f äng e l s et s om vä l f ä rd s bygg e 362 ted as the construction of a welfare state prison in Chapter 7.The period investigated starts with the reform program in the 1930s and ends after the prison reform gained legal status.The legal process is thoroughly investigated and the study explores both the mode of procedure and the principles presented in the Act.The research is concentrated on parts that explicitly dealt with prison care, especially the conditions to rehabilitate and re-socialise prisoners according to the objective paragraph. The working committee (Strafflagberedningen) was assigned the task of reforming the penal system in Sweden in the autumn of 1938. In the same year a regulation concerning treatment in the State Penitentiaries was accepted.This statute corresponded with the intentions of the reform, which was to treat each criminal as a member of society.The outbreak of war postponed of the committee’s work. In1942 a motion was proposed in the Swedish parliament for an overhaul of the penal system. First legal committee (Sw. Första lagutskottet), with Karl Schlyter serving as chairman, rejected the motion.The reason, according to the First legal committee, was that a general Act was needed.At the turn of the year 1942/43 Strafflagberedningen was given new directions to deal with the reform of the prison system.The task involved both principal discussions and practical questions regarding the system. Foreign legal traditions directly influenced the drafting of the legislation for the new Swedish prison model. In this study traceable influences also came from the racial biological ideology.The working committee was aware of these ideas, but they were never put into practice as they had been in Germany and Italy. Strafflagberedningen had, for example, outlined a new Act regarding the possibility of castrating sexual offenders. Direct links are shown in the study between the members of the working committee and the Institution of racial biology in Uppsala.The legislators advocated biological methods in which to judge offenders even in the 1950s. Cabinet Minister Herman Zetterberg summarised the reform as being revolutionary.To rehabilitate offenders became part of the objective paragraph, motivated theoretically by the idea of basic human rights and the possibility for offenders to re-entry into society.The new openness of the modern prison also led to new prison constructions.The working committee was of the opinion that with these new means of treatment there was less need to discipline prisoners.New temporary prisons were constructed because of increased demand and the new model dictated that these facilities be of a smaller scale than were previously built.
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