In Växjö, for example, a decision was made to temporarily stop visits for relatives for three weeks in June, when the visiting rooms have been used as living rooms.
— It is unfortunate, not least from a child’s perspective, children’s right to see their parents, for example, says prison manager Tove Strandsäter, to Ekot.
Also at the detention center in Huddinge, south of Stockholm, there was a ban on visitors for nearly twelve weeks during the spring. There, however, children have been able to have supervised video calls with their detained parents.
On average, 33 of the country’s 39 prisons have been overcrowded during the first half of 2023, according to figures that the Norwegian Prison and Probation Service produced for Ekot.