Of crime and punishment

Anders Behring Breivik, the butcher of Norway who massacred 76 people because of his anti-Muslim, anti-multiculturalism views is likely to be imprisoned in a jail, which seems to be more luxurious than the houses that free people live in. According to reports in Norway there is something called The Halden Fengsel maximum security prison which will most probably house (pun intended) the terrorist. Pictures and reports show not a prison in the conventional sense of the term but a luxury home clean, comfortable, with rooms that have flat screen televisions.

Some rooms (you would not call them cells) have attached washrooms. There are even fitness facilities for inmates, pictures of which would evince the clich ufffd state of the art. There is a well-equipped gymnasium, a green, jogging track and some reports say even a basketball court. If the Halden Fengsel prison sounds like the perfect holiday getaway, there's more to come. There is also an opportunity for the inmates to play musical instruments!

Even by Norway's standards of treating prisoners humanely... is this prison a punishment or a luxury retreat?
Meanwhile, people who may have at the most killed a cockroach in their lives or swapped a mosquito wade through slush, wait for treadmills in gymnasiums (20 mins max! say most gyms) and jog on roads clogged with traffic, at least most people in the city do. Even by Norway's standards of treating prisoners humanely, Halden Fengsel seems over the top. Is this prison a punishment or a luxury retreat?

Does such treatment work towards reforming people? Maybe, it does, I do not know for sure. Yet, humane treatment, actually this is much more than humane for somebody who has been so inhuman? It defies logic. One wonders what families of victims would think at the prospect of Breivik contemplating his killings in a room (he has not shown remorse till now) with a flat screen TV blaring while he contemplates going for a jog on a gentle, picturesque track some time later. It's the unfairness of it all that would kill them.

Meanwhile, there are reports too that Breivik could even get away because of insanity, though these reports are just speculation as of now. It reminds me of Gunther Parche, the crazy Steffi Graf fan who stabbed Monica Seles (though not fatally) in the back while she was playing a tennis match in Germany. He got away on an insanity plea and got zero jail time. While it was Monica Seles who paid, by losing her ranking and never again playing at the level she used to play. She was not the same person again ever, mentally. The woman, who tasted champagne before that, was left with the bitter taste of ashes in her mouth.u00a0

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