There's no doubt that the Norwegian correctional services sports one of the best agency names around: Kriminalomsorgen. And evidently, Norway's also home to the most superior, enlightened prisons in the world, as well.
That might not surprise you, given the privileged position Scandaniavian countries hold in the liberal imagination. But even so, some of the latest details out of the Norwegian prison system, as chronicled by a new TIME piece, are fairly startling.
For example: When Norway inaugurated its newest prison, Halden Fengsel, the King himself was present, and was accompanied by a choir of police belting out the chorus to "We Are the World." Norway's latest prison complex extends over fully 75 acres of "gently sloping forest," and is scattered with jogging trails, a sound studio and a two-bedroom house that's reserved for the families of prisoners to stay in during overnight visits. Meanwhile, the delicate scent of orange sorbet wafts through the corridors from the "kitchen laboratory," where prisoners are instructed in the culinary arts.
Perhaps the most striking fact of all? Among all of Norway's prisons, only 20% of those people leaving them will return again within two years. By contrast, in the U.S. and the U.K., that figure is as high as 60%.
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