It is not possible to ignore the problems that follow from the Prison and Probation Service's capacity shortage, and the situation is starting to become more acute, says the Social Democrats' law policy spokesperson Teresa Carvalho at a press conference.
We have landed on that it is necessary to rent this prison in Estonia for a limited period.
The government has signed an agreement with Estonia to rent up to 600 prison places in the city of Tartu. To get the proposal through, a vote with a qualified majority in the Riksdag is required and then the Social Democrats must also say yes.
"An emergency solution"
The Social Democrats have visited the prison in Estonia to get a picture of how it will work in practice.
At the bottom, it is not a good strategy to rely on, but there is currently no other equally quick solution to relieve the pressure, says Carvalho.
Through the rental agreement, the Prison and Probation Service gets eight years to address the capacity shortage, she points out.
It is an emergency solution that buys the agency time. But when this Estonian rental agreement has expired, there must be sufficient capacity in Swedish prisons, says Carvalho.
The Prison and Probation Service's plan is to build out to 29,000 remand and prison places by 2034. The Social Democrats have no other assessment, but believe that the government could have increased the pace in several different ways.
Build out like the defense
The Social Democrats want to start building out the Prison and Probation Service according to the same model as the Defense Forces, and also want the Prison and Probation Service to speed up the process of designating more places and building to the maximum there.
Teresa Carvalho expresses some self-criticism for the eight years when the Social Democrats had government power.
Neither did we do enough, we should also have built more prison places. But with that said, the great need has arisen during this mandate period, she says.
Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer (The Moderate Party) tells TT that he welcomes the Social Democrats' announcement about places in Estonia. But he rejects the Social Democrats' criticism that the government has not done enough to get more places at home.
On the contrary, we have increased the pace after the Social Democrats not only dragged their feet, but in practice stood still for eight years, says Strömmer.
