According to the information published by the Danish Radio, the government of Denmark is close to signing an agreement with Kosovo to rent prison cells for 300 inmates in an effort to ease prison overcrowding.
Facing a rapid increase in the number of prison inmates since 2015, Denmark will be short of up to 1,000 places in the prison estate by 2025, Danish Minister of Justice Nick Hækkerup has said.
Official statistics showed that Denmark’s prison population has grown by 19%, reaching more than 4,000 inmates at the start of 2021, thus exceeding 100% of capacity.
The Danish government said the measure targets a special group of inmates that have been selected out of the foreigners that are already due to be deported from the Nordic country at the end of their sentences.
Hækkerup pointed that fact as an advantage of the program, noting that the selected prisoners will not have to be resocialized to return to society since they won’t be in Denmark after finishing the sentence.
At the same time, Denmark is reforming its prison system with a $607 million funding boost for “new initiatives,” which Haekkerup underscored as historic, but noted it’s only a first step in the long struggle to rebalance the Danish prison service.
As part of the reforms, the government is constructing a new high-security prison for hardened criminals and also plans harsher consequences for badly behaved prisoners that will assault or threaten prison staff or other prisoners.
Although the agreement was backed by several parties across the political spectrum before being announced by the Danish Justice Ministry on Twitter, two pro-government parties have opposed it claiming that’s not a solution for Denmark’s problem.
They also underscored the corruption that prisons in Kosovo and their administration are prone to and also warned on human rights violations, violence among inmates, and poorly trained prison staff.
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