As the prison population spirals out of control in the United States, Sweden finds itself with an interesting and opposite predicament: it has too many prisons and not enough prisoners. For this reason, the Scandinavian country recently decided to shutter four prisons and a remand center.The issue isnt lack of crime in Sweden—in fact, the crime rate has actually increased slightly there—but rather a strong emphasis on rehabilitating criminals, rather than locking them up. The prison population declined 6 percent between 2011 and 2012. In the United States, by comparison, federal facilities are 40 percent over capacity.

via Sweden Is Closing Prisons Due to Lack of People to Put In Them.