The main goal of prisons is to protect society from criminals by removing them and deterring others from committing crimes through fear of punishment.
My point is that deterrence has been proven to be a poor tool to reduce crime. Rehabilitation has been proven to be a relatively more successful tool to reduce recidivism.
The Norwegian approach to prisoners is one piece of evidence in support of this. Here’s some more (non-Norwegian) evidence:
Of course there are other differences between the US and Norway, but that doesn’t change the validity of what I’m saying. If you want to argue that deterrence works, back it up with some evidence.