'Ban porn from prisons' call

The Swedish Prison and Probation Service wants to put a stop to pornography in the country’s jails, Svenska Dagbladet reports.

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In September the Prison and Probation Service ordered that all pornographic material be removed from Kronobergshäktet, a detention centre in Stockholm. Previously inmates could purchase pornographic magazines from a mobile kiosk.

Prisoners have also been forbidden from putting up pornographic pictures in communal areas.

The reasons given for the ban are that it is insulting for female prison officers, and that there has been an increase in the number of suspected sex offenders.

Among the internees in Gitta Grönlund’s section at Kronobergshäktet in Stockholm are men suspected of rape and incest.

“The fact that suspected sex criminals had access to porn magazines felt very uncomfortable.

“It means that with our help they can ‘make themselves horny’ and plan new crimes,” Grönlund told Svenska Dagbladet.

The Swedish Prison and Probation Service is considering introducing similar bans in all prisons.

But first it must convince the courts either that pornographic material has a negative effect on the treatment of sex offenders or that it is harmful in the workplace.

A directive from the Prison and Probation Service led to a 40 year old man convicted of rape having his pornographic magazines taken away from him at a prison in Härnosand.

He appealed his case to both the county court and the administrative court of appeal. And he won.

The Prison and Probation Service has appealed to the supreme administrative court of appeal.

Authorities have already successfully banned television stations showing pornographic films from the country’s prisons, but magazines are a trickier proposition as access to printed media is a constitutional right.

“Despite the constitution it must be possible to make a judgment on what is right, and giving porn magazines to sex offender certainly is not,” Liberal Party MP Solveig Hellqvist told Svenska Dagbladet.