I feel this is morally wrong. How does a recording studio in a jail end up better equipped that those in studios in high schools and those funded by small business grant programs?? If a government is going to put that much cash into a recording facility, the resources ought to be a given to a community fine arts center and made accessible to NON criminals. This studio is better outfitted than most of ours on this site! WTF! - this is really unfair and not cool.
The video:
This is the where the snowflakes and lunatic liberals will take you if they are allowed to.
“The prison system isn’t there to inflict pain and be punitive.”
What the fuck is it there for, then?
Most public contracts go to the bidder that greases the most palms. In this case someone managed to sell boat load of equipment.
I don’t know about your area but I worked on a musical in a brand new school in Houston, TX.
Their theater had a 96 input board, 8 power amps at 1500 watts each, and ridiculous amount of outboard gear, multitrack digital recording gear attached to board.
The theater didn’t have a sound man, they had to pull request from the school district to loan them one guy that basically did all this and he might or might not show up, depending on schedule.
While the public contractor (local audio firm) sold them this, the requirement was for 4-6 tracks of wireless body mics to be worn by actors so audience can hear performances, and the occasional soundtrack for the actors to sing to. So, in essence, the whole thing could’ve been done by one 24 track mixer, and probably not really that expensive at that.
The orchestra room had a rolling rack with a top of the line 24 input digital mixer with bunch of outboard attached to it, including CD player, and a CD/HD recorder. The orchestra teacher found it so complex and her technical abilities were super limited. She couldn’t use it and brought a home jukebox to play the music and little Olympus sound recorder to record practices.
The sound contractor made a killing in both cases. I actually managed to look at the #s as I was curious and all the gear was sold at 3x markup from the price of the local music store.
But someone had to approve the funds for the jail system to build this thing. If I understand correctly, Halden is the heaviest guarded incarceration facility in the country, which makes this a maximum security penitentiary… (but then again my source on that is Michael Moore).
I get that they’re gonna buy from the bidder that greases the most palms, but my issue is that I don’t feel they shouldn’t be buying this stuff at all!
Here’s a picture of an American prison warden scratching his head going WTF???
Those mics on that drum kit are $2800 U87’s for crying out loud lol.
What do you have to do to get in there? Dang, I’ll do it. Rob a bank? I’m on it.
Yeah, but are placed directly over the cymbals, rank bloody amateurs 
I know, it’s criminal I tell you.
I’m glad the US is finally catching up.
In Sweden, the average prison cell is 5000 per cent better that the average global person’s house.
Life in prison is 10 years, for the worst murder… but these days the crims will have escaped to the country they previously could not be deported to…
I think the Swedes need to import his studio concept, so the inmates can produce Fuck Da Police songs and get rich, as this would bring true societal equality.
And since Eastern Europe’s worst criminals have figured out the “Sweden Advantage” concept, my former home country is reveling in cultural enrichment. [Wealthy homes to rob, and zero punishment].
We can only go up from here, kids,
S
How has nobody made the obvious joke yet, along the lines of “having to use ProTools is like being in prison”?? 
That is why they have Pro Tools in jail, they want to REALLY deter others from committing crimes. It’s one thing to go to jail, but it’s another thing to go to jail that only has Pro Tools.
We’re talking about a prison in Norway, right?
I dunno, speaking as a non American it seems weird that Americans are casting judgement of any kind on the prison system of a totally different country/culture/society.
I’d have thought that if it ends up reducing the rate of re-offense, that means there are less people in prison and could end up saving money in the long run. So, I won’t judge it unless someone shows me the evidence that it’s a mad idea.
In contrast with America where the prison and justice system is… and I almost hesitate to say this… absolutely insane I mean, almost 1% of your population is behind bars. What the hell? Now, loads of factors go into that… but my god. I have to admit that I’m a bit sceptical of American anti-liberal “world’s gone mad” propaganda these days (note that I don’t think @Jonathan was intending his post to be taken that way!)
Just imagine the shivs you can fashion out of U87s, especially from the gold sputtered diaphragm, that’d be some blind, yo! 
Could this be a private jail, one of the Cheney jails? In Texas he’s cranking out car license plates and inspection stickers and getting rich both ways as judges can’t be quick enough to put repeat offenders in jail.
Thankfully, at least in my State, you can defend your home and blast the perp after he breaks in the door. Got some good bear shot for that!
In EU from what I’ve been told - most countries at anyway, if someone breaks in your home you have to meet him with proportional force, so if they’re carrying a knife, you can’t shoot them, you’ll have to produce a knife of the same size, things have gone absolutely insane. Western Europe life sentence is 10 years, or thereabouts?
It’s going to sound strange to persons who live in the US - but private jails, and 3 strikes and mandatory minimums are completely an American monopoly at the moment. I can understand that going to prison is a punishment, but I consider that reoffending isn’t just an individual committing a crime after release. Often it’s an individual being in a prison and being taught better and more sophisticated ways to break to law.
Back when I lived in the UK, my cousin was put into prison for common assault. He was sent to one of our more notorious prisons called Wormwood Scrubs (yes, that really is the name of this prison). He had a really tough time, and spent a few years inside. While there he was taught the intricacies of committing crimes by some very seasoned inmates. When release, he managed to keep up his life of crime, culminating in getting caught burgling a house. He was sent back to prison, for 5 years. On release, he was addicted to heroin, violent and completely broken. When I saw him after he got out, I can’t even tell you the change that had taken place. He was an absolute mess in every way. All these years later and he’s a mere shadow of the boy / man he went to prison as.
Now if I ask myself honestly what should have happened to him, the choices are a) lock him up and throw away the key, or b) put him in a place that would scare him straight or c) put him in a place where he suffers proportionally for the suffering he inflicted on others. For some reason, none of the options seems to sit straight with me. They really don’t. For me, the perfect solution would have been for him to come out of prison, with a purpose and motivation to be a better person. I know that if the environment had been right, he would have come out of prison and joined a trade and actually contributed to society.
Yup. Correct.
I understand.
Nope. This, from what I understand is their highest security prison. A guy who had killed 77 people was protesting a couple years ago, and went on a hunger strike because they wouldn’t upgrade his Playstation 2 to a Playstation 3. I get that @Cirrus thinks we Americans ought not be judging… and he’s probably right. But it seems like we ought to be able to make a judgement call about the appropriateness of these types of expenditures.
… and with that being said - I thought AJ raised a very valid question here:
There is some part of this that comes down to your view of penitentiaries. And how your view balances the prisons ideal roll of revenge vs incarceration vs rehabilitation.
Because some people realize that not everyone is serving a life sentence and preparing them for eventual release is more important than punishing them as a form of protestant foreplay.
Presenting your opinion as pseudo-fact does not magically give it veracity, it just makes you look patronising.
My opinion is that people should take responsibility for their own actions. I don’t accept that It’s society’s responsibility to make them into decent human beings, I think it’s society’s responsibility to keep offenders locked up, most importantly so they can’t harm society any more, but also as a punishment.
I’ve been thinking about this on and off for the last couple days - ever since I saw the video. I largely agree. That was my understanding of prison. I have always understood the prison system to rank in this order:
1- Revenge/Retribution - to punish
2- Incarceration - to separate them from society
3- Rehabilitation - to recondition them to re-enter society
Several arguments against this studio in the Norway prison:
The resources dedicated to building this facility would yield a greater benefit to society if spent building and managing the same caliber of studio for citizen community. US cities have public parks, recreation, and fine arts programming that could easily absorb the management of facility into its administrative infrastructure.
Second, its unclear how that studio plays a distinct roll in the rehabilitate process. I question if its more of an endeavor to entertain inmates than it is to condition them to re-enter society. If that’s the case, then the facility is excessive and indulgent.
So you see the line of priorities either:
1- incarceration
2- rehabilitation
3- punishment
or
1- rehabilitation
2- incarceration
3- punishment
I have difficulty seeing why punishment shouldn’t be at the top of those lists. The natural argument is recidivism. Essentially that you get less repeat offenders if you don’t punish them as hard (making it easier to rehabilitate). Yes, statistics imply a correlation. But here’s my question:
How do we get from
expensive audio production facility = inmate rehabilitation?
Incarceration == punishment. What additional punishment should be meted out in your opinion for prisoners who don’t misbehave ?
We need to move away from our current protestant form of incarceration into an enlightened methodology, if we ever hope to reduce our inmate population, which is ridiculously high.
We as a nation are a people who love punishment and according to polls, a majority think it’s ok to physically torture other human beings. The rest of the world is moving on and actually evolving their views, whereas we just keep on using the same old ideas because it wins elections.
Recent legislation was passed to help move our system of incarceration forward and I was happy to see progress being made.
I’m guessing that we spend more on a couple of bombs to drop on Afghani wedding parties then in all of the audio production facilities in American prisons. If you were to dig deeper into why such expensive equipment was purchased, don’t be surprised to find out that some state politician’s family member owns a company who sells high end equipment.
I personally don’t see the need for such expensive equipment and think a bare bones setup would work fine.
This is a fair point and a valid objection. And specifically one that the prison warden in Norway raised on the video.
If I understand your point correctly, its like when one English queen (can’t remember which one) locked another in castle tower which had a nicer jail cell than any law abiding peasants house. I think you’re suggesting that creature comforts (relative to standard of living in the society) are irrelevant if the essence of the punishment culminates in loss of freedom.
So while we have them locked up, we may as well treat them as humanly as possible because it serves the best interest of society at large to not deprive of prisoners of things like food, clothing, and some degree of mental stimuli. Hmmmmm.
Thinking…
If I’ve understood you correctly (which I’ve tried to here), then the difference between your and @AJ113’s presuppositions come down to the ideology of civil justice.
And for the record, I do find depriving a human being of mental and physical stimuli highly questionable if they’re non-violent throughout the duration of their incarceration.
