Whether ruling him sane will encourage extremist copycats, or ruling him insane would discourage them by showing political views used as pretext for murder will be dismissed as dangerous luncy, has been hotly debated here, and probably will continue to be. Aside from that, a just sentence requires knowing whether he is out of his mind and therefore not responsible for his actions or simply a rational cold blooded murderer. Anyone who shoots their neighbors believing them alien lizards come to destroy the Earth should be in a padded cell, but that is inappropriate for someone who just shoots them in the course of robbing their homes.


Kind of like we used to do with "99 years to life." Norways forvaring law is only about a decade old, and created as a stricter penalty than the sikring law that predated it. I did not pay much attention to Norwegian law then, but imagine the terms of the forvaring law were a compromise between sides who wanted far stricter laws and those who wanted to preserve the existing ones.

Frankly, I think Breiviks decade of meticulous planning for murder, joining gun clubs as a pretext to buy weapons he did not obtain until several years later, constructing uniforms that fooled genuine police, incorporating an agricultural firm just to buy large quantities of fertilizer and going out of his way to avoid suspicion throughout are as unprecedented as the number of victims. Norway did not plan for that because it had simply never happened, not here nor anywhere. So they passed a tougher law that still left room for proof of rehabilitation even after the worst crimes. Breiviks record of detailed and duplicitous long term planning makes proving his reform impossible though, so even under the current law there is virtually no chance he will ever be free.