I suspect that keeping him alive is a sound political move, not that Norway would actually have the option to call his bluff and let him die. In general, making martyrs of extremists is counterproductive. Allowing self-serving demands such as this one to be made public where the press may belittle them is likewise probably sound.

If i remember his trial it showed that he enjoyed the media.
Now only his poor victims and their relatives are thinking about him.
Time for some limelight again?
Don't give him that, ignore him and let him rot.

Rehabilitation is a lovely idea. In theory. In the real world, there are cases where reality violently clashes with neoliberal fantasy.

Let me give you some very interesting examples from Switzerland, a country that treats criminals so nicely that they even make Norway look bad in comparison. Wait, how is that even possible? Let's take a look, but prepare your face for some major facepalming of fubar dimensions.

Switzerland Example 1:

Carlos, 17-year old guy with a nice criminal record of 34 offences including a stabbing that has left his victim disabled for life.
Rehabilitation program for Carlos:

-4,5 room apartment
-Personal kickboxing training with a world champion trainer (who had himself been convicted for assault, so clearly a good role model). It's all for 'channeling aggression'.
-Private tutoring
-640 Swiss Francs 'pocket money' per month (=720 USD) Carlos wants brand deodorant for 47 Swiss Francs (52 USD)
-500 Swiss Francs for leisure and weekends (=560 USD)

All those benefits weren't good enough for Carlos and he couldn't be controlled and went on rage induced rampages so they had to place him in an actual prison. Keep in mind that a Swiss prison would still pass as a a 2-3 star hotel in other countries. In prison, he caused further problems and had to be moved to solitary confinement. There, he demolished his cell out of protest, including destroying a special 'vandal-proof' washing sink. Which, thanks to his government funded kickboxing training, didn't pose too much difficulty for Carlos.


Switzerland Example 2:

Simon Anthamatten. Had already been convicted for raping women more than once at knife point. Still, it was considered a good idea to let him have horseback riding therapy in the company of a single unarmed female social therapist. He was even allowed to buy a knife, for cutting the horse's hooves...
The therapist was later found in the forest with her throat slit. She was 34 years old and had a 8-month old daughter.


Do you need more examples or is this enough?

This is one of the few cases in which "being a Neo-Nazi" is NOT the #1 problem with a person. Most Neo-Nazis probably go their entire lives without causing significant harm to another human being. I wouldn't even be surprised if a lot of Neo-Nazi's even look at this guy as a disgrace. Not, again, to say anything positive of Neo-Nazis. But when you kill 77 people, you're going beyond simply being a Neo-Nazi.

There's crazy and there's crazy. There are mass murderers who kill for strictly personal reasons that don't go beyond their warped sense of self; and there are others who kill because they believe they are advancing a public cause. Making one of the latter into one of the former simply because you do not believe anybody would do anything like that in a sincere-though-insane belief they are advancing their cause would be a dangerous mistake.

And what you say may all be true, but as a practical matter it doesn't change anything. Alive, he's a heinous murderer and a continuing profound embarrassment to the cause he claimed to advance. Dead, he's Horst goddamn Wessel, and they'll sing songs to his memory.

2 examples or even a 100 examples is not enough condemn this concept as a "neoliberal fantasy". Your examples simply prove that not everyone can be rehabilitated. OR maybe your examples simply prove that they weren't being properly rehabilitated. Your examples also prove that in Switzerland, the correctional facilities don't value safety for their employees. Leaving a known violent rapist alone with a woman is simply retarded. There should of been at least 2 officers accompanying them to make sure things like that don't happen. If this concept didn't rehabilitate a large percentage of prisoners in the world, I'm sure your government would say "Fuck it!" and put them all in more traditional prisons. Torture, death, pain, misery only creates more of the same... Hell doesn't spit out nice happy people who care about their fellow human beings...hell spits out monsters.

Indeed, apart from being confined, he seems to be living a lifestyle that many people here would love to have. I'm all for rehabilitation, but there should be at least some element of punishment here, he's behaving like a spoiled brat.
Yes, even in Switzerland 2 is hardly a representative example.

It sounds like they weren't getting rehabilitation that actually addressed the problem.

Do you know through what process rehabilitation programs are designed content wise? Is there a committee, and if yes, what are the qualifications/ requirements to participate in it? Do convicts get evaluated, and if yes how?

What your examples demonstrate is poor judgement and poor choices by those in decision making positions. It's actually mind boggling that a convicted rapist would be assigned a single unarmed female social therapist during horseback riding (therapy) in the woods or that the hooves cutting would be done by the convict given that it requires the use of a tool that he could use as a lethal weapon.

It's oversimplification if you think that prisoners can so easily be divided into two groups, those who can be rehabilitated and the monsters who can't. If the entire massive apparatus of professional psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, correctional officers and social workers can't and fails in many cases time and again, what makes you think this is a simple matter. Simon Anthamattten is an example where crass negligence was practiced but in most cases you have no way of knowing beforehand whether rehabilitation will work or not. While it is generally a good concept with decent results, the idea that everyone can be rehabilitated is in fact a neoliberal fantasy.
No one is advocating that rehabilitation be thrown overboard entirely just because some convicts are uncorrectable criminals.
But there has to be a clear limit to the amount of resources and money spent on a single convict.

Meaning that Breivik gets no gaming consoles, Carlos gets no 4,5 room apartment plus all the other nonsensical benefits and Anthamatten most certainly doesn't get horseback riding therapy. You want to assign two officers to protect the therapists working with people like Anthamatten? That's fine with me if you are willing to pay for it and take personal full responsbility, but I see a million uses for public money to be spent in better ways.

Which would prove my point: Rehabilitation is a good idea but in its actual implementation in the real world it is anything but fail-proof with plenty of examples where things went seriously wrong, as in young-mothers-getting-killed kinda wrong (case Anthamatten).
We must judge things in the real world by what they are in practice rather than by their theoretical potential.

This, pretty much:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GurL-EflShY

So, time to be more levelheaded and at least limit the excesses. That would already be a great start, free up valable resources and prevent much public anger.

I wonder if he'd like Sacrifice .

Well if prisoners can not be divided then things should remain the way they are now except there needs to more security for the employees working with these prisoners.

If you take away the horse back riding, the game consoles, everything enjoyable then you are sabotaging the rehabilitation process. The only thing that doesn't make sense in my eyes is the large apartments. That s simply a waste of resources. A 1 bedroom apartment is more than enough. And if you can kill 77 people and injure 319 and the Norwegian people forgive you and give you a 2nd chance, then send you to a nice place so you can get better. And your response to that is to smile on camera, show no guilt whatsoever and then complain about only having a PS2, then it's pretty clear you are beyond saving.

Mind if I ask how you know that? :D

The unsettling thing is that the people on rehabilitation evaluation committees, meaning the psychiatrists, therapists etc are all trained and certified professionals and even so, there repeatedly are cases where things go awfully wrong. Not always resulting in murders and newspaper coverage as in the Anthamatten case, but wrong and with harmful consequences nonetheless.
Humans (even professionals) make mistakes, and spending more money means there are more humans involved which means the potential for things to go wrong is not reduced no matter how much money is thrown into these rehab programs.
What is needed is more intelligent and efficient solutions but unfortunately, intelligence can't be bought (unlike a Playstation 2 or 3 that you throw at a prisoner just to make him temporarily shut up...until the next console comes out. This doesn't work with spoiled kids and so what makes people think it would ever work on grown up criminals.