The American Way of Punishment
By 
Reading about the prison conditions of white supremacist mass murderer Anders Breivik, the worst killer in Norwegian history, reminds one of just what a pointlessly inhumane nation the United States is and really always has been.
Anders Behring Breivik—the far-right terrorist and mass murderer who is surely the most reviled man in Norway—lives in a two-story suite with a kitchen where he can cook his own meals, a pleasant outdoor yard, and a TV room with armchairs, an Xbox, and scenic photos on the walls.
The contents of the rooms, however, are carefully chosen. Appearances to the contrary, this is a supermaximum-security unit, which has been purpose-built for Breivik by the Kriminalomsorgen—the Norwegian Correctional Service—at its Ringerike Prison.
Ringerike lies just across a broad lake from Utoye island, where on July 22, 2011—15 years ago today—Breivik shot to death 69 people, including 33 children, at a Labour Party summer camp, after killing eight others with a bomb blast in Oslo. To this day, Breivik maintains his virulently anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, white supremacist beliefs, and desires to spread his message of hate to the world. For this reason, his communicating with both other incarcerated people and the outside world is almost entirely prohibited.
But throughout his imprisonment, Norway has gone to great lengths to mitigate the harmful impact of Breivik’s isolation by providing him with comfortable surroundings and with as much human interaction as can be provided by specially trained prison staff, who are assigned to talk with Breivik, join him in games of cards, and offer him every possible opportunity for rehabilitation, whether he embraces them or not.
Whether you think this is good or not I guess is up to you. The question I would ask from an American perspective is why we as a nation are so uniquely focused on mass punishment in horrifying, dehumanizing conditions, compared to European nations. What does this say about the character of Americans, a nation of people who like to describe themselves as being the greatest nation in human history, an assertion completely lacking any evidence at all.