Honestly I don't really care if it looks nice and cozy with appliances and a TV and furniture and workout equipment and even little birds. Breivik complains about his prison conditions because he knows it'll give him (and more crucially, his neo-Nazi ideas) attention, as news media around the world is all too eager to gawk at him and go "uhmm, entitled much?" — in fact, even aside from simply giving him a platform, I believe he knows how his prison conditions are covered by the news, and knows how any coverage of his conditions will play into his hand.
There is one point that can be made about how if prison conditions are worsened for Breivik, that they're really going to be worsened a lot more for a lot more people who deserve worse conditions a lot less — but I also feel like a just as important point, which I have raised another time, is how Norway's prisons are a part of the country's "national brand": having humane prisons is treated by many as basically evidence of Norwegians having a virtuous character "as a people", of Norway being a "good country" with "morally superior" citizens, As Opposed To the "ebil countries" and of course Norway's greatest love-hate envy in Seppoland. This presentation of Norwegians as innately moral is obviously at the core of anti-immigrant and imperialist rhetoric, but another problem is that this presentation of Norway's "morality" ends up distracting from all the fucked up shit that Norway actually does, including in the selfsame "criminal justice" system that is supposedly so humane.
At the end of the day, we need to remember that Norway is still a bourgeois state: prisons are still prisons, ex-cons are still ex-cons, deportations are still deportations. If you wouldn't want to be put under house arrest in someone else's house, then you wouldn't want to go to a prison cell that looks like an apartment. No matter how nice it looks on the surface, everything you do is still being closely monitored and restricted.
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
I completely agree with your analysis. I found the pictures interesting and hoped they would stimulate a nice discussion, but I really don't agree with all the redditors crying that prisons should be what they imagine soviet gulags were.
Honestly I don't really care if it looks nice and cozy with appliances and a TV and furniture and workout equipment and even little birds. Breivik complains about his prison conditions because he knows it'll give him (and more crucially, his neo-Nazi ideas) attention, as news media around the world is all too eager to gawk at him and go "uhmm, entitled much?" — in fact, even aside from simply giving him a platform, I believe he knows how his prison conditions are covered by the news, and knows how any coverage of his conditions will play into his hand.
There is one point that can be made about how if prison conditions are worsened for Breivik, that they're really going to be worsened a lot more for a lot more people who deserve worse conditions a lot less — but I also feel like a just as important point, which I have raised another time, is how Norway's prisons are a part of the country's "national brand": having humane prisons is treated by many as basically evidence of Norwegians having a virtuous character "as a people", of Norway being a "good country" with "morally superior" citizens, As Opposed To the "ebil countries" and of course Norway's greatest love-hate envy in Seppoland. This presentation of Norwegians as innately moral is obviously at the core of anti-immigrant and imperialist rhetoric, but another problem is that this presentation of Norway's "morality" ends up distracting from all the fucked up shit that Norway actually does, including in the selfsame "criminal justice" system that is supposedly so humane.
At the end of the day, we need to remember that Norway is still a bourgeois state: prisons are still prisons, ex-cons are still ex-cons, deportations are still deportations. If you wouldn't want to be put under house arrest in someone else's house, then you wouldn't want to go to a prison cell that looks like an apartment. No matter how nice it looks on the surface, everything you do is still being closely monitored and restricted.
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
Treaty with the Sioux of September 29th, 1837
"We Will Talk of Nothing Else": Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837
I completely agree with your analysis. I found the pictures interesting and hoped they would stimulate a nice discussion, but I really don't agree with all the redditors crying that prisons should be what they imagine soviet gulags were.