A society that needs to spend that kind of money on locking people up is deeply flawed, however.
The first thing I mention when anyone asks me about the differences between the UK and Sweden is that the class society still exists over here. I'm not even going to pretend like I know anything about the British class issues, because it is, as you well know, complicated and goes back a long way, but the obvious thing that strikes me is education, and the way it is looked upon, in the UK, as a way for the elite to get an internationally recognized degree whereas in Sweden it is a way of social mobility.
Higher education is free in Sweden. Although you'll need great grades to make it into the most popular programmes at uni, the bigger universities (Uppsala and Lund, for example, which are usually ranked as two of Sweden's top unis) offer quite a few courses that anyone who finished high school can enroll in. That means you can walk into any of the unis and get yourself a Master if you work hard enough for it. It won't take as far as an Oxbridge degree, but it'll get you a pretty good career in Sweden.
You'll get 6 years of £200 student grant + £600 (so a total of £800 per month) interest free student loan automatically - no questions asked, as long as you've got a place at a university and don't drop out. That's why I'm comfortable calling myself a Conservative in Sweden, because there is really not an excuse not to get a proper education. Cameron's argument to raise the uni fees is that it is necessary in order to keep the quality of education - I'm sure that's true, because there are some of the best unis in the world here, but it only reaffirms the point then that higher education is reserved for the elite.
