What's Right with Sweden? Prisons Close as Demand Falls

As study after study (after study) in the United States over the last several decades have shown a prison population explosion that demands additional, larger, more expensive—and increasingly privatized—prisons, the trend in Sweden might hold a lesson on how to end the ever-expanding incarceration rate.

In fact, instead of building new prisons or holding steady with the number they have, the Swedish government—citing a rapid fall in demand—has now ordered the closure of four prisons.

“We have seen an out-of-the-ordinary decline in the number of inmates,” Nils Öberg, the head of Sweden’s prison and probation services, explained to the Guardian. “Now we have the opportunity to close down a part of our infrastructure that we don’t need at this point of time.”

As the Guardian reports:

Swedish authorities explain that this more “liberal” approach includes both the rehabilitation cited, but also a new sentencing structure that has reduced the terms given for drug offenses, theft, and other less serious crimes.

At 112th in the world, Sweden has long been rated well in indexes that calculate the percentage of its population the remains incarcerated. In contrast, the United States has the most heavily-jailed population in the world.