The nordic country of Denmark has a current population of 5,806,015 including the peoples of the remote Faroe Islands and ice giant Greenland. The penal system consists of forty-seven institutions holding approximately 3,795 prisoners of whom almost 30% are foreigners, legal and illegal.
Each cell is a model for humane treatment, although in Thailand I met more than a few members of the motorcycle gang The Banditos and they are hardened criminals.
But even they get the IKEA cells to serve out their time.
After all Denmark is the happiest country in the world according to the Happy Planet index.
Still according the dk.com Denmark's rightist government has approved funding to transform Lindholm Island, once a contagious diseases laboratory, into a detention center that would house migrant criminals who cannot be deported due to fears of execution or torture.. The move was criticized by the UN.
"They are unwanted in Denmark and they must feel that," said Integration Minister Inger Stojberg in a Facebook post, shortly after the proposal was announced in early December.
The foreign criminals will be allowed to leave the island during the day, but will have to report their whereabouts to authorities and return at night.
I've always joked that my retirement plan was to rob a bank in Denmark, get caught by the police, and then be sentenced to prison.
I think I would fit right into the system, although in recent years many prisoners are deported to their native countries to serve out the terms of punishment.
I would have to ask for asylum, because America's prison are a disgrace.
Torture, rape, violence run rampant in the fifty states.
The prison population is half the size of Denmark.
Overcrowding is a norm.
Solitary confinement punishes the vocal and the wild.
No human contact.
No natural light.
No sense of day or night.
Torture plain and simple.
Living death for millions of Americans, mostly black.
Run by corporations for profit.
Starvation.
For body and soul.
And no one at an NFL football game cares about them, except maybe the players.
No surprise.
Outrage at a quarterback taking a knee against racial injustice.
None against the slavery at Angola Prison.
At one time people have to say enough is enough.
Sadly it won't be this Christmas in the American slave colonies.
Hard times is always hard time behind the walls.
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