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15 Years Ago, Anders Breivik Massacred 77 People. Norway Is Determined to Treat Him Humanely.

Our prisons, ourselves.

Anders Behring Breivik—the far-right terrorist and mass murderer who is surely the most reviled man in Norway—lives in a two-story suite with a kitchen where he can cook his own meals; a pleasant outdoor yard; and a TV room with armchairs, Xbox, and scenic photos on the walls.

The contents of the rooms, however, are carefully chosen: The furniture is too heavy to lift and throw, and cooking knives are tethered to the countertop. Appearances to the contrary, this is a supermaximum-security unit, which has been purpose-built for Breivik by the Kriminalomsorgen—the Norwegian Correctional Service—at its Ringerike Prison.

Ringerike lies just across a broad lake from Utoye island, where in July 2011—15 years ago this month—Breivik shot to death 69 people, including 33 children, at a Labour Party summer camp, after killing eight others with a bomb blast in Oslo. To this day, Breivik maintains his virulently anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, white supremacist beliefs, and desires to spread his message of hate to the world. For this reason, his communicating with both other incarcerated people and the outside world is almost entirely prohibited.

But throughout his imprisonment, Norway has gone to great lengths to mitigate the harmful impact of Breivik’s isolation by providing him with comfortable surroundings and with as much human interaction as can be provided by specially trained prison staff, who are assigned to talk with Breivik, join him in games of cards, and offer him every possible opportunity for rehabilitation, whether he embraces them or not.

I toured Ringerike last fall along with a group made up primarily of US correctional officials and staff, as part of an immersion program on Norway’s famously humane and demonstrably effective prison system. The program is hosted by the public health organization Amend at UCSF, which seeks to promote positive, evidence-based “culture change” within America’s prisons.

That such change is direly needed has long been indisputable on practical as well as humanitarian grounds. With few exceptions, US prisons and jails are grim warehouses that breed violence, mental illness, and recidivism. (According to the most comprehensive study conducted by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 77 percent of individuals released from prison in the United States were rearrested for a new........

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