You are assuming a substantial fraction of prisoners are rehabilitatable. That's probably not true. We're talking about a lot of borderline retarded and very unhinged folks. You aren't going to run them through a class and find them jobs. I dare say you're naive about what the criminal underclass is really like.
You are assuming these prisoners should be prisoners in the first place.
In Norway, there are 71 prisoners per 100,000 population. In the US there are 716. This means that if the US had the same incarceration rate as Norway, 90% of the current prison population wouldn't even be there, never mind the need for rehabilitation.
I'm not Norwegian, but I've spent about a year living there and I can tell you that it doesn't feel at all like there are criminals roaming the street. On the contrary, it felt very, very safe over there.
Norway is for the most part full of Norwegians. I've been there and seen that. America is not full of Norwegians. If you failed to notice that in your year there or upon your return to America, I'm not sure what to say to you.
I'm confused too. What do you mean? Surely their are 3 options here. America has worse behaved citizens, the system in the US is trying to imprison people, or a combination of both (most likely imho).
You are suggesting forgetting about people, real people, instead locking them up and throwing away the key. You are justifying it with some bullshit quip about them never changing since they're part of some TV psychology "criminal underclass". I am not going to suggest that you are locked up as a danger to society (as part of the "bit-twiddling overclass") since I believe you can change to recognize the errors in your ways. You should offer others the chance to reform after their mistakes, too. Let's not forget that the most important thing when growing in a new direction is environment.
