Hi everyone, I’m interested in learning more about how other countries deal with crime and punishment.
I’m especially curious about countries that have very different approaches from the US, such as Norway, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc. I’ve heard that some of them have very low crime rates, very high conviction rates, very harsh or very lenient punishments, etc. I want to know how they achieve these results and what are the pros and cons of their systems.
If you have any personal experience or knowledge about the criminal justice systems in other countries, please share them with me. I’m not looking for a debate or a judgment, just an honest and respectful exchange of information. Thank you!
9 comments
The Danish justice system is … _under pressure_. Horribly underfunded, understaffed, and overburdened.
I’ve been to court a couple of times, _once_ as the defendant, and while the court-room practice does run smoothly, and I think most people agree that they receive fair trials, you can, as an outsider, feel the strain on the system, just by looking at the processing time.
Some of the things that has led to the problems in the court system, has been the social democratic, liberal and conservative, political focus on ever harsher punishments, ever more rules and regulations, and so-on, leading to only more cases with longer court-times, in a system short of both judges and “normal” workers, to take care of those cases and defend our legal rights and due process, citizens and (particularly) non-citizens alike.
The public discourse in Denmark has, in recent years, sadly turned to punishment for the sake of punishment, rather than ideas about re-socialisation and reintegration into society. Our prison system is also understaffed and our prisons overcrowded, the correctional services outside of prison are also understaffed and overburdened, and so-on. Workers are paid too little, it is hard to attract new labour, and so-on and so-on.
Generally, the justice system in Denmark, is hanging on for dear life. It’s in a sorry state considering Denmark is such a wealthy country.
Do not know much, fortunately. Somewhat repetitive issue was cringe that taxpayer’s money were used for police operatives to buy onlyfans subscriptions and then ‘collect evidence” to craft a crininal case for “spreading or pornography” which is still illegal for some reason. Like, LOL there are so many crimes our there, but police does this …
I dont really have much personal experience dealing with the justice system, except getting randomly searched by police twice and caught with small amounts of weed once or twice on seperate occasions. Those were surprisingly quite pleasant interactions with the police. We joked with each other, but they did take the weed away and gave us fines, just doing their jobs tho. No criminal record or anything, as posession for private use had already been decriminalised by that time.
Generally our justice system (like all the others in europe) is much more lenient than in america. Sentences are shorter, prison conditions better and more focussed on rehabilitation, restrictions for criminals during and after their sentence almost non existant… all this serves the purpose of reintegrating them into society and giving them a real chance to succeed in a legal way.
Also, equally importantly, avoiding making them more criminal than before the arrest. Which happens in america by traumatising people (by getting raped, mistreated etc), by encouraging joining gangs (to avoid the aforementioned) and by closing legal avenues to success (restricting access to many jobs and social services).
As a result, crime rates and recidivism rates are much lower.
Today i found out on youtube just made a very long video about this 2 weeks ago. Also comparing americas system to norways (the best and most advanced system in europe, following the same principle).
Talk about the flaws of the Italian judicial system? Do you have until Christmas?
I’m joking but not too much. The Italian system in theory would like to aim for the rehabilitation of the convicted person rather than his punishment. In practice, all this is ruined by system problems.
Simply put, the current system would be good for a population half the size of the current one. Too few officials in the courts, prisons clogged with people not yet fully judged, politics inventing new crimes in the wake of news cases, a clash between politics and judges that has been going on for 30 years which hinders any serious attempt at reform.
And all this for criminal justice, for crimes such as murder, theft, corruption… for civil justice it is even worse, trials can drag on for years and years, even when the reason of one of the two parties is evident. In practice, the most astute ones always win in keeping to the limit between legality and illegality, without straying into too serious crimes. The economy is seriously damaged by this situation and there is no solution in sight.
Another issue is that there are prison sentences that in Europe are seen as too cruel, such as life imprisonment under 41bis: applied to mafia bosses, it imposes total isolation on the prisoner. He does not go out into the courtyard with others, he cannot interact with other prisoners, he cannot read books, he does not watch TV, his correspondence with relatives is monitored and may be censored or banned. However, the vast majority of the population is in favor of these conditions, seen as a system to hinder the mafia.
Not near as good as in EU countries in most aspects. Yet not nearly as bad as it was 10 years ago before reforms.
Police wotk is… fine. A lot of street level patrol officers are really helping people. Yet some distrust to police still exists. Office-level policemans can be described as “lazy” when it comes to taking crime reports from people and would do anything to persuase you to no to do this (unless it’s a really easy case). But with some persistence you can report your crime, and then they usually do their job fairly good.
Judiciary and judges work are more complicated, and I preffer to not touch this topic. Judges can be incompetent, abuse their power and corrupt, but most of the ordinary folks won’t face this. Such issues usually occur on high-level criminal cases between huge businesses and oligarchs. Reforms are progress and slowly moving towards improvment of situation.
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Prosecution is often does a really bad work at case preparation. Which may lead to prolonging court case for inedaquate terms. Sometimes corruption involved as well. Can’t add anything to this.
One really positive thing is that public opinion matter, and when people decide to organize and take interest in specific court case, either in from of registred advocacy organization or with spontaneous protest it’s often gets result.
England and Wales: Creaking at the seams. There’s a backlog of over 65,000 serious cases in the criminal courts and prisons are effectively full. The whole system – police, courts service, and the Crown Prosecution Service – has had budgets slashed over the last decade.
I can’t imagine it’s any better in the other UK jurisdictions.
Belgium here , it’s ridiculous.
I have a good example :
1- a cocaïne dealer close to where i live was regularly beaten and robbed of his coke by a boxer
2- he got tired of this and killed the boxer with an ak47 ( illegaly owned of course)
3- he was guilty of cocaïne traffic , illegal weapon ownership and of course murder , that’s a lot imo.
4- his punishment was an electronic bracelet , not prison.
What a joke.
Finland [overview of justice system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_system_of_Finland)
[Crime and punishment summary from Ministry of Justice](https://oikeusministerio.fi/en/crime-and-punishment)
Main focus is on rehabilitation, not punishment, sentences are almost always quite laid back.
It’s as fair and functional as a justice system can be, but sentences for crimes are on many occasions way too mild. For example one can be found guilty of rape and not face any jail time.