Prison places, foreign prisoners and the Danish welfare state: Towards a conceptualization of prison space as a welfare resource

Abstract

In December 2021, the government of Denmark entered into a rental agreement with Kosovo whereby 300 non-EU foreign nationals convicted by the Danish criminal justice system would be sent to Kosovo to serve their sentence of imprisonment and await their subsequent deportation. Based on an analysis of the wording of the Agreements on the finances of the Danish Prison Service, the article argues that a conceptualization of prison space as a welfare state's scarce resource makes it possible to explain such rental agreement through the theories of welfare and penal nationalism. In doing so, the article contributes to the growing body of literature that exposes the inherently dual harsh-but-mild nature of the penal regimes of Nordic welfare states. The article concludes with a brief outline of the future challenges that can potentially arise once the Denmark–Kosovo rental agreement enters into force.