Sweden Closes Four Prisons

The Guardian published an article called “Sweden closes fourprisons as number of inmates plummets.”

I have a few questions off the bat that I wish would be addressed in articles like these. What defines a prison, and how are they using it in this article? Four prisons may be shutting down, but does that include jails? Does Sweden have jails?

Sweden says it all comes down to their focus on rehabilitation and lenient sentences for lesser crimes. Doesn’t that sound like common sense?

The article notes that Sweden’s inmate population has dropped 1% a year since 2004, but has dropped 6% just between 2011 and 2012.

I wish this article was longer. It gives basic information behind Sweden’s prison numbers, and a few quotes from officials and why they think the population is dropping. I want someone to do a more in depth analysis here. How does this compare population wise between Sweden and America? While the article lets us know who has the most as far as prison population (good ol’ US of A is number 1 with over 2.2 million), I’d like to know how the strategies differ between the countries. What are they doing for minor offenses that we aren’t, what percent of the prisoners are repeat offenders compared to ours?

And what are the numbers based on? USA leads with over 2.2 million, but does that include the jail system? Even China is a distant second. We hear and read reports about China’s lack of humanitarian rights, yet they apparently have less people imprisoned than we do. What is the rate of executions? Do they have less because we give life sentences in most states?

A lot more could be covered in this story.

Only two sources were used in this article, though it was short enough that it was sufficient for this piece. If there was a longer expose, perhaps they could talk to prison inmates from Sweden and the US, compare experiences.

When searching for another news site that may have covered this issue, I came up blank as far as national level news organizations. Though the point of this article over all seems to be a pat on the back for Sweden, again, I wish bigger questions had been raised. It seems strange that other news sources wouldn’t find it worth researching now that the opportunity has arisen.

But then, why is this relevant to Americans? It could easily be linked to the state legalization of marijuana in recent months. What is this going to do to the prison population in legal states? If the federal government decided to follow suit with states like Washington and Colorado, how many thousands would have to be set free? Would they be set free? This kind of article raises more questions if researched more in depth. Now that the US is on the path to making some street drugs legalized, this is an issue that needs to be covered.