Criminal justice issues

Mikael Damsgaard (M)

Mr. Speaker! Södertälje last week: A 17-year-old convicted of murder escapes after a release. The incident highlights much of what is not working in Sweden in a flash.

We are talking about the offensive low sentences. Today, no one can be sentenced to more than four years in closed juvenile custody, not even for very serious crimes such as murder.

We are talking about how grossly criminal teenagers today are placed in state-run youth homes, where they have access to mobile phones and computers and can therefore continue to plan crimes remotely or, for that matter, their own escape.

We are talking about that it is not a crime to abscond.

We are talking about how serious criminals can become Swedish citizens. In this case, the 17-year-old is reported to have become a Swedish citizen last summer, during the time he was wanted for the murder. Swedish citizenship should be something one earns, not something one applies for.

And finally, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about security deficiencies during prisoner transports. After two escapes in a short period of time in connection with medical and dental visits, it is evident that the security routines are failing in a serious way. In a single individual case, the need for a paradigm shift in criminal policy becomes so clear.

The government has now launched the largest offensive against crime in Swedish history. It is about tightening individual penalties but also about a complete review of the entire penal code. We are shifting the focus from the perpetrator to the crime victim.

Punishments shall reflect the gravity of the crimes. The government intends to introduce double sentences for crimes committed in gang criminal environments. Today's form of discount for multiple offenses shall be abolished, and the rules on parole shall be tightened. The prison sentence aims to provide redress for the crime victim and to give the perpetrator the opportunity to re-enter open society as a law-abiding individual after the sentence. But the prison sentence also, and not least, aims to protect society from the perpetrator.

To meet all these ambitions that the government has, the correctional services need to be expanded significantly in the coming years. In the budget bill for 2023, it was assessed that the Kriminalvårdens budget would increase by 5 billion from 2022 to 2025. This corresponds to an increase in the budget of 30 percent over three years. But the expansion will need to continue thereafter to meet all the announced sentencing increases.

Criminal justice issues

In the Swedish Prison and Probation Service's regulatory letter for 2023, the government tasked the agency with calculating what capacity would be needed in prisons, detention centers, and community service for the Tidö Agreement's proposed reforms to be implemented. The Swedish Prison and Probation Service's report was presented yesterday. The Swedish Prison and Probation Service assesses that they may need up to 4,900 additional prison places. There is talk of 11-16 new prisons.

Everyone in here and in our entire country realizes the magnitude of the challenge. It is naturally about the physical expansion itself, but also about the correctional service's competence supply. But, Mr. Speaker, the fact that it is difficult does not change the fact that it is necessary. Sweden needs a paradigm shift in justice policy, and it will require more places in detention centers and institutions.

Today we are dealing with a motion report where the motions on criminal justice from the general motion period are being addressed. In many of the motions, wise views are presented that one can feel great sympathy for. The committee majority proposes, however, that all motions be rejected, in most cases because there are already announcements from previous parliamentary years, work is ongoing in the Government Offices, or they are included in the Tidö Agreement, which regulates the work we will carry out moving forward in the government cooperation.

I therefore want to take the opportunity to say something about everything the government intends to do within the area of the Prison and Probation Service, in addition to the increased penalties that I have previously touched upon.

A large proportion of those detained in Sweden's prisons are foreign citizens. The starting point shall be that these persons are to serve their sentences in their home countries. The work with the transfer of sentence execution will therefore be intensified.

Escapes from institutions, prisons and other measures of deprivation of liberty shall be criminalized. It shall not be legal to escape.

The rules on permission are being reviewed, where, among other things, greater consideration shall be taken of the crime victims' vulnerability.

An investigation shall be appointed regarding renting places abroad. This is of particular importance in the discussion we are having now regarding the shortage of capacity within the criminal justice system.

The rules for conditional release are being reviewed. Conditional release should only be granted if there are special reasons, for example, good conduct and a low risk of continued crime. The supervision period after the sentence has been served should also be extended so that those who serve their entire sentenced term in prison do not escape supervision after the sentence is served.

The Prison and Probation Service shall take over the responsibility for the execution of sentences according to the Act on Closed Juvenile Care, and special juvenile prisons shall be established for this purpose.

I also want to mention an expanded use of restraining orders and the introduction of stay bans, which will be tasks for the social services.

Overall, there is a very high pace of reform at the Ministry of Justice, and it will be so during the remainder of the mandate period. The effects on the correctional services' operations will come successively as different reforms are launched and take effect.

The Prison and Probation Service and its employees will have a demanding time ahead of them. But, Mr. Speaker, it is an effect of a necessary reorganization of the justice policy.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Sanna Backeskog (S)

Mr. Speaker! In this report on the Prison and Probation Service, the Social Democrats have several important reservations. For the sake of time, I choose to move for approval of reservation 14, which contains a motion from our committee motion, motion 68, regarding more prison and detention places.

The Prison and Probation Service has the task of both executing sentences and reducing recidivism. The sentencing toughening of recent years, combined with more people being sentenced to prison and the fact that crime has changed, has meant that the Prison and Probation Service has been faced with difficult challenges. Lack of space is a constantly recurring problem. The Prison and Probation Service has received large supplements to be able to expand, but it is a task that takes a long time.

The Prison and Probation Service is also an authority that has made an impressive journey over the last decades. Security has increased significantly, and the fact that more prisons have been expanded across the country has contributed to more jobs. The Prison and Probation Service's work with Bättre ut has proven to be successful and unique in the world.

The goal is that the clients, during their prison sentence, shall receive tools to manage to live a life free from crime and be able to contribute to society after serving their sentence. When I previously this year visited the prison in Gävle, real success stories were shared about the Prison and Probation Service's successful treatment programs and about people who had served their sentence, done their homework, received treatment for their addiction, and then been able to function fully and contribute in society and the working life.

Mr. Speaker! The key for the Prison and Probation Service to be able to succeed in its socially important mission is, of course, the employees. It is not an easy job to be a prison officer. The Prison and Probation Service's employees need to have good judgment, very good security competence, and strong personal integrity. But it also requires good pedagogical ability, a motivating approach, and a humanistic view of people.

Seko writes in his report *Satsa på personalen - En rapport om krisen i Kriminalvården* that one in three employees at the institution considers it completely ruled out or not particularly likely that they will continue working within the correctional services in two years. This is an incredibly worrying statistic that requires action here and now - not in two years or in three years, but here and now.

A quote from the report that I want to highlight in this context is:

"Staff shortages and staff turnover. There must be more staff. The lack of space takes a toll on both staff and inmates. Then it is difficult to do quality work so that the inmates perform better. The wage conditions also make it difficult to retain colleagues. Despite the important social mission and the risks we are exposed to every day just by going to work, it simply does not pay off in the wallet."

The Prison and Probation Service therefore does not only face major challenges with the physical premises. There are also very large and serious recruitment needs, and judging by everything, those needs will only increase.

A major cloud of concern is also that the Prison and Probation Service's latest statistics regarding recidivism show that the long-standing positive development has now stalled. This is perhaps not particularly surprising given both the lack of space and staff, but it is extremely important that the government acts quickly here so that the operations can continue to rest on a scientific basis and so that the employees will have the conditions to perform their socially important mission.

Mr. Speaker! Those who want to leave the criminal lifestyle should be given help to do so. Often, very extensive efforts are required, and therefore cooperation between all involved actors must function. The defection work needs to be strengthened, and the Prison and Probation Service needs to have the conditions to work long-term and structurally with, among others, the Public Employment Service, social services, and the important civil society.

So, it is not just a matter of importance that the government does not leave the Prison and Probation Service in the lurch. The whole society is interconnected, and it is a great betrayal that the government is now subjecting the welfare system to a steel bath. We Social Democrats believe that it must be possible to have several perspectives simultaneously. The preventive and equality-creating work is absolutely crucial so that fewer choose a criminal lifestyle. The recidivism-preventing work within the Prison and Probation Service must be prioritized, and for those who have served their sentence and want to choose a different path in life and contribute to society, such conditions must exist. The whole society benefits from that.

(Applause)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Ingemar Kihlström (KD)

Mr. Speaker! I would like to begin by moving for approval of the committee's proposed decision, which entails a rejection of all motions within the area of correctional services.

That human beings are imperfect is probably not difficult to agree on when we look at ourselves both in our immediate surroundings and around in our world.

In recent years, violence has increased in many different ways in our society. Crime has always existed, and it is a primary task for a country to strive to limit crime as far as possible and to administer justice. The criminal justice policy has the task of establishing laws and arresting and sentencing those who commit crimes, and then the one who has committed a crime must atone for their deed through a criminal penalty. The criminal penalty also has the purpose of providing redress to the crime victim.

We are debating criminal justice issues here in the chamber today, and it should be done in light of the fact that there must be enough places to cover the increased space requirements that arise when the justice system ensures that more criminals are arrested and sentenced. The space requirement is a consequence of harsher sentences and also of the expanded opportunities and resources that the various functions of the justice system have received to counter violence and crime in our society.

But the time in the correctional system must also, for every individual placed there, become a time when a criminal path can be broken and the convicted person receives support and motivation to change and leave a criminal life choice.

The time during which the sentence is served shall be used in a meaningful way. If the inmate has an alcohol or drug addiction, these dependencies must be broken through targeted programs. In order for the inmate to have the opportunity to find a new path in life, education and work training must be offered. Naturally, the institutions shall be kept drug-free. Release must be prepared well in advance. For us Christian Democrats, the resources that civil society can offer in the form of interventions and support are also important. Of course, man does not live by bread alone, so the possibility for spiritual care and activities within the institutions must also exist as a way to break a destructive life choice.

Mr. Speaker! To avoid recidivism, the released person should be helped to secure housing, work, or other types of meaningful occupation. It is also important that the social network is strengthened. Investments in the Prison and Probation Service, not just to create places, must be seen as a way and be directed towards reducing crime in the future.

Mr. Speaker! As the speaker before me has mentioned, the lack of space within the Prison and Probation Service has been a major problem for many years. It is rooted in increased crime, primarily within serious crimes, but also in legislative changes and expanded resources for the justice system which have resulted in more people being convicted and also, in many cases, receiving longer sentences.

The Prison and Probation Service has, in recent years, not least through budgets submitted by the then opposition and which the Riksdag approved during the previous parliamentary term, received increased resources to create more prison and detention places. Despite this, the situation is strained both in detention centers and in prisons. Today, after a number of capacity-increasing measures, there are approximately 8,000 available places.

Previous plans showed a need for approximately 11,000 places over a ten-year period. As also mentioned by previous speakers, new plans were presented yesterday that require between 10 and 16 new institutions.

Construction projects are underway in a large number of places around the country. In addition to premises, personnel are also needed to handle this increase in capacity.

The Prison and Probation Service submitted a request for an additional budget as late as March this year, and it is pleasing that the government was able to meet this with a supplement of 300 million in the spring budget submitted to the Riksdag at the start of this week. This is a need that did not exist in previous requests from the Prison and Probation Service for the years we are talking about right now, and in my eyes, there is reason to have a continued close dialogue and analysis, so that future needs are included in the upcoming budget processes, both this autumn and later, and so that the Prison and Probation Service receives the resources needed to meet the demands and needs that exist in the coming years.

Mr. Speaker! In today's Sweden, it does not result in any additional punishment to attempt an escape or to escape during the period of detention. We Christian Democrats have, however, for a long time considered that escape and attempted escape from a correctional facility should be criminalized. The possibilities for sanctions after an escape are limited today, and the consequences for the individual therefore become small.

Escapes mean that large resources are taken from various parts of today's heavily strained justice system. Furthermore, in many cases, it concerns persons who have been sentenced to long prison terms for serious crimes and can be dangerous out in society.

The person who escapes from a prison sentence signals that he or she does not stand on the foundations of the rule of law and does not take the punishment that belongs to the damages and the suffering that affected the crime victims. It is a reprehensible behavior that we should clearly mark against, just like other reprehensible behaviors in our society, and it can occur through criminalization in law.

Every escape from a facility or closed forensic psychiatric care is a failure that must be taken most seriously. A parliamentary majority has in previous decisions, most recently during 2022, stated that escape and attempted escape from a correctional facility and deviation from permission shall be punishable by imprisonment. An investigation has been initiated. I am pleased that the Tidö Agreement indicates that escape from a facility, jail, and other liberty-depriving measures shall be criminalized. We Christian Democrats welcome these steps and look forward to the investigation's proposals.

In the Tidö Agreement, it is also signaled that today's rules on conditional release shall be reviewed with the aim of replacing them with a new system which implies that conditional release shall only be able to be granted when there are special reasons.

Mr. Speaker! For us Christian Democrats, it is also about seeing other possibilities to solve the acute situation. To relieve the occupancy of the Prison and Probation Service, the Prison and Probation Service should also be tasked with renting places abroad. Even here, the Tidö Agreement states that the possibility of renting prison places abroad shall be investigated. It will be a method to create the possibility to meet the increased need.

Mr. Speaker! We also consider that foreign citizens convicted of crimes in Sweden should, as a rule, serve their sentences in their home countries. Today, approximately 30 percent of those detained in Swedish prisons are citizens of other countries. Sweden should therefore prioritize entering into agreements with other countries that ensure these citizens serve their sentences in their home countries. Even here, the Tidö Agreement indicates a clear direction.

Mr. Speaker! As today's debate shows, there is a need for further activity regarding the lack of space in today's institutions, and there is also a need for methods and treatment plans to break a destructive lifestyle and a drug addiction.

As I said initially, I move for approval of the committee's proposal for a decision and rejection of all motion proposals.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Mats Arkhem (SD)

Mr. Speaker! This debate concerns issues regarding the correctional services. The latest escape in connection with a transport in Södertälje shows that there is a great deal to be done.

Let me first, like so many others, state that Sweden has a severe shortage of prisons, both in terms of prison places and remand places. This has been noted and pointed out by both the Prison and Probation Service itself as well as trade unions and the National Audit Office, among others. This dangerous situation has been reported for a long time.

Yesterday, we were able to review the Prison and Probation Service's capacity needs as a result of the Tidö Agreement. The Prison and Probation Service may, as stated, need up to 16 new large prisons. The shortage of prison places with a high security classification causes overcrowding in the country's detention centers.

The overcrowding means that prisons in some cases are forced to let detainees share cells or use visiting rooms and other rooms as cells. It has happened that youths have been placed with adults, and it has happened that detainees have simply had to remain in the police's holding cells due to a lack of space.

The occupancy rate is at times over 100 percent. These are not my words but something that the Parliamentary Ombudsman has reported.

According to the Prison and Probation Service, the occupancy rate last year averaged 107 percent in prisons and 113 percent in detention centers. This is, as everyone understands, completely unsustainable for the staff and their working environment, for the operational content, for the inmates, and for security.

There is a majority both in the Riksdag and among the Swedish people who want to see more and also longer sentences for criminals. This will be implemented. But it takes time to build new institutions and detention centers. In addition to the process with municipalities, permits, and procurement, staff must also be hired - trained staff with competitive wages.

That is why the Sweden Democrats want to do a number of things.

We must review the ownership forms for the prison estate. Currently, the Prison and Probation Service rents its premises primarily from a state-owned company, Specialfastigheter. In this acute situation, we want the Riksdag to let an investigation be conducted into whether greater flexibility for the agency would provide higher capacity, more places, and lower costs for construction and operation.

We are also not unfamiliar with reviewing the possibilities of renting detention places in other countries to quickly address the overcrowding. On the one hand, this can be more cost-effective since the cost level is high in Sweden; on the other hand, a large proportion of those detained in our Swedish prisons are foreign nationals with deportation orders. It is not a human right to be held in a Swedish prison as a foreign national. On the one hand, these individuals cost money, Swedish tax money that is needed elsewhere; on the other hand, they take up space and resources and prevent adequate correctional care for Swedish citizens who are detained.

The Sweden Democrats also, in connection with the fact that such a large proportion of those detained are foreign citizens – around one-third, and that proportion appears to be increasing – want to see a significantly improved statistic regarding this. We have no exact figure on the proportion of detained Swedish citizens with a foreign background.

The Prison and Probation Service does not record the inmate's original nationality. This creates obstacles to greater knowledge and understanding of society's development and thus for how we can turn the development for the better.

Mr. Speaker! If one commits a crime, it must have consequences. If one wants to avoid these consequences, there is the possibility of not committing a crime from the very beginning. There are many possibilities for deferral of execution, for example, work or studies. This is what we want to review.

We want there to be consequences if a convicted person fails to appear for admission to a facility. We want it to be more restrictive regarding unsupervised visits in order to reduce the amount of drugs, which unfortunately is far too large in our facilities.

We want to further investigate a general smoking ban in prisons and detention centers.

We want that detention hearings should be able to be conducted via video link if there is a need.

We want to review the possibilities of allowing some camera surveillance in the cells to prevent drugs, threats, and assault.

We stand behind all our reservations, but for the sake of time, I move for approval only of reservation 15 regarding the forms of ownership for Kriminalvården's premises.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Juno Blom (L)

Mr. Speaker! The Government is now carrying out a comprehensive reorganization of the crime policy. It is a major shift in perspective that is about putting the crime victim perspective in the foreground. The report on the correctional services that we are now debating plays an important role.

The role of the Prison and Probation Service is twofold. On one hand, the convicted person must serve their sentence. On the other hand, those who have committed crimes must be given opportunities to return to a normal life without criminality. The punishment is also an important restitution for the crime victim.

A well-functioning correctional service strengthens people's ability to develop their own resources and create a law-abiding life. Getting people to break with a criminal lifestyle is therefore an important crime-preventing task.

The Prison and Probation Service faces major challenges today, not least due to the lack of space. As sentences are toughened, the police are expanded and more criminals are sentenced, the need for prison places will continue to increase. It must not be accepted that persons sentenced to prison have to wait a long time to serve their sentences because there is no possibility to receive them.

The Government proposes that the Prison and Probation Service shall receive an additional 300 million kronor this year. The money is included in the Government's autumn budget revision for 2023. An additional investment may come this autumn.

The situation regarding the occupancy in prisons and detention centers is strained. The lack of space has worsened despite the number of places having increased continuously in recent years. Today, the Prison and Probation Service has 8,000 available places, and that includes double occupancy. The Prison and Probation Service assesses that 11,000 places will be needed within a ten-year period.

There needs to be support for those who want to leave the criminal life. Here, it is important to have conditions for studies and jobs as well as participation in civil society.

Furthermore, it appears in the Tidö Agreement that the Social Services Act needs to be reformed. It concerns the crime prevention work to prevent young people from being recruited into crime and the work for children who are in crime to get out of it. It is incredibly important that the preventive work is now codified in law.

The Prison and Probation Service's general efforts are of great importance. To that should be added the specific so-called exit programs, which are aimed at those who want to leave a criminal lifestyle. It is important to stop the recruitment of children and young people, to prosecute those who commit crimes, and to encourage more people to leave the criminal environment. The Liberals believe that exit programs play an important role in that work and have for a long time demanded a national exit program.

The Swedish Police Authority, the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, the National Board for Institutional Care, and the National Board of Health and Welfare have since 2021 been tasked with strengthening and developing the work of providing support to defectors from criminal, violent extremist, and honor-related environments in the country. The authorities shall develop forms for follow-up. Brå shall also support the follow-up and evaluation. That assignment continues and shall be final reported in February 2024.

In Sweden, it is not a crime to escape from prison or closed youth care. Such an arrangement is completely unreasonable. Escaping must in itself be punishable. Society's signals must be unambiguous, and the consequences for the one who escapes must become even more tangible. Therefore, it is good that the government will return to that issue in the near future.

Within the criminal justice system, the perspective of the child must also be strengthened. I have myself been involved in Buff, an organization for children and young people with incarcerated parents or family members. I have shared in the shame that children feel when they have a parent in prison, the loneliness they feel, and the fear that their classmates will find out that dad is in prison. I have also accompanied children on visits to prisons and seen the criminal justice system's inability to meet the children's needs.

Above all, I have fought for children who do not want to meet their father, children who have been forced into contact with a convicted parent, and children who have reacted extremely strongly when they have been forcibly removed by the social services.

I gained insight into this serious problem many years ago. A boy had witnessed how the father assaulted the mother so severely that she became unconscious. The father then left the son and the mother, locked the door and left. The boy, who was only five years old, was finally able to get help through the mail slot after a few hours. It is an enormous trauma. Despite that, the boy was forced into contact with the father in prison, with two social workers whom he did not know.

I will never forget how he cried and did everything to stay with his mother and how we fought so that he would not be forced to visit his violent father. But the court ruling was to be followed, and the boy was carried away. That boy is one of all the crime victims that exist behind the statistics, one of all the betrayed children that I fight for.

Mr. Speaker! I vote in favor of the committee's proposal and against all motions.

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Lotta Johnsson Fornarve (V)

Mr. Speaker! Today we are debating correctional care. It is important that we never forget what is the very purpose of the correctional care. It is about both preventing and reducing crime. The person who has committed a crime shall, of course, be prosecuted and sentenced to a punishment that is in proportion to the nature of the crime. Serious criminals must, of course, receive tangible punishments. But to believe that harsher punishments are the only solution to deal with crime is to make it very easy for oneself.

The correctional services are not just about marking and punishing, but primarily about ensuring that the person who has committed a crime does not reoffend. The person who has ended up in crime must be given an opportunity to return to society. It is our duty and our responsibility if we want to make a real change. The correctional services must strive to provide the best possible interventions so that the person convicted of a crime can live law-abidingly in the future after the sentence has been served. This is important both for the convicted person's own sake and for our society as a whole. There is much left to do here, and unfortunately, the development is going in the wrong direction.

In Seko's report on the crisis in the Prison and Probation Service, it reads as follows:

"Shortage of staff and shortage of places have caused the Kriminalvården's care mandate to suffer. The possibilities to offer the inmates different forms of program and educational activities have been limited. Kriminalvården has become a place for detention where it is about getting the operations to function from day to day."

This is, of course, completely unacceptable.

The severe shortage of space in our facilities is acute. The lack of space has major consequences for both the inmates and for the staff. The environment becomes more vulnerable, and security is threatened. For the employees, it leads to increased stress and pressure. It is high time to listen to Seko and to invest in the staff by introducing safer working conditions, better training and ongoing skills training, and to conduct a review of working hours as well as wage increases.

Vänsterpartiet has many proposals concerning both treatment in prison and rehabilitation, which we have motioned for previously. It is about that more must be motivated to participate in various treatment programs but also about developing these as well as improving the possibility to participate in different forms of educational interventions.

In this report, the Left Party (V) has a reservation stating that the person convicted of purchasing sex shall be required to participate in education aimed at creating awareness of the causes and consequences of prostitution. The Left Party believes that the Swedish sex purchase law should be developed so that a judgment for purchasing sex can include conditions that the convicted person shall participate in mandatory education on the causes and consequences of sex trafficking and prostitution. We believe that it is an important preventive measure that can reduce the risk of recidivism. I therefore move for approval of reservation 12, which concerns this.

In order for someone who has been released from an institution not to return to crime, there must be a well-functioning reintegration activity throughout the country that is permanent and has a long-term focus on readjustment to a life without crime and substance abuse. For a well-functioning reintegration activity, close cooperation between the correctional services, social services, and the public employment service is required. Someone who is released from prison with only a bus ticket and a plastic bag in their hand runs a great risk of relapsing into crime.

If we seriously want to tackle crime, society must intensify crime prevention work and allocate the resources required for it. It is about broad cooperation between different social actors, primarily at the local level – police, social services, school, civil society, business, housing companies, youth centers, etc. It is about building a strong welfare society and reducing economic inequalities. A society that holds together, where children and young people can grow up and develop in safe environments, is the best vaccine against crime.

Part of the crime prevention work is the defector activity. Vänsterpartiet therefore stands together with the Socialdemokrater behind reservation 2, which I hereby move for approval of.

We want to see a national program for defector activities. The proportion of people who want to leave the criminal environment is increasing, but society's ability to support these often young people is unfortunately not good enough today. More interventions are needed to motivate those who want to defect from criminal gangs and leave the extremely violent environments they move in, while at the same time, the authorities' knowledge of these environments needs to be improved.

The opportunities to receive support need to become more equal across the country. At national, regional, and local levels, efforts from society need to be coordinated between different actors, and the work must also become more structured and long-term. We therefore want the government to give Kriminalvården, Polismyndigheten, Statens institutionsstyrelse, and Socialstyrelsen a mandate to jointly develop a national dropout program.

The program shall contribute to strengthening society's support for individuals who wish to leave criminal or violence-oriented extremist environments and groups. The mandate also includes assessing whether groups acting against a background of honor-related motives should be included in the program.

The program shall also include a plan for persons who have such extensive protection needs that it requires a change of place of residence or municipality. The committee has previously submitted a notice regarding this, but now we have a new government, and we therefore consider that there is reason to once again submit a notice regarding the need to establish a national exit program. It would be of immense importance and contribute to reducing crime and recruitment to criminal gangs.

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Ulrika Liljeberg (C)

Mr. Speaker! When the correctional services take over in the justice chain, it is often after a judgment has gained legal force. The crime prevention work has failed, but the prosecution work has succeeded. Police and prosecutors have presented the evidence that existed to Sweden's courts, witnesses have testified, and crime victims have had their say and hopefully received redress. Now a new phase begins for everyone involved.

The complainants, the crime victims, need to continue to be a very important focus. They need to continue to receive respect and, if they so wish, receive the information they need from the criminal justice system.

Another crime victim focus is to work for shorter time between judgment and execution in, among other things, domestic violence when the convicted person is not deprived of liberty, both out of respect for the victim and to prevent recidivism. This is something that Centerpartiet works for.

For the convicted person, after the sentence, a period of deprivation of liberty of various types and of varying lengths begins. Above all, the work of preventing recidivism begins - for the convicted person, for the correctional services, and for society.

The Government recently tasked the Prison and Probation Service with further developing the work on preventing recidivism and wrote the following: "Whether it concerns short or long prison sentences, the goal shall be that the sentence marks the end of the convicted person's criminal path." I think it was very well formulated and something we should highlight more often.

Mr. Speaker! As I have said before here in this rostrum, and will probably say again, I do not understand how crime prevention work can have such a poor resonance in certain circles. The biggest winner of crime prevention work will always be the one who avoids being subjected to a crime that can be prevented and averted.

Crime prevention work will always be the best work for crime victims. Therefore, we should work to equip the convicted person in an appropriate way so that the sentence will be the end of the convicted person's criminal path. We need to work with desistance activities out in society and within the correctional services. We shall make the thresholds for young people into crime high, but the thresholds out low. When the motivation, regardless of reason, is there, we must also be there. Everything else is a loss for society, for presumptive crime victims, and for the individual. I particularly want to highlight today the important role, task, and work of the voluntary services in this issue.

We therefore have a focus on crime victims and a focus on preventing recidivism regarding correctional issues. But of course, we will also have a major focus on high security and robust systems within the correctional services during the time the sentence is served. Believe nothing else!

We have all read about – and now I believe that we have all even mentioned – the escape that occurred in Södertälje last week when a person convicted of a brutal murder here in central Stockholm escaped. What happened is completely unacceptable. The Center Party has, in a motion that is up for consideration here today, requested that GPS transmitters be used more often than they are today, this in order to increase safety for crime victims and relatives but primarily to deter both spontaneous and planned escapes and flights and to, in a way that is as fast and effective as possible, re-deprive the convicted person of their liberty and return them to the facility.

Criminal justice issues

In the coming years, the Prison and Probation Service will need to increase its capacity enormously. It is an incredibly important mission to create safety and increased security for all of us in society. But it must not happen in an overly repressive spirit, where the most important thing becomes to punish and not to ensure that new crimes are not committed. We will follow the development closely.

I stand behind all of the Center Party's reservations but wish to move for approval only of reservation 11, which concerns precisely the increased use of GPS transmitters during transports and permissions.

The deliberation was hereby concluded.

(Decisions were made under § 11.)

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