According to the Scandinavian exceptionalism thesis, Nordic societies exhibit exceptionally humane penal policies with low rates of imprisonment. Prominent authors have argued that these moderate penal regimes are the result of the Social Democratic welfare state model with its associated values and practices. This article challenges this view and offers an alternative account of punishment and welfare in Nordic societies. Nordic societies have always maintained illiberal and punitive penal practices alongside more mild ones and under current conditions of mass migration, these penal features have become much more visible.
We focus on new empirical evidence and recent developments in Denmark where immigrants have been detained under strict regimes without having committed a crime and where political anti-immigration plans have included a prison island for foreigners and paying third-party countries to house detainees extra-territorially.
We confront the theory of Nordic 'penal exceptionalism' with these elements and argue that Scandinavian welfare states are much more conditional and coercive than comparative accounts allow. We further suggest that these developments, which stem from the welfare state, nevertheless over time, may erode the very foundations upon which it was built: security and equality for everyone regardless of status, class or person.