Tuesday, July 03, 2012

The Cost of Incarcerating Breivik

Breivik in black #2

The Norwegian government has released a preliminary estimate of the cost of keeping mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik safe inside his lounge, spa, gym, and games room. Needless to say, his incarceration will be a very expensive proposition, regardless of the final judgment on his sanity.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer sends his translation of an article on the topic, and includes this note:

I’m not quite sure about the exchange rate at the moment, but needless to say, we’re talking about several thousand U.S. dollars a day.

Surely there must be better ways to spend Norwegian tax money…

And the translated article from Dagbladet:

New Breivik-wing approved. Price tag: NoK 30,000 per day

The new hospital wing in Ila prison where Anders Breivik Behring will be looked after requires at least twenty employees, and will cost approximately NoK 30,000 a day.

According to VG, this price only covers the cost of the security personnel. Annual costs are expected to reach nearly NoK 11 million.

“It has to be sufficiently staffed in order to protect the patient, the staff and the safety of the society,” says Robin Kåss (Labour), member of the Ministry of Health.

According to Kåss the cost of employing staff on a 24/7 basis is significant, but he is unable to come up with a concrete figure.

On Wednesday it was announced that the Ministry of Health has approved the construction of a new hospital wing at Ila prison, where Anders Behring Breivik will be incarcerated if he is declared insane.

Which means that Breivik will stay at Ila regardless whether or not he is declared sane by the Oslo City Court. The wing will have a high security level, and it will be separated from the rest of the prison, but lie within the perimeter of Ila, according to an article published in Aftenposten on Wednesday.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

What nonsense..why can´t Breivik be incarcerated or be looked after in the same way other inmates/patients are?
And why should his caretakers be protected, and why would he need special security?
Is he to be kept silent so that he cannot tell his story to anyone? Are the authorities afraid he might escape, or are they worried someone would try to kill him?
In Norway that doesn´t seem very likely..
Why all the fuss?

Anonymous said...

Commander Coco is kept in the same standard prison as all other prisoners are, except of course those on lower security than he is.

The only special thing about his prison life, is that he is not allowed to interact with other inmates. Thus, the service costs that would normally be split on several prisoners are spent on ABB alone.

The reason he is not allowed to interact is because he might use it as an apportunity to recruit(something he described in his manifesto) followers. Kinda like one of the ideas behind Gitmo.

Anonymous said...

And do note that this has nothing to do with not "being allowed to tell his story". He is not under media cencorship, and are thus allowed to speak to reporters. He can also interact freely with the outside world, the only censoring taking place is the standard one, ie, checking to see if crimes are being planned by letter.

Anonymous said...

Smart move, this basically legitimizes the idea of the left that Islamophobia is a unique, distinct and dangerous mental disease requiring special attention.

~Oz

Anonymous said...

If he were in an American prison and were allowed to interact - well, we have a lot of scroundrels behind bars who have a strongly developed sense of justice. They would deal with the, er, situation. Just sayin'.

The Norwegians are patsies.