STOCKHOLM, 8 August 2004 — Renowned for its humane penal system with short sentences in comfortable prisons, Sweden has found itself enveloped in crisis following two large-scale jailbreaks and a number of less spectacular escapes over recent weeks.
After three violent convicts were sprung from a high-security prison near Stockholm on Wednesday, just a week after four of Sweden’s most dangerous criminals escaped from another prison, politicians and the Scandinavian country’s “soft” penal system have come under increasing fire.
Amidst calls for his immediate resignation, Justice Minister Thomas Bodstroem on Thursday promised to not only greatly strengthen security at Sweden’s existing prisons, by among other things increasing the police presence near penitentiaries, but also to build, “as soon as possible”, a maximum security prison for the country’s most dangerous criminals.
For a country that has long prided itself on its humane treatment of prisoners, plans for the new prison, which will allow minimum contact between prisoners who will be kept under 24-hour video surveillance by armed guards, may sound well out of character.
According to critics of the ruling Social Democrats’ penal policy however such measures are far overdue.
“We’re not all that impressed since we’ve been demanding the same things for years. We have discussed these questions for a long time,” Beatrice Ask of the opposition Moderates told AFP. Bodstroem however brushed aside the criticism, claiming that the government had taken earlier warnings seriously and had passed laws aimed at improving security after another dramatic jailbreak by three prisoners last January.
“The truth is that we passed laws after the first escape (from the Kumla prison in January) calling for metal detectors and cell phone signal scramblers. We’ve already passed the laws, which is the part of this that is our responsibility,” he told AFP.
Cell phones smuggled into the jails are thought to have played an important roll in organizing both of Sweden’s most recent prison flights, and one female guard was on Thursday forced to resign after admitting that she had snuck a phone into one of the prisons. According to media reports, that phone was smuggled into the Norrtaelje penitentiary north of Stockholm which three convicts, serving sentences between four and 12 years for violent crimes including attempted murder and robbery, broke out of last Wednesday, helped by three outsiders carrying automatic weapons.
All three men remained at large on Friday afternoon. Their escape came just a week after four of the country’s most dangerous criminals fled the Hall penitentiary south of Stockholm, using at least one gun smuggled into the jail to threaten guards and temporarily take a hostage.
The four, including Tony Olsson, doing life for his participation in a 1999 bank robbery in which two police officers were killed, were captured within a couple of days.
