilities, and provides the resources skills and programs required to train inmates to function in a modern civil society, then that's what they are. If your society does not emphasise that function for prisons, this is a choice that your society has made, not some reflection of a universal truth.

Even if, as in most societies there is some ambivalence about the functions of prisons, surely Iceland has the right to set its own priorities.

Do you think putting them in that kind of prison will help rehabilitate them into society, as a healthy, contributing system?

Do you think it will prevent them from committing that crime again?

Do you think that prison will scare other bankers from making the same 'mistake?'

This is an empirical matter. I would have no opinion beyond consulting the literature, which by my superficial understanding does indeed indicate a greater success for pleasant, rehabilitation focussed institutions.

Americans like to punish. A lot. Instead of rehabilitation they focus on making sure convicted felons are practically unemployable once they are out of jail. This is changing, but slowly.

I agree with rehabilitation and make people employable, but let's face it, this is clearly not the case here. This is a white collar... with the outcome being paid vacations.

Another thing to mention is that even if Lárus Welding loses his appeal and the six months jail + three months parole sentence is upheld, that doesn’t mean that he’ll actually be in jail for six months.The way incarceration works in Iceland, he’s likely to be out in a halfway house with a GPS tracker on his ankle in two months, and completely free in three, serving the remaining six as parole.And he gets to keep all of the money he made. Which was lots.Baldur Guðlaugsson, the other major conviction mentioned, only served six months out of 24 in prison. [1]

[1] https://studiotendra.com/2012/12/29/what-is-actually-going-o...

And I'm sure they'll have plenty of private companies offering them a job once they get out of 'jail'.

Oh most certainly. But the original comment was basically a call to "hang'em high" which is what I was addressing.

You must stay in shitty hotels.

Yup, those banks still owe me money.

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