On September 25, 2023, Justice Minister Guðrún Hafsteinsdóttir announced a series of reforms to Iceland’s prisons. They included increasing the number of rooms in women’s prison Sogn from 21 to 35 and revisions to the Enforcement Act. The biggest news, however, was that the country’s largest prison, Litla-Hraun, would be replaced with new facilities, projected to cost ISK 7 billion [$51.2 million, €48.1 million] and take five years to build.
A few months later, in January 2024, investigative journalism programme Kveikur aired a programme on Litla-Hraun that clearly illustrated the need for new prison facilities. Litla-Hraun’s first building was completed in 1929, and was meant to be a hospital, but was instead utilised as a prison. Over the years, buildings were added to address changing needs, but never with a holistic strategy or design for the prison. Its ageing buildings are worse for wear, creating health and safety issues for inmates and prison employees so acute that they cannot wait five years for a new prison to solve them. The programme sparked a broad political discussion about Iceland’s prison system, not only regarding conditions within prisons themselves, but whether the correctional system is in fact rehabilitating inmates so they can successfully re-enter society.
Graduated sentencing
There are currently four prisons in Iceland. Two of them – Litla-Hraun in South Iceland and Hólmsheiði in the capital area – are closed prisons. The other two, Sogn and Kvíabryggja, are so-called open prisons. Iceland’s open prisons do not have fences or locked cells. Prisoners, wardens, and guards do not wear uniforms and they mingle relatively freely in the facilities, where all cook and eat together. While most prisoners will serve the first part of their sentence in a closed prison, Iceland’s prison system allows them to graduate to an open prison further into their sentence, provided they show good behaviour. Prisoners then often transition to the halfway house Vernd, and in some cases, can even serve the end of their sentence at home using electronic ankle tag monitoring.
A study based on data collected between 2012-2016 showed that, during that period, Iceland had lower rates of reincarceration than its Nordic neighbours (20% versus around 35% in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland). Páll Winkel, Director-General of Iceland’s Prison and Probation Administration, attributed these figures to Iceland’s graduated system, which helps prisoners re-enter society in stages. While this graduated system certainly has its benefits, the country’s prison system has long been criticised for a lack of true rehabilitation support for inmates and a lack of services such as mental healthcare.
Mental healthcare
Many of the major issues within the Icelandic prison system have persisted for years, including a lack of mental healthcare for inmates. In 2018, the Ministry of Justice itself stated that Icelandic prisons were breaching human rights by not providing adequate mental health care to prisoners. At the time, Icelandic prisons were at capacity, with 150 serving sentences and 530 on the waiting list to do so. In addition, 200 were performing community service, and a considerable number were on probation. In total, the groups consisted of around 1,000 individuals, of which 75% were believed to require mental health care, yet there were only three psychologists serving the entire system, and there had not been a psychiatrist serving the prison system since 2015. Between 2017-2019, two prisoners committed suicide, and their deaths were linked to the disarray in mental health services.
In the summer of 2019, the Council of Europe’s CPT (the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment) visited Icelandic prisons and released a report on their conditions. Unsurprisingly, it found mental health services to be lacking. In response to the report, in December 2019, a specialised, interdisciplinary mental health team was established to provide prisoners across the country with mental health services.
Persistent problems
Despite some improvements to mental healthcare access, in 2020, the CPT expressed concern that several long-standing issues in Icelandic prisons had not been resolved, some dating back to the CPT’s first visit to Iceland 26 years prior. The committee’s recommendations included addressing the lack of systematic and prompt medical screening of newly arrived prison inmates, including checks for injuries and transmissible diseases. In addition, the CPT noted that drug use continued to be one of the major challenges facing the Icelandic prison system. The committee also called on the authorities to put in place a comprehensive strategy to support prisoners with drug-related problems, including harm reduction measures.
The CPT also called for the implementation of the long-standing recommendation to improve legal safeguards in cases of involuntary hospitalisation and expressed concern that uniformed police officers can be called on to help healthcare staff to control patients with aggressive behaviour. The Committee had recommended stopping this practice as early as its 2012 visit.
Waiting lists
Over the years, due to a lack of funding, prison facilities have not kept pace with population growth and the rise in the number of sentences, leading to persistent waiting lists within the Icelandic prison system. Many convicted criminals in Iceland end up waiting a significant time before they can start serving their sentences. During this waiting period, they are not under any form of custody or constraints. In November 2022, it was reported that some 60 sentences had expired over the preceding three years due to a lack of available spots in prisons. Roughly 300 people (of which 279 were men) were on prison waiting lists at the time. Opposition MPs argued this was an unacceptable situation, both for victims and perpetrators.
That same year, then-Justice Minister Jón Gunnarsson stated that funding constraints had at times prevented the use of all the available cells at Hólmsheiði Prison. Hólmsheiði was opened in 2016 and is Iceland’s newest prison, the first purpose-built prison facility in the country since 1874. It has 56 spaces, but a lack of funding has meant that those spaces are not always fully utilised.
A damning report
In November 2023, the Icelandic National Audit Office published a report on the state of the Icelandic prison system that concluded that the system is “not run with the efficiency or effectiveness required by law.” It pointed to the lack of a comprehensive policy from the Ministry of Justice as well as a persistent lack of funding, which contributed to understaffing and accumulating maintenance issues in prison facilities.
The report’s conclusion on the state of Litla-Hraun, Iceland’s largest prison, was particularly damning. It stated that the prison does not fulfil modern safety requirements, due in part to the fact that its design and layout make it impossible to adequately segregate prisoners, making it difficult to prevent violent incidents or drug use. The report went so far as to state that the prison’s main building, opened in 1995, is likely unusable and may threaten the health of inmates and employees. According to the report, Litla-Hraun’s staff shows far higher rates of illness than what is considered normal.
Over 90% of prisoners in Iceland are men. The report pointed out that the prison system has been shaped by that reality, to the detriment of female prisoners. While female inmates are kept at both Hólmsheiði and Sogn prisons, there are no prison facilities that are exclusively for women, and due to the lack of space in open prisons, women are often interned at the closed prison Hólmsheiði for longer than necessary. This significant gap in the conditions of male inmates and those of female inmates is something the National Audit Office stated would not be improved simply by adding more spaces at Sogn Prison.
According to Páll Winkel, Director-General of Iceland’s Prison and Probation Administration, the issues brought up in the National Audit Office report are issues that prison authorities have been pointing out for at least two decades. In Kveikur’s investigative programme into prison conditions, Páll stated that while schools in Iceland are closed when mould is discovered, Litla-Hraun is permitted to stay open, despite the fact that people not only work there, but also live there. The poor conditions not only impact inmates’ physical health, but also their mental health.
Repeat offenders
While prison sentences are a punishment for committing a crime, they are also intended to be an opportunity for prisoners to access rehabilitation and prevent them from committing crime in the future. Yet the report from the National Audit Office found that between 2018 and 2022, 46.8% of inmates in Iceland had been in prison before. While this was a lower rate than in other Nordic countries, it shows that rehabilitation is not as successful in Iceland’s prisons as it could be. Litla-Hraun’s director Halldór Valur Pálsson told Kveikur that successful reintegration is not something prisons can provide on their own, rather it depends on providing healthcare services and social services to inmates as they transition back into society.
One Litla-Hraun prisoner who spoke with Kveikur reporters described how he purposely committed a crime so he could return to the prison. It was January and freezing outside, and he had no housing and couldn’t access a shelter. “I didn’t see any other option than committing a crime so I would be arrested. I went into a pharmacy and threatened an employee,” he stated. Other prisoners said that conditions at Litla-Hraun did nothing to help their rehabilitation, often leaving them feeling like they were in the exact same place when they were released as at the start of their sentence.
Next steps
The prison intended to replace Litla-Hraun will not be completed until 2028, if construction remains on schedule. In an interview in February 2024, Þórunn Sveinbjarnardóttir, chair of the Parliament’s Constitutional and Supervisory Committee, stated that authorities cannot wait for the new facilities to improve conditions in Icelandic prisons. Þórunn stated that it was necessary to improve existing facilities and improve the prisoners’ environment so that it supports their rehabilitation. Considering that the social cost of individuals who receive criminal sentences is estimated at between ISK 9-11 billion [$66-81 million, €61-74 million] per year, there is also a clear financial incentive to ensure prisoner rehabilitation is successful.
