Pretty funny but glossing over a lot of details. In general you should remove dangerous people (especially habitual offenders) from the general population. In my US state, the main reason our prisons are so expensive is the extraordinary healthcare costs as well as guards/admins pay, benefits and pensions.

Good point and there should be strong controls regarding the prison system as a business and encouraging more "customers" vs. using it as a deterrent/punishment.

The prison industrial complex, one of the glorious achievements of capitalism.

Puts a new slant on "the land of the free".

And it takes a Brit to hold up the mirror? A very funny guy making a very serious point in an engaging way, and I doubt that it will make a tap of difference. The people who vote for these policies don't watch programmes like his; it hurts their brains too much.

The "three strikes and you're out" (which he doesn't mention) is a bizarre practice - I don't know if what I see on TV is really how it works, but if the third strike is for something incredibly minor and the person gets a long stretch...? That can't be right, surely? But if it is, no doubt it contributes.

As I commented once before, Top Gear's Clarkson was told by a US cop "We have laws; we don't need common sense." How very true. And this is how you end up...

Here in Finland, only very dangerous people are put to real prison. Most of the convicts reside in an open prison, where they are given the possibility to educate themselves and even have minimum salary jobs. even more, the prisoners are allowed to have short vacations, when they can send time outside the facility. Also, one's criminal record is your personal secret, by law, so having one doesn't stop you from getting a job. Of course there are some exceptions, like jobs where you work with children, where you have to provide your criminal record when applying.

In the US 50% of the released inmates end up back in prison. In Finland the same number is 30%, while in Norway, where the justice system is even more forgiving, only 20% of the ex-convicts go back. I'm just wondering, when are the Americans going to admit that the system has failed, and rethink the strategy...

#5 Imagine for a second that every part of the prison system is represented by a mechanical part of an internal combustion engine. The police is the valves that let the fuel in, the fuel itself are the prisoners, the judges are the spark plugs and so on, I think you'll get the point. Now to complete the analogy answer this question: What do normal, non-mechanically enlightened people say when an engine starts to put too much fuel through the system? Don't they say the engine is broken? I hope that you don't think that someone using rhetorical questions should have the crap slapped out of them too. Ouch for me!

Corporations. If you don't invest in them you're screwed by them.

Google "Norwegian Prison System". yeah..

#4 in Finland, serious crime is mosquitoes and a hirvi messing the washing line. Finnish men are docile and happy to drink themselves to death by 59.

Drugs, by the way are a cancer on society. it is how China was held back. China now has the death penalty for drug trafficking. Perhaps they know something?

As a Norwegian: I'm afraid of loosing my job due to doing something illegal. I'm sure as shit not afraid of going to jail..

#6 and #7 A system as a whole is never 'broken'. To use your example, a car engine is never 'broken'. One of the components may be, but the engine as a whole is not. The valves may be sticky or the spark plugs need replacing, but the whole engine isn't broken.
And that's the real problem. When people don't like the results of something (in whole or in part) they condemn the entire process without identifying what the source of the problem was.
Part of the problem here is that people confuse comedy with actual news.

#10: China has death penalty for drug trafficking, but it has not stopped drugs being imported. It has only made catching the criminals very dangerous, as the drug traffickers always fight to death.

Just stay out of prison...