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>In his teens, Stefansson graduated to drugs: pot, speed, cocaine, ecstasy, LSD. By the time he turned 20, he was growing cannabis. His rap sheet soon included 200 cases of petty crime. He broke into people’s homes to steal TVs and stereos, and somehow managed to extract $10,000 from some slot machines in a Reykjavík bar.

yikes. I'm sure he's hardly the only one. It makes you wonder if Iceland's purported low crime and peacefulness is due to under-reporting of crime and crime being ignored and excessively lenient sentencing guidelines, than because of the absence of actual crime. If all the criminals keep being released over and over, then the prison population will be very low yet there will be crime everywhere anyway. lenient sentences heavily tips the moral calculus in favor of criminals, both petty and major.Time is money. time behind bars means less time for stealing.




It is a large reason actually, we don't have enough well funded programs for mental help or drug addiction and roughly 70% of prison inmates are there for drugs and just cycle in and out running up huge fines which they'll never actually be able to pay.

Also please keep in mind because of our sovereignity but low population we win a lot of categories for "most this of any nation" due to sheer per-capita mathematics. We're basically the most-per-capita country out there in many ways.




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