Sweden could have more prisoners per capita in EU: Director of prison service

By Alexandra Enberg

IZMIR, Türkiye (AA) - Sweden is “in the midst of perhaps the biggest change in modern history for the Correctional Service,” its director, Martin Holmgren, told Ekots broadcasting on Saturday.

The country would become the one in the EU with the most prisoners per capita if that scenario becomes a reality, according to a report.

Currently, 6,000 people are in Swedish prisons. But the prisons are already full and the Correctional Services has been assigned to increase the number of inmates as more convicts are expected to be sentenced in the coming years.

If all 13 proposals for tightening punishments made by the Tidö Parties Agreement in 2022 are implemented, from double punishment for gang criminals to abolishing parole, the number of prisoners would increase from 6,000 to 35,000. Sweden would go from being a country with relatively few incarcerated to having the most in the EU.

That is according to a calculation by the Correctional Service in a report submitted to the government at the end of last year.

“We have been in a situation now for several years where the entire Correctional Service is very strained due to the occupancy situation -- the number of detainees and convicts -- and at the same time we are now preparing for an even greater expansion,” said Holmgren.

He said he does not think there will be 35,000 prisoners in the next 10 years but believes 27,000 cells in prisons and detention centers will be enough, and that is a reality that the authority is now planning.

But the expansion from 9,000 to 27,000 cells in detention centers and prisons is historic in its scope and will require an extremely fast construction pace, doubled personnel and increased budget from the current 16 billion sek ($1.6 billion) to around 40 billion sek per year.

One of the proposals that would increase the need for cells is to abolish the current system of parole. Conditional release means that inmates who behave are released after serving two-thirds of their sentence. Removing parole would mean additional years in prison and it could also mean an increased security risk when the incentive disappears to behave.

“I think that there can be such risks and I think that needs to be taken care of and analyzed in the investigative work,” said Holmgren.

In new institutions to be built, inmates will, as a rule, share a cell.

The Council of Europe's anti-torture committee, CPT, said double cells should be at least 8 square meters (86 square feet) in size, preferably 10 square meters. But due to a lack of space, the Correctional Service has started to double-occupy cells that are at least 6 square meters.

“As I read the Council of Europe's regulations, it is the case that if you go under six square meters, it is presumptive because it is torture-like conditions. And in that case, that country must show or explain that it is not, so we are starting from the limit, six square meters,” said Holmgren. “Although it's incredibly small, it's tough. But we need to get the job done. If we can't receive detainees and convicts, there is no other body or function in society that will do it.“