Experts believe that the number of places that need to be provided is very few compared to needs.
“If we talk about the possibility of the presence of 40,000 prisoners, 600 cells will not help very much,” said Emely Lonkvist, a criminal policy researcher and a correctional system at the University of Stockholm.
The Lonkvist said that Sweden leaves its confidence in rehabilitation and is increasingly focused on punishment and “imprisonment of people.” The government and social democrats are considered subject to pressure from the right wing.
“It is quite terrible that all this happens without any argument,” he said. “We are witnesses of the form of mass detention, as we have seen in the USA, and we know that this is unsuccessfully. We know that the influence is the opposite: the situation will deteriorate. ”
“The idea of stability and rational and human approaches to criminal policy has now disappeared in Sweden.”
Olla Jonasson, a priest in Stockholm, who often talks with 15-year-old children who are delayed for allegedly involved in serious crimes, including murder, said that politicians are too focused on punishing vulnerable people, and not on rehabilitation.
Most of the children whom he met, according to him, did not have “criminal identity”, but were used as a “disposable object” with gangs, while many guilty of violence actually avoided punishment abroad.
“I did not say that they did not need to provide consequences, of course, they committed a serious crime, so they had to make sentences,” Jonisson said.
“But we need to leave this“ punished ”thinking and begin to help them find new opportunities.”
The community, he added, drank the weakest chain.
The proposal to send prisoners to Estonia – about 400 kilometers through the Baltic Sea – should be approved by parliament in both countries, but the Swedish Ministry of Justice evaluates that this Agreement will be applied in the summer of 2026.
The Ministry of Justice denies that Sweden is moving towards mass maintenance in custody and from rehabilitation, emphasizing their prevention efforts.