Tel-Chai Nation

Don Surber (via Power Line) finds that in Norway, they've got quite a way of dealing with criminals: arrest, try, and then release them and let the criminals decide if they want to go to jail or not. According to Aftenposten, one out of five criminals don't turn up to serve their sentence:

It almost sounds like something out of a film, but for the Norwegian Correctional Services (Kriminalomsorgen), the problem is real. 20 percent of convicted criminals simply fail to show up to serve their prison term, according to figures for 2007.

Criminals sentenced to long prison terms are particularly prone to bunking off. Almost every fourth person sentenced to six months or more in prison failed to meet in 2006. The situation is only becoming graver, with a total a 1799 people failing to show up during the whole of last year, compared to as many as 1068 people so far this year.

"It’s difficult to make plans for the prison terms when we have no idea who will show up and who won't," said Ellinor Houm, director of the Norwegian Correctional Services, section for eastern Norway.

[...]

The dilemma facing the prison authorities is that failure to show up at prison is not yet illegal. Although Parliament has passed new legislation making it a criminal offence to skip prison, the law has not yet been implemented and until it is, prison authorities can do nothing but hope that the criminals will eventually show up at the prison gates.

Which is unlikely, and something tells me that the authorities likely don't even search for the fugitives from justice and charge them with evasion of the law. And how come it took them so long to enact such laws? Where were the legislators all these years?

Some justice system, right? Even Britain's isn't as bad as that. One can only wonder how many terror suspects could get away thanks to this.

Trackposted to: Dumb Ox Daily News, Inside the Northwest Territory, Nuke's News & Views, Rosemary's Thoughts, Stuck on Stupid.

Labels: Europe, Scandanavia