You should consider your own prejudices. I've described the culture, and it's not unique to any particular group. A precise example is gangs, though gangs are a subset of all 'actors' who behave in this way. Though even there in the US we have some 1.4 million gang members already. Grow up in this and you see people of all sorts fall into it.
which is precisely why it's so important that them judicial system does everything in it's might to get the out of "it".
currently, the american judicial/penal system seems to have the opposite effect. I dare say a underlying factor has to do with prisons being profit-driven, which is essentially a incentive for them to not rehabilitate inmates (cause then they wouldn't have repeat "customers"!)
you say yourself that it's different in Scandinavia. Why is it so? the culture is different, sure, but not THAT different. We do have criminal gangs here, though to a lesser extent to be sure. how come?
I suggest the reason to be that rehabilitation of criminal works, whereas incarceration does not. There is some data to support this idea, albeit not enough to be conclusive. it would certainly be very interesting to see such trails carried out with american inmates in any scale.
Well again halfway houses were designed precisely as an experiment in rehabilitation. It helps resocialize the convicts, helps them get a job, get over an issues (such as drugs) they have, all within the framework of a positive and supportive social network at a shared home. I'm not really sure what people are proposing beyond this. They've carried these experiments out at large scale (and continue to do so - halfway houses are still very much a thing) but they just don't seem to work, at all, in the US.
And so I think what is the difference there is the million dollar question. And the worst part is that it's not even consistent with nations themselves. For instance in checking out some recidivism rate data [1] it turns out that we have things like a recidivism rate of 23% in Oregon while it's 61% in Minnesota. That datum runs also runs in stark contrast to the person who responded while projecting his prejudiced views. Minnesota demographics [2]. Oregon demographics [3]. On the gang issue, to reemphasize I think that's a product of this sort of culture rather than this sort of culture being a product of gangs. So gangs are a subset but not the issue in and of themselves.
A huge issue in this realm is halfway houses largely operate without much oversight and often fail to actually provide structure and support for inmates and end up being just a place to dump them. I recall one researcher who visited many saying "we are paying for them to watch Jerry Springer."
Halfway houses cost less and have similar recidivism rates.
