The law, according to a press release issued on Tuesday, will speed up the process of transferring a prison sentence abroad, as well as increasing the number of prisoners who serve time elsewhere.
“The government’s restructuring of justice policy means that more people will be in prison for longer periods of time,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said in the statement.
“Now we’re putting strong proposals on parliament’s table which mean that, in more cases, people who have been convicted would be able to serve prison sentences in their homeland. This would reduce the burden on Swedish prisons while looking after taxpayers’ money."
Around a fifth of inmates in Swedish prisons are citizens of another country.
They can currently request a transfer to their home country if they wish, which requires them to make a formal application to the Swedish Prisons and Probation Service with details on their country of residence, their connection to the country where they want to be transferred to and their reasoning behind wanting to be transferred there.
The new proposal would make it possible in some cases to transfer prisoners to another country without their consent, for example in a situation where a prisoner was set to be deported from Sweden.
It would also make it possible to transfer prisoners to other countries even if there was no formal transfer agreement in place between Sweden and the other country.
In 2024, 7 prisoners were transferred from Sweden to a non-Nordic, non-EU country, 109 from Sweden to another EU country and 78 from Sweden to another Nordic country.
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The proposal, which has a suggested implementation date of July 1st, 2025, would introduce “more uniform and effective regulation” for when Sweden can request and provide assistance with transferring prison sentences to countries outside the EU and the Nordic region, the government’s statement reads.
It would also stipulate that governmental authorities ‒ specifically the Prisons and Probation Service in the case of prison sentences, or the Enforcement Agency in the case of fines ‒ would as a general rule be responsible for requesting to transfer a sentence.
Finally, it would increase the number of cases where it would be possible to transfer a prison sentence while also introducing new rules to speed up the process.
What about dual citizens?
According to the proposal, it would technically be possible to transfer dual citizens away from Sweden to their other country of citizenship.
"In practice, such cases should be extremely unusual and primarily apply to situations where the person who has been convicted has returned to the other country," the proposal reads.
"In that case, it would be reasonable for the Swedish sentence to be carried out there, if the requirements are met, even though the person convicted is a Swedish citizen," it continues.
Otherwise, it says, dual citizens could end up in a situation where they cannot carry out their sentence if, for example, they were in their other country of citizenship and that country refuses to hand over its own citizens.
How easy is it to transfer a prisoner to another country?
Within the Nordic countries, there is a well-established system that enables citizens of other Nordic countries who are given a prison sentence in Sweden to serve part or all of their sentence in their home country.
Since 2015, there has also been a European Union framework for transfer of prisoners back to their home countries, Ulf Mossberg, a press officer at the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, told The Local in an interview back in 2022.
The UK also has a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Sweden.
Mossberg said that transfers outside the EU tended to be difficult to arrange.
"In addition to the fact that both countries need to agree on a transfer, it is generally the case that there needs to be a certain standard and humanitarian values in the countries that are to take over the convicted person in order for a transfer to be possible," he said. "In some countries, prison conditions are poor, which means that Sweden cannot transfer convicts to all countries. Some countries have no agreement at all with Sweden."
According to Mossberg, arranging a transfer in these cases can be so complex and time-consuming that the sentence is over before it happens. More often than not the delay comes from lengthy court processes in the prisoner's home country.
"A common obstacle to being able to transfer convicts is that the transfer process can be very long while the sentence times are often short," he said.
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