Indefinitely Sentenced to Denmark—The Return to Greenland

Abstract

Greenlanders who have committed serious crimes may upon mental observation, where they are declared mentally deviant, be sentenced to an indefinite sentence under the Greenlandic criminal code's § 161, part 2. The indefinite sentence has no minimum or maximum time and must be served in a Danish prison, more than 4,000 km away from the convict's home. I have looked at how many Greenlanders have been sent down to Danish prison during the period from 1979 until 2006, how this arrangement is experienced by the convicts, and how life is when after many years in Danish prison they return home to Greenland.

Keywords:

• Criminal policy
• Greenlanders
• Indefinite punishment
• Mental evaluations
• Resocialization
• Risk assessments
• Stigma

Acknowledgements

The text was translated by Karl Boyd-Nafstad.

Notes

¹ [All quotations translated into English by the translator. Translator's note.]

² In Greenland there are long waiting lists for serving time in the institutions.