So you came across a rehabilitation facility (as differentiated from a prison) in Austria- who has a much more progressive view of incarceration than the US to begin with, and for which no violent criminals would be housed in- and are representing all prison conditions to be like this. Is that the point you're making? Because that seems to be your point, that people who commit barbaric acts will wind up in a facility like this, so we better just brutalize them instead.
Most of the prisoners in Bastoy (Norway) were convicted of violent offenses, such as murder or rape. I don't think it is a nice idea to provide such people with 5-star facilities inside the prison. If I had the power, then I'll ship them either to the White Swan or to the Black Dolphin in Russia.
I suppose it depends what the intent of prison is. If it's to reform people and have them be functioning members of society when they're released, I think Bastoy is shows some promise. If it's to punish people in harsh conditions during and after imprisonment so they are likely to return to crime, the US prison system is exemplary.
It's probably the luck of the draw though than any top down philosophical decision. You sure wouldn't want to be in the state penn in one of the very poor states like Mississippi.
Are you disputing that the majority of prisons do not make rehabilitation their primary function? The war on drugs has proven to be the death of rehabilitative prisons as they are overcrowded past their ability to function in a rehabilitative manner, even when they're specifically built to be so. Here's a nice and short synopsis of the changing role of the US prison system: http://www.adpsr.org/home/prison_history. Perhaps if the war on drugs were eliminated, there would be less stress on the system and it could return to a more rehabilitative role, but that would require a seismic political shift in the national landscape, especially by the republican party. I'm hopeful, but not expectant.
Also, you might want to rethink the concept of the "war on drugs by Republicans" since most attorneys vote Democratic (at least historically, that may change with the flight away from Obama). This means the main cash from the "Drug war", that of the courts, legal system and it's attorney inhabitants - are largely Democratic.....
I've never seen any marked improvement in drug law enforcement where the sheriffs or police chiefs were Democratic, for example, over Republican. With the obvious exception of the Oakland/SF area, and maybe Oregon/Portland, before some drugs were legalized up there. Try Louisiana for downright mean, harsh enforcement of drug law by Democrats. The list could go on and on.
In short, false dichotomy. About as ridiculous as the "Republican war on women."
The republican party is the one that stands in the way of legalization. That's the whole basis of the "republican war on drugs." I'm talking legislatively. It doesn't matter what party to local officials are when the republicans block reform on the national or state level. Those local police still have to enforce the law.
And I'm highly skeptical of your belief there or has been any thing resembling a "republican war on drugs." Yes Nixon, a repub, created it. But Clinton and Obama have been perfectly fine with it. What you've seen is individual states stepping forward and voting weed legal.
I can't say it really matters to me if those states are largely Demo or Repub. For sure your four border states are not going to vote weed legal, because of the horrific power it'd give the Mexican cartels to move right into the USA. But all power to DC, Colorado, etc...
