This is the main difference. We have relatively poor social safety nets in the US and no real regard for rehabilitation. We keep trying to put bandaids on a broken system and it just compounds the suffering.

It does, but the Norwegian system is not perfect. It does not work as a mitigation against Eastern European “theft tourists” that come to Norway to steal. This is because Norwegian jails pay inmates per day in addition to being setup for rehabilitation, so they are not a disincentive for “theft tourists” from very poor countries.

The Eastern European mafias take advantage of this and ship busses of thieves to Norway.

Basically, Norway system of rehabilitation assume strong borders so that you can limit how many you need to help and Schengens free flow of people from some poor Eastern European countries violate this assumption.

That makes sense. The tough part is that the real solution is uplifting Eastern European countries, but that's a huge challenge. In the short-term, is the cost of property theft worth creating a more draconian society? That's the absolute worst possible solution, imo.

To protect the capability to rehabilitate Norwegians the Norwegian people is struggling to find a way to stop this “theft tourism” as it does victimize people (private citizens through home breakins and businesses that already tax high to support socialism), and unfortunately the mitigations in some ways create a tougher society.

The solutions are tough trade offs: One of the solutions is to make deals with their country of origin to serve time in jails back home, tighter border control to stop “theft thieves” from entering and prohibiting begging again as the Eastern European mafia bring in beggars to serve as mules. Especially the one around begging feels culturally difficult and it makes people sad to have to prohibit begging again as it was legalized a couple of decades ago.

> This is because Norwegian jails pay inmates per day

Do they pay them more than typical software developer salary is in Eastern Europe? Asking for a friend.

Absolutely not, but that is a demographic that is better off working from Eastern Europe than pursing less noble means :D

"Tough on crime"/"soft on crime" are terms used in Australia, the UK and probably elsewhere to describe policies of prescribing harsh/lenient punishments. It's not about how effective the police are at stopping crime but what society feels is "right".