Funds set aside for families of prisoners

Better contact with their children will reduce number of repeat offenders

The Justice Ministry has revealed that 24.4 million kroner have been set aside over a four-year period to help the children of prisoners.

The goal of the initiative is to ensure good and stable contact between children and parents, thus leading to fewer repeat offenders returning behind bars.

”More often than not, it is the children who suffer when their mother or father are in prison,” Mette Frederiksen, the justice minister, said in a press release.

”Many are ashamed that their parents have done something criminal, and at the same time, they miss them. Good contact during incarceration won't only help the feeling of absence, but will also contribute to mum or dad not ending up on the wrong side of the law again.”

READ MORE: Foreign prisoners have it too easy in Danish prisons, says Venstre

Prevention and resocialisation
The 24.4 million kroner will come from the total 1.2 billion kroner funding pool earmarked for the Ministry of Children, Equality, Integration and Social Affairs.

According to a report from the committee for prevention and resocialisation, Udvalget om forebyggelse og resocialisering, good family relations and close contact is hugely influential in preventing a return to crime.

A human rights institution, Institut for Menneskerettigheder, contends that at any given time there are about 4,500 children in Denmark who have at least one parent behind bars.

Some 40 percent of inmates in Denmark have children or stepchildren under the age of 18 who they either lived with or were in close contact with before being incarcerated.

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