As promised, Dr Tapio Lappi-Seppälä has sent on a full copy of his slides which he used at the recent meeting of Nordic Horizons. They are full and comprehensive and and available here as "the Scotland 2012 Finnish prison reduction presentation ". As a reminder, you can listen to the presentation recording in real time by downloading the audio recording below. ( Tapio starts speaking about 7 minutes in ) . Download the "Finns can only get better" Podcast
Humza Yousaf MSP, the host introduced Dr Tapio Lappi-Seppälä, Director, National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Finland. Finland had one of the highest prison populations in western Europe until the 1970s. Since then, the imprisonment rate has fallen to the low Nordic average but crime rates have stayed the same. Today, Finland has 59 prisoners per 100,000 of population; Scotland has 153. Finnish reform began when academics in the 60s argued criminal policy should be part of social policy, with employment and educational opportunities, and they also pointed out there was no evidence of a link between long prison sentences and less crime. Politicians legislated to turn prison sentences into community alternatives. The Scottish Prisons Commission modell...Read More
Pasi Sahlberg has kindly let us have a copy of his slides from his presentation. It’s a big file ( 3+ mb ) and you can download it here. Download Pasi Sahlberg Presentation in the Scotland Parliament 2012
Nordic Horizons event, Scottish Parliament, 29th March 2012 From Collapse to Constitution: The Case of Iceland Lesley Riddoch; Welcomes and intros. Professor Thorvalder Gylfason, economist, from Reykjavik (Thor) Christina McKelvie MSP, Convenor of European and External Affairs Committee, hosting. Welcomes everyone. Special welcome to the Ambassador and the consular guests.