Imprisonments, 2000

The Norwegian prison population at the start of 2000 was somewhat larger than it was one year earlier. However, the average number of inmates in 2000 as a whole only changed marginally from the previous year, as it remained at about 2500. The same can be said for the number of new imprisonments, i.e. the number of times people were incarcerated during the course of a year, 11 000 both in 1999 and in 2000. The most common reason for incarcerations was traffic misdemeanors, followed by larceny, narcotics crimes, and violent crimes. These offences led to vastly different sentences, as evidenced by the statistics on discharges. Those who commit serious narcotics crimes as well as the most severe violent crimes spend the longest time in prison, while those convicted of traffic misdemeanors serve short sentences.

7.9 per cent foreign nationals

Of the 6106 discharges from serving prison sentences in 2000, 482, or 7.9 per cent, were of foreign nationality. A majority of those who were not Norwegians came from so-called "non-western" countries; i.e. Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America (see table 1). The data indicate that foreign citizens, and especially non-westerners, constitute a larger proportion of those with long prison sentences than the short-term prison inmates, as evidenced by the second and third column in table 1. However, we cannot determine which, if any, of the proportions in table 1 deviate from the percentages of foreigners in Norway as a whole at any given time. Hence, we cannot tell whether one group or another is over represented in Norwegian prisons.

Foreigners serve a shorter part of their sentence

At first glance, the data indicate that foreign nationals serve shorter times in prison than Norwegians, because they spend a smaller proportion of their unconditional sentence behind bars. Norwegians serve an average of 92 per cent of their sentence behind bars, while the corresponding figure is 86 per cent for foreign nationals (see table 2). The difference of 6 percentage points results in part from the fact that a larger proportion of the foreign prisoners receive long sentences, which makes them eligible for parole. But even among those who receive sentences of over 90 days, foreign nationals spend a slightly smaller proportion of their sentence in prison than Norwegians. This difference is the result of a precedent that has developed in granting paroles from Norwegian prisons. Foreign nationals may petition for parole after serving 7/12 (58%) of their sentence, while Norwegians have to wait until they have served 2/3 (67%) of their sentence.

More time behind bars

If all else was equal, one would expect foreign inmates to spend somewhat less time in prison than Norwegians, given the practice of releasing foreigners a little sooner. But that is not the case. The Norwegians who got out of prison in 2000 after serving a sentence had spent an average of 96 days in prison, compared with 209 days for foreign nationals. As can be seen from table 3, this difference does not apply to those who had served an unconditional sentence of 90 days or less in prison. The major difference in prison time between Norwegians and non-Norwegians is in the group who served sentences of over 90 days.

The first thing that comes to mind as a possible explanation of the differences in prison time between Norwegians and foreign nationals, is that the foreign prison inmates had committed more serious types of crimes than the Norwegians had. Our data indicate that that is the case to a certain extent. However, there is even a difference in prison time between Norwegians and foreigners who commit the same main offence. We can see two further explanations for these differences. One is that the foreigners committed more offences than the Norwegians, and thus received longer prison sentences. A second possibility is that the foreigners committed more severe varieties of the same crimes as the Norwegians, which may also have led to longer sentences. The data material on imprisonments does not enable us to determine which, if any of these two explanations account for the differences in table 3.

Tables

Published tables