U.S vs Norwegian Criminal Justice Systems
Every country relies on being able to enforce the law in order to have a functional society. To accomplish this, nations have come up with different justice systems which ensure its laws are being applied to everyone equally. A justice system has many roles such as protecting society, punishing crime, rehabilitating criminals, and defending the victimized. Countries do this in different ways, like Norway and the United States. The United States’ criminal justice system is considered to be merciless when enforcing the law. Norway is different in the sense that they see justice very differently, since there is more equality when comparing their gender and juvenile criminal statistics, harshness of punishments,
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When it comes to gender, they are committed to enforcing that principle of equality. Unlike the U.S, Norway holds laws punishing crimes of gender-based violence. This is important because statistics provided by the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network show that 97% of gender based crimes, specifically sexual assault, in the United States are handled without punishment. The research presented by sciencenorway.no compares that in Norway only 25% of offenders go without punishment. Because of this, women feel more protected and respected in society, which makes sense when looking at imprisonment rates. As previously stated, Norway is a country where gender equality is a priority, and due to that feeling of security, women are less likely to commit crimes. Not to mention the United States women’s incarceration rates are also going up. As stated in Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy “In the United States, the number of women sent to prison increased 646 percent between 1980 and 2010”(Stevenson, page 200). These statistics prove that gender equality impacts the criminal justice system and the function of society as a whole.
In conclusion, the Norwegian Justice System is merciful and takes the situations of its people into consideration when deciding a punishment. They are more lenient about life sentences, and rarely do anything as drastic as the U.S court does. Overall, the Norwegian system has proven to be more ethical than the U.S when it comes to the protection of its citizens and society as a