Imagine being released after ten years in prison. Your debt has almost doubled while you were in debt. When the gate opens and you are free, the torpedo awaits.
In court, you were sentenced to pay compensation of four million kroner to victims in the case. You were quite young when you were convicted, and had no value to pay the compensation with.
While you zone, your debt grows by about 26,000 kroner a month. When you are released, you must thus pay more than seven million kroner to the Central Government Collection Agency. The debt has thus increased from four to seven million.
This is a common problem in Norwegian prisons.
Difficult to motivate
If you have to pay compensation to victims of violence, the default interest on recourse claims is currently 8 percent. It is thus much higher than on a regular mortgage.
Debt collection agencies often freeze claims while sitting inside. At the Norwegian Central Collection Agency, on the other hand, the default interest runs if you do not pay the claim due, ie 30 days after you have received it.
The claim will only grow and grow. At the same time, the prison service must work to motivate prisoners to work and education, so that they can be released as a good contributor to society.
Some are sentenced to pay very high amount of compensation, sometimes several million. The compensation is paid to the victim from the Office for Compensation to Victims of Violence. A recourse claim is also sent (
- claim for repayment ) to the tortfeasor.
- A big share, around 55 percent , struggling with the economy even before incarceration.
- Few inmates own their own home, only 13 percent have a mortgage.
- Prisoners generally score lower on living conditions surveys than the rest of the population.
- 48 percent of prisoners are sentenced to compensation or fines.
- It is known that poor finances and mental illness are connected and reinforce each other.
The default interest rate of 8 percent does not benefit the victim. That money ends up in the treasury.
In prisons around the country, prison officers, teachers and factory officers work to motivate prisoners to education and work. It is hard work when the inmates live on the minimum rates of subsistence for the rest of their lives, because what is deducted from the salary deduction only covers part of the interest.
Refugee Crime Many prisoners know well how to live a life on the side of society and how to makes a lot of money without a regular job. It can be easy to resort to such a solution when it becomes difficult to make ends meet.
Having a good overview of your finances and an opportunity to Serving debt and unforeseen expenses is a crucial factor in coping after release. Poor finances are a major obstacle to a successful return and can strike a chord during any other effort.
This is what we know about prisoners’ finances:
We like to think that we have a humane penal system here in Norway, with a focus on rehabilitation and that you have made up for it, when you have served your sentence punish sin. In practice, we have a system that in some cases provides a financial life sentence. A punishment that prisoners only notice when they are released.
For those with claims debt, it is difficult to be granted a debt settlement. This is because such a scheme should not seem offensive . Often these do not get debt settlement at all. Then they have to live with the demands for the rest of their lives.
The access to postponement or reduction is so narrow that during my almost ten years as a prison officer I have only heard of a single one case that has caused it.
But the joy was short-lived.
After the consultation responses have been chewed through, it seems that the proposal to remove the default interest rate has been changed. In the proposal for a new law on compensation from the state to victims of violence, which was presented on 17 September, the state will still continue to demand default interest on the claims.
But it is time to behave, as they say in Bergen! The law has not been passed in the Storting. There is still time to write about the proposal. / or continue with crime. A normal job will not be able to serve the requirements.
Then the state as a torpedo has achieved the opposite of what the purpose of the punishment is.
The writer works as a prison officer, but writes this post as a private person.
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