Prison (Holiday) Break!

Normally when someone mentions to you 'prison' or 'jail' what comes to your mind? A dark, dirty and undesirable place that no one in their right mind will ever want to go is what came to mine (we have stories from the oh so feh-mes Kamunting). Rightly so! These places serve as a deterrent.

Apparently some folks in Norway thought otherwise. So they built Halden - the World's most humane high-security prison.

Unbelievably, they've spent around $1 million on paintings, photography and light installations! Rooms are fitted with en-suite bathrooms with ceramic tiles, mini-fridges and flat screen tvs. And according to them, 'Officials say sleeker televisions afford inmates less space to hide drugs and other contraband.' Rrrrright...

This looks better than some of the hotels I've stayed in

The windows have no bars - though anyone trying to escape is probably stupid

This is the scariest picture so far - a dental chair! *gasps* The sound of drills...

And if you do get bored of your stay, you can choose to do some workout, rock-climbing or take up a course (where they'll refer to you as a student and never an inmate). They go to great lengths to do this because they reason that criminals will have to rejoin society sooner or later and they try to make this phase of transition as similar as they can to the real world experience. While this is a very noble idea with lots of merits, it will never work in Malaysia. There will be a sudden surge in crimes as people jostle for places in these so called prisons (yours truly included).