It has a lower population than e.g. Wisconsin, in an area about twice as large. You could fit 61 Norways (in terms of population) into the US. I think there's a lot of things that work really well at smaller scale, but just don't work at larger scale. It's not really possible to say where 'smaller scale' ends because it's going to depend on factors other than just population, but I think Norway is comfortably far into the very small side of things in part because of population and in part because of those other factors.
A microstate is not just "one smaller than another" though, and nobody lists Norway as a microstate of Europe/the EU.
But with what you had meant - it means Norway is pretty comparable to a typical US state division or, in other words, something US states could be expected to implement successfully in their state prison systems if there weren't other reasons than scale they do things differently.
And you'll find that a number of states of a comparable makeup as Norway have comparable and even lower recidivism rates than Norway. Oregon is the lowest in the US, with a recidivism rate of 12%, contrasted against Norway's ~20%. [1] And that has nothing to do with punishment vs rehabilitation.
Similarly, Asia is another interesting counter-example to Norway. For instance the Chinese penal system makes the US look like a trip to Disney Land. Beatings, physical+psychological torture, and more are regular aspects of their prison system which is not only punitive but borderline sadistic. And their recidivism rate? One of the lowest in the world, around 8%. And perhaps even more important than the recidivism rate is their crime rate, which is also one of the lowest in the world.
[1] - https://usasymbol.com/rankings/crime/recidivism-rates-by-sta...
As a former resident of Oregon, I would strongly suggest that the low recidivism rate is likely due to Oregon’s far above average level of available social services compared to most other states.
I would also loosely suggest that social services should be considered part of the rehabilitation pipeline.
This got me wondering, because I find the topic interesting but haven't really dug deeply into it in a while, and it's so much easier to get data (especially foreign language) now a days thanks to LLMs. It turns out that there's one huge factor that most people don't consider. That is - what is recidivism? Definitions vary radically between areas, and that goes a long way towards explaining the difference.
So for instance in both Norway and Oregon somebody isn't considered a recidivant unless they are arrested, prosecuted, and receive a minimal standard of punishment. In locations where you see much higher rates of recidivism it's because they use a more intuitive definition - if somebody's convicted of a crime, then they are a recidivant. By contrast here [1] you can see Oregon's raw data. And about 50% of people released from prison will be convicted for another crime within 5 years. In Norway 55% will face criminal charges within 4 years, and 42% will be convicted again!
So the whole point about Norway having an exceptional recidivism rate comes down, in large part, to statistical definitions! It'd be interesting to dig more into China/etc and see if there's some similar 'nuance' there. It often seems that so many things that 'everybody knows' just end up wrong upon closer inspection.
[1] - https://www.oregon.gov/cjc/CJC%20Document%20Library/2018SACG...
[2] - https://www.ssb.no/sosiale-forhold-og-kriminalitet/artikler-...