Iceland’s remand population quadruples in a decade

About four times as many people are held in pre-trial detention in Iceland each day as a decade ago, while the annual number of sentenced prison years has doubled and prison capacity has barely grown, mbl.is reports.

Ragna Bjarnadóttir, director of Iceland’s Prison Administration, said the figures showed mounting pressure on the prison system. One consequence is a longer wait to begin serving prison sentences, she said, describing the situation as unacceptable and calling for action to meet the increased workload.

Ragna pointed to changes in the rules for foreign nationals facing expulsion from Iceland. They cannot serve parts of their sentences through measures outside prison, such as at the Vernd halfway house or under electronic monitoring with an ankle bracelet. As a result, they spend longer in prison than they would have before the legal change.

She said she agreed in principle that it was inappropriate to prepare people to live in Icelandic society if they had no right to remain in the country. However, she said the effects of such decisions on the prison system as a whole also needed to be considered.

Ragna called for a comprehensive review of how sentences are served, taking account of the growing workload and how different sentencing options are used. She said policymakers had focused too narrowly on individual parts of the system when making changes, without adequately considering their combined effects.