Norway's notorious mass
killer was sentenced in court today to the country's maximum penalty
for murder, 21 years, with subsequent «forvaring» (literally,
«custody»), a system not well known outside Norway, which entails
his continued imprisonment after 21 years under the same conditions, with the possibility of a prison sentence lasting until his
death. This, in other words, is not simply a 21-year sentence.
After the 21 years, the
killer will be evaluated by the court for a possible 5-year extension
of the punishment, and every 5 years thereafter the same evaluation
will be repeated, potentially for the rest of his life. The criteria
for release are the chances of recidivism and the danger to society
of his/her release. Both were determined by the court today to be
exceedingly high. These pronouncements will be the main criteria in
evaluating his degree of «progress» after each 5-year period. As
the Norwegian system is set up, these evaluations will begin already
after his 10th year in prison.
Although the Norwegian penal code has
not even considered the possibility of anyone committing crimes like
those at issue here, the custodial system (rarely used) recovers much of what the
normal system misses – provided the court takes a strict rather
than a lenient line in its follow-up decisions every 5 years.
In a country where the politically dominant center-left has previously tended to view criminals as victims of an
unjust and vindictive society, this is not a sure thing. Still, one
may hope the fact that the massacre was directed just at the Labour
Party's youth organization may turn people in that political segment
to a more realistic way of thinking, so that future generations of Norwegians can have a more balanced view of crime and punishment.
