Well, let’s just start with the fact that I hold a Finnish passport (alongside my UK one) and I actually LIVED there for whopping 18 years.

Here’s some “insider information” for you : Finnish prisons are like a “daycare school” ie. very very SOFT where nobody is isolated etc. and DO NOT turn offenders into good citizenry any more than UK or US prisons. In the fact, the criminal element just gets released back into the society where they go committing crimes until they get “taken out” by someone who’s not willing to become a victim.

By “taking out” I mean the fact gun ownership is near 40% in Finland and for willingness to to use them check Winter War from 1939-1940. Finland is a HUGE country by land mass comapared to european counterparts and is basically snowed under for good half of the year, with very thinly distributed population. This all means you do not have to feed that corpse of a burglar to the pigs, just dump it into the forest and by summer… it’s GONE! Vanished! Like an intelligent thought in a socialsts head!

Still despite that, Finland enjoys one of the highest murder rates per capita in the EU… maybe due to the heavy drinking culture, long dark winters and oppressive taxation and regulation causing high unemployment all the problems that come with that.

Criminals and prisons … what to do, what to do ….

I’ve GOT IT! Let’s outsource it!

Why not hire some third world country to build prisons? We could get things done much cheaper there and those third world countries would gain a valuable amount of foreign currency. Additionally these criminals would realise that their “rights” are considerably different and the availability of plasma TV’s would be greatly lessened.

Hmmm. Even liberals would like that as it would increase trade to poor countries ….

LOL.

During my time at detention barracks, the place was already much milder than in the past, when wardens would sometimes throw offenders into solitary and then set loose two growling guard dogs onto the hapless prisoner. After that? Emergency ride to the hospital.

Then we changed tactics. Simply, deprivation. Deprivation of sunlight, deprivation of good food(it didn’t help that we as wardens had to eat the same lousy slop!!!), deprivation of space except for the space enclosed by the three walls and the cell bars. We even prevented them from doing pushups in the cells.

Good behaviour is rewarded by strenuous training in the parade square, and they actually seem to prefer it. But foul up, and that privilege is taken away.

Friends elsewhere in the army told me our tactics were very effective, serving to discipline the insubordinate and straighten out the lazy. Only a few of the die hards, or those who have other reasons(family financial difficulties) to go AWOL, would choose to do so again.

Dan McWiggins – Get your gun rights back from the Government, or be prepared not only to be “subjects” of the Crown …

First, it’s an American misunderstanding that we are “subjects”. Our passports say we are “citizens”.

… but subjected to the whims of every criminal who manages to catch you unawares.

You mean there might be another Tony Blair lurking round the corner?

To understand how to ‘fix’ a criminal you first have to understand what’s ‘broken.’ Some people are just sociopaths and there’s nothing you can do about it. Lock ‘em up & toss the key.

Most people aren’t though. Most people who are in jail have made rational economic decisions to break the law. They don’t have the skills and habits it takes to succeed in the legal private sector so they attempt to make their fortune in the illegal private sector. They are anti-social, but they aren’t biologically pre-disposed towards that – you can train it out of them.

The Finns seek to do two things. They seek to punish people do deter crime. They also seek to instill in their inmates the skills they need to tip the rational ‘balance of factors’ towards legal activities. Punishment comes from isolation mostly – they don’t have any contact with the outside world. They don’t see any of their friends or family for years. This has proven to be sufficient punishment to deter crime.

The second half of their system is to instill in people to the skills it takes to be rationally law abiding. Skills like taking responsibility, self discipline, following instructions from a manager and showing up places on time. For a simple example I will demonstrate a difference.

In US prisons is a prisoner works in the wood shop he is escorted from cell to work place by prison personell. In the Finnish prison no one comes to get you. After a certain time your cell is just unlocked. If you don’t show up to work on time you are punished in some way. Wardens have the authority to extend your sentence in one day increments, as an example. In this way the Finnish prisoner learns how to get up our of bed in the morning and go to work without any armed guards forcing him to. This is a highly valuable skill which all of us law-abiders take for granted, but our lives would be non-functional without it. That’s just one example.

US prisoners never learn these skills. For them the only rational decision is to return to a life of crime – its the only thing they know how to do, and they have the same desire to make money and provide for themselves the rest of us have.

That said, the prison system is the last resort. Arming the populace is one of many ways of insuring it never reaches that point.

Well said. Still, the most effective way to sort all this out is to get the private sector involved. Let the people of Britain keep and bear arms and reestablish in law the castle doctrine. Make concealed carry widely available to people with clean records. Allow the use of deadly force in cases where life or grievous bodily harm is threatened. In the US, being threatened by a much larger attacker, or multiple attackers, generally permits the use of a firearm. In short, arm the people and let them take care of themselves.

That would seriously diminish the problem and, IMHO, is the only thing that will. With the best-trained and most highly motivated officers on earth (which Britain certainly does not have), there would still be far too few to prevent most crime. The only way for the people to be, and feel, safe, is to allow them to take their own safety into their own hands.

Guns aren’t called “equalizers” for nothing. A gun makes even a small, old, or female citizen perfectly capable of lethal self-defense against the biggest lout. If the yobbos on British streets knew they were quite possibly looking at getting two or three hollowpoints to center of mass the next time they decided to assault a citizen, I suspect they would give the matter much more consideration. The thugs on this side certainly do, at least in the concealed carry states. That’s why, over here, most robberies happen when homes are unoccupied. In your country, most robberies happen when the occupants are there.

Get your gun rights back from the Government, or be prepared not only to be “subjects” of the Crown, but subjected to the whims of every criminal who manages to catch you unawares. Or come to the US. Your choice.

The socialists/Gramscians in Britain have basically dismantled fatherhood, as they have dismantled the family. Fatherhood is now a night at the Oprah, in front of the TV wiv a few bevvies an’ ven a quickkie before he remembers ‘is appointment da’an the pub wiv a few mates. He may come back, or he may not.

By the time the child is born nine months later, the mother may have little recollection of the father. Certainly, there will be no permanent man in the council flat (free, except to ratepayers).

The children will have absolutely no concept of what a father is – not a temporary “dad” passing through, but a real husband and wife, shared debts, ambitions and experiences, “you get your homework done, or you won’t be going out after school for a week” real life daddy. Just a little teenage girl who calls herself mum and whose own daddy is “the social”. The state.

They’re in their third generation now and their folk memories have been airbrushed out by the schools, “the social”, and television. Women without permanent men and hundreds of thousands of children without fathers.

How? Having failed to learn for the 20 years or so they’ve been under the impression they were supra-important, they’re suddenly going to cleave to life lessons? They have to learn the lesson that wild young men all over the world learn: there is someone stronger than you. You’re not in control. We (a coherent society, which the socialists have done so much to destroy) are.

This learning experience, if not inculcated when very young by – preferably – dads, will require it be learned by force later on.

But prison is not the socialist way.

Oh yeah? Tell that to Stalin! Oh, wait, you meant putting criminals in prison isn’t the socialist way. That I can agree with.