Canada and the World

        Current Events with a Canadian Perspective

 

Last update

19 November 2010

Site map

Prison System in Denmark

 

Rather than punishing criminals and using long

Sentences to deter others, Denmark focuses on getting

the few people it does jail ready for life outside

 

According to the World Prison Population List (8th Edition), “More than 9.8 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world…This is an increase of 300,000 since the previous edition two years ago. If prisoners in ‘administrative detention’ in China are included the total is over 10.6 million.”

 

The list was published in January 2009 by the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

 

Some Countries Jail People at very High Rates

Corey Leopold

 

The list reveals that, “Almost half of the world’s prisoners are in the United States (2.29 million), China (1.57 million sentenced prisoners), or Russia (0.89 million) – countries which account for just over a quarter of the world’s population.”

 

Prison is a last Resort

The Danish justice system is based on rehabilitation rather than punishment. Writing in The New Statesman (September 2006) Nick Pearce reported that Denmark “does all it can to keep people out of jail, and once there, to prepare them for life back in the community.

 

“Its sentences are short, but its re-offending rates far lower. In Denmark, prison appears to work for the right reasons.”

 

In his 2005 book, Prisons and Prison Systems, Michael P. Roth writes that Denmark’s modern penal code can be traced back to 1930, when corporal and capital punishment were abolished, as well imprisonment at hard labour.”

 

The average Danish prison sentence is just 6.2 months, with just two percent of Danish prisoners spending more than two years in jail.

 

Life in Ringe State Prison

On an island called Funen in the central part of Denmark is the Ringe State Prison. This is where Danes who have committed serious crimes such as murder and armed robbery are sent.

 

In a monograph After Prison: The Case for Offender Reintegration published online by the Institute for Security Studies, Ringe is described as having “as its first priority the preparation of inmates to live as normal members of society after their release. There are no bars or armoured glass, although it is a closed maximum security prison surrounded by an inconspicuous enclosing wall and equipped with a sophisticated video surveillance system.”

 

Nick Pearce, who visited the prison, wrote that, “Prisoners live in small units with communal kitchens…Ringe is a mixed-sex prison and married couples live in a special wing. Children can live with their parents in prison until the age of three. Sex between inmates is permitted if wardens are convinced that the relationship is serious.”

 

Does Denmark’s Justice System Work?

The hardliners of the lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key school scoff at Denmark’s lenient approach to criminal justice. However, it seems to work. In July 2003 Dan Damon reported for BBC News that, “While 55 percent of British prisoners will re-offend and come back to jail, in Denmark the re-offending rate is just 27 percent.”

 

One of the key reasons seems to be that half the corrections officers in Danish jails are women. Damon quotes lawyer Anne Broendum as saying that, “Women guards are often better than men in calming down a prisoner who is getting angry.

 

“And the number of women helps the prisoners behave more normally. They don’t just meet criminals and male guards, they interact with women.”

 

And, that’s central to the Danish approach to dealing with prisoners; to make their life inside as close as possible to life outside so they don’t come out angry, disoriented, and equipped only to go back to a life of crime.

 

Image Credit

Victor Vizcaino

 

Sources

“World Prison Population List.” Roy Walmsley, King’s College, London, January 2009.

“Dinner with Wife and Kids.” Nick Pearce, New Statesman, September 4, 2006.

“Prisons and Prison Systems.” Michael P. Roth, Greenwood, November 2005.

“After Prison: The Case for Offender Reintegration.”  Lukas Muntingh, The Institute for Security Studies, March 2001.

“Lessons from Danish Prisons.” Dan Damon, BBC News

July 2, 2003.

“Sentencing Act to Cost Billions: report.” CBC News, June 22, 2010.

 

© Canada and the World, November 2010

All rights reserved

AND THE WINNER/LOSER IS

 

Prison incarceration rate per 100,000 head of population:

 

Top ten

United States - 756

Russia - 629

Rwanda - 604

Cuba - 531

Palau - 478

Belarus 468

Belize - 455

Bahamas - 422

Georgia - 415

Grenada - 408

 

Canada - 116

Denmark - 63

 

Bottom ten

Comoros - 30

Central African Republic - 29

Liberia - 29

Nigeria - 28

Mauritania - 26

Tuvalu - 25

Nepal - 24

Nauru - 23

Burkina Faso - 23

Liechtenstein - 20

 

World Prison Population Map

MORE PRISONERS

At a time when the crime rate in Canada is declining, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper has embarked on a large prison-building program.

 

The so-called Truth in Sentencing Act calls for convicts to spend longer behind bars, which, reports CBC News  (June 2010) will lead to “construction of new correctional facilities [that] will cost about $1.8 billion over five years.”

Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Chief Kevin Page projects the Truth in Sentencing Act will cause the annual costs of running correctional services to more than double by 2015-16, from $4.4 billion to $9.5 billion.