Didn’t see your BBC citation so slogged through that Atlantic piece. I’m usually a big fan of articles in The Atlantic but holy crap that particular writer’s style was dense and pretentious as hell and a real impediment to even sticking with it long enough to get to the finish line (persevered and got there.) I thought my sentences were too long and impenetrable but he was like hold my beer and take some extra NoDoze.
I did Google to read other articles though and thought this one is good:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-05/what-are-nordic-prisons-like-criminal-justice/101481590
I wish we could drop the American Exceptionalism and macho “who’s gonna be tougher on crime” posturing between competing factions for 5 minutes to have more honest conversations in the US about things we can learn from other countries’ experiences, without immediately citing how “that would never work here because of X, Y and Z” —- and also never really expending any energy to consider if it might be worth exploring changes to X, Y and/or Z as well.
Glad BrainVision spurred some exploring of assumptions here. Still have no idea how any leader looking to get re-elected would even start consideration of any “open prison” experiment in the US, nor if I’d want to be part of the guinea pig community to have one near me.