VI Jornada d'activitat física i esport als centres penitenciaris. Open prisons, l'experiència danesa. Centre d'Estudis Jurídics i Formació Especialitzada, 16 d'octubre de 2014

1. 1
The Danish Prison and Probation Service
Open prisons
Kim Andersen
VIII Conference on Physical Activity and Sports in Prisons (Compartim Knowledge Manadgment Programme of Department of Justice in Catalonia)
Barcelona, October, 16th, 2014
Disclaimer
The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeWorks licence 3.0 permits reproduction, distribution and public communication of the material, as long as the authorship of the material and the CEJFE (Catalan Ministry of Justice) are credited and no commercial use is made of it, nor is it transformed to generate derived works (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/3.0/deed.ca)

2. THE TOPICS
•
The Danish Prison and Probation Service in general
•
Open prisons in Denmark
•
Tendencies and the future
•
Questions

3. MISSIONS AND TASKS
The mission of the Prison and Probation Service is to contribute to reducing criminality

4. Fundamental value and Strategy
The Art of Balancing a Strict and Soft Approach

5. The Programme of Principles
1.
Normalisation
2.
Openness
3.
Responsibility
4.
Security
5.
Least possible intervention
6.
Optimum use of resources

6. The Danish Prison and Probation Service
Multi-year agreements
Ministry of Justice
• The Danish Prison and Probation Service is subject to political multi-year agreements running for 4-5 years.
• The current multi-year agreement is valid for 2013-2016.

7. Organization
Minister of Justice
Ministry of Justice
Department of Prisons and probation
Director general
Training Center
Probation Service
Probation Offices
Half-way houses
Local prisons
Pretrial detention
Prisons
The director general doesn’t follow the governments reign and is in that sense independent of the politicians in power.

8. The Department and the institutions
•
The Department of Prisons and Probation
•
The Staff Training Centre of The Danish Prison an Probation Service
•
Prisons
•
Local prisons and local prison units
•
Asylum-seekers institution – Ellebæk institution
•
The Probation Service
•
The 6 halfway houses

9. The new organization 2014
Ministry of justice
Region 1
Region 2
Region 3
Region 4
CEO
Management secretariat
Management service
Strategy & controlling
Statistic & documentation
communication
Law
Case handling/enforcement
Center
HR & Ressource
Center
IT
Center
Service
Service
Service
Prisons
Local prisons
Probation institutions
Region 1

10. Financial ressources
The total 2013 budget amounted 403 m. euro
Price per inmate per day:
•
Maximum secured prisons
•
Minimum secured prisons
•
Local prisons
•
Halfway houses
239 euro
156 euro
154 euro
162 euro

11. Staff
•
Around 4,700 staff members (full-time) work within the service.
•
2/3 are uniformed staff and 1/3 civilian staff.
•
55% of staff member are men and 45% are women.
Difference in education and the content of work.

12. Key figures – Inmates/clients
State and local prisons
Prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants:
Total number of places in state and local prisons:
Capacity utilisation, management target:
Prisoners per day serving sentences:
Remand prisoners per day:
Female prisoners per day:
Detained asylum-seekers per day:
Young offenders under the age of 18 per day (2012):
Inmates with an ethnic background other than Danish:
Admissions per year:
71
4.160
98 %
2,472
1.362
158
115
12
37%
14.000
Probation Service (offices and half-way houses)
Residents of half-way houses per day:
Clients per day subject to electronic tagging:
Clients on December 31th under supervision:
Pre-sentence reports per year:
Community service orders per year:
166
293
9.573
11.839
6.689
CAT-2013
133
10.000
1.667
766
45 %

13. During incarnation
Occupation (work/education/treatment)
Leisure time
Contact with family
Self-catering
Leaves
Escapes
Release on parole

14. Alternative to custodial punishment
Community service
•
The hours of work required are between 30-300.
•
The work must be carried out during leisure time.
Electronic tagging
•Offenders with a sentence to up to 6 months can apply.
Serving a sentence at a treatment institution

15. Efforts and results
Recidivism – the total rate is
Recidivism rate for offenders having served a prison sentence is
Recidivism rate for offenders having served a community order is
Recidivism rate for offenders having served under home curfew detention is
28 %
38 %
20 %
18 %
Treatment and programmes
•
Individual action and sentence plans.
•
Treatment guarantee.
•
50 treatment programs – e.g. drug abuse, prevention of violence, sexological treatment, improvement of cognitive skills.
•
Good release scheme.
Recidivism
CAT
40 %

16. Open prisons
•
In Denmark there is 9 open prisons in 2014.
•
The first open prison started in 1933.
•
The new prison concept “open prison” arose from the need of placing citizens that betrayed the country during the 2. world war.
•
Forerunners for “the open prison concept” was the youth- prisons, especially “Søbysøgård” and “Sønder Omme”.
•
The imprisonment and daily life in these youth-prisons had a more open minded approach to serving time and had less fixed forms and can move around freely compared to the closed prisons.

17. More humane imprisonment
Same rights as the inmates in maximum security prisons – for instance the inmates are obliged to work 37 hours a week.
The open prison Søbysøgård

18. Focal points in open prisons
•
Focus on local outdoor resource exploitation – agriculture and forestry.
•
Focus on education.
•
More inmates are allowed to work outside the prison in the community than prisoners in closed prisons.
•
A larger portion of the inmates start their exit plans sooner and get probation.

19. The inmates in open prisons
•
More inmates have shorter sentences.
•
The open prisons are a part of the exit plan for the inmates that serve time in the maximum security prisons.
•
Men and women serve together.

20. The daily life in open prisons
Opportunities – uses the local community to
integrate the inmates into society – the inmates...
•
Can move around freely
•
Go shopping
•
Go to the library
•
Do workout
•
Focus on health issues

21. Open prison vs. closed prison
The open prison is...
•
More humane
•
The ability to move around freely
•
Mobile phones are allowed
•
Early exit plan and probation
•
No walls

22. The Danish Prison and Probation Service in the future
Moving towards a centralisation and 4 regional Centres.
The focal points are:
•
Partnerships – cooperation across the 4 centres as an ongoing process of development e.g. better workflow in case handling.
•
Focus on the client.
•
Standardization of work tasks.

23. The Danish Prison and Probation Service in the future
•
A significant decline in youth crime and also a tendency of shorter sentences for the youngsters committing crime.
•
Women prison.
•
Political restriction.
•
Greater focus on gang related crime and inmates that are gang related.

24. QUESTIONS