Does rehabilitation work better than incarceration?

That's an interesting question.  Our prison system focuses on incarceration, many in Europe focus on rehabilitation.  We have the highest per capita rate of prisoners, followed by the 'democracies' of China and Russia.  We spend a lot of money for our prison system; our costs have more than tripled since 1982. Drug offenses account for a large percent of the prison population. This post was triggered by a comment from our Brooklyn correspondent relative to Sweden's closing of four prisons.

The crime rate in Sweden has not fallen, but the country is using probation and shorter sentences where we use longer sentences. The prison population has decreased 15% since 2004. The drop in the population was due to a fall of 36% in theft-related crimes, 25% in drug offenses and 12% in violent crimes.

The prisons in Europe are different in that prisoners have more privacy and freedom, and the system is aimed at helping the prisoners reenter society. Look at the video and photographs for some differences in the prison systems.