Considering we're reading allot of material dealing with crime and punishment it should be worth while to look at prison. I subscribe to a sort of utilitarian theory of justice, justice should produce the best social outcomes possible for the greatest possible structural good. My working assumptions therefore assume that rehabilitation should be the goal of the prison systems (Which we are utterly failing to do in the US, with privatizing prisons and stigmatizing past inmates so they re forced back into crime).
Even with my admittedly liberal leanings I was shocked to discover that Norway had such success with rehabilitation. I assume, and this is an important assumption, that the reason rehabilitation has failed so utterly in the US is because it has never been attempted with such single mindedness like it was tried in Norway. We have always tried to sorta rehabilitate and always punish, and this approach has lead to some pretty sorry outcomes (the US has the highest number of prisoners in proportion to its total population than any country (yup, even including the anti-democracy guys: Russia, China, and Iran))
This is a very good article about a Norwegian low security prison.
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