Danish justice minister visits Kosovo prison set to receive 300 inmates from Denmark

Denmark’s justice minister Peter Hummelgaard has visited a detention centre in southeast Kosovo where his country intends to send up to 300 prisoners to ease overcrowding in the Danish prison system.

Speaking alongside his Kosovan counterpart Albulena Haxhiu, Hummelgaard praised what he called the “fruitful cooperation” between the two countries.

“Now we have come to Kosovo in need of help in the use of excess capacity in the Kosovan prison and detention facilities. And that is a very big help for Denmark in a time where we have a very, very pressured prison and probation services in in Denmark,” he said.

The deal, which was originally signed in 2021, only became a treaty earlier this year when it was approved by Kosovo’s parliament.

In the year the pact was signed, officials statistics said Denmark’s prison population had grown by 19% since 2015, reaching more than 4,000 inmates at the start of 2021 and exceeding 100% of capacity.

It will see Pristina lease 300 cells in the Gjilan prison to Copenhagen which will be responsible for renovation and modernisation work to bring the facility in line with Danish standards in a deal worth €15 million per year to Kosovo.

The cells in Kosovo will only be used for foreign nationals convicted of crimes in Denmark who were due to be deported after they have served their sentence.

The Director of the Correctional Service of Kosovo, Ismail Dibrani, said that the prisoners sent from Denmark will have the possibility of employment in the Gjilan centre after the investments from Denmark have been made.

“Several workshops will be built, workshops which will serve for the employment of convicts, this centre is intended for pre-detainees, at the moment when this centre will be put to use by the Danish state, of course there will be more workplaces, spaces where prisoners will have the opportunity to work. And, for this entire project, the contract was signed according to the needs and requirements of the Danish state,” he said.

But the decision to move inmates to the Kosovo prison has raised concerns among human rights groups.

“There have been credible allegations of abuse in the past. That doesn’t mean that it will happen (in Kosovo) but there is definitely an increased risk compared to if they had been in a Danish prison,” said Therese Rytter, the legal director of Danish human rights group, Dignity.

The US State Department said in a 2023 report that while Kosovo’s prisons met some international standards, violence among prisoners, corruption and inadequate treatment for inmates with mental disabilities were persistent problems.

And the UN Committee against Torture said in a report in the same year that it was concerned about inmates’ access to healthcare and family visits.

The Denmark-Kosovo deal is similar to an agreement signed between Albania and the UK last year, where hundreds of Albanian prisoners were sent to their home country’s prisons in exchange for British support in modernising Albania’s prison system.