Forced removal of children from criminal families proposed

Leading members of Venstre back up their Odense mayoral candidate who called for the removal and subsequent adoption of children born into persistently criminal families

Venstre’s mayoral candidate in Odense, Jane Jegind, wants to forcibly remove children from families with persistently criminal backgrounds and put them up for adoption.

She pointed to figures from Odense Council that show that 40 percent of the criminals living in the city’s Vollsmose ghetto came from, or were controlled by, only two families.

“Letting them start their lives in new families with different values would give them a far better life,” Jegind told TV2 News. “I think that when there is persistent criminal activity we need to use tools that help children have different role models.”

READ MORE: Shooting leads to chaos at Odense hospital

Criminal families
It is currently only possible for the state to forcibly remove and put up for adoption children whose parents are incapable of caring for them, and the immigration spokesperson for Radikale, Zenia Stampe, sees no need to change this.

“Some totalitarian states might think it’s okay to remove children from criminal parents but it’s not something that we do in Denmark,” Stampe told TV2 News. “We only remove children if the parents are incapable of looking after them.”

Rejected by government, supported by Venstre
The immigration spokesperson for Socialdemokraterne, Trine Bramsen, also dismissed the idea.

“You are taking away the rights of children to have their biological parents – not just for a period, but for the rest of their lives," she told TV2 News. "We know there are serious consequences when children are not given the right to see their parents or know who they are.”

But the idea cannot be dismissed as simply a whacky proposal by a local party member. The party top of Venstre, Denmark's largest political party, supports the idea.

“Venstre wants to look, without prejudice, at all the proposals in Odense regarding the question of forced adoptions,” Venstre’s legal spokesperson Karsten Lauritzen told Berlingske newspaper. “We want to examine if it is possible, if it would work, and whether it would help councils solve problems with criminal families who pass on their criminality to future generations."

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