Preventive detention in Finland and the other Nordic countries

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the early twentieth century, European criminal justice systems started to discuss new security measures for dealing with persistent habitual criminals and mentally disordered offenders. New preventive institutions were established in the Nordics in the shift of the 1920–1930s. Indeterminate confinement came to cover both persistent property offenders, and repeat serious violent and sexual offenders. The success of these measures and the effectiveness of institutional treatment more generally, came to be questioned in the Nordic countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Disappointment about treatment effectiveness, combined with increased stress on legal safeguards, predictability and proportionality in the administration of criminal justice, undermined professional support for indeterminate sanctions and compulsory care. The use of preventive detention was either restricted, as in Denmark and Norway, or abolished altogether, as in Finland and Sweden. However, there were other arrangements in the latter countries, which partly served the same purpose.