Criminal Justice and Detention

Abstract

This chapter evaluates the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Articles Art. 37 and 40) in the policy and practice of detention of children within the Norwegian criminal justice system. It covers three different forms of detention (pre-trial police custody, pre-trial court-ordered custody and detention as punishment) from a legal and empirical perspective. The chapter finds that Norway has, to a large extent, addressed many critiques from the CRC Committee, including on limitation of the use of detention, conditions for detained children, and the need for various law reforms. However, challenges remain in relation to time-unlimited preventive detention of children and conditions in police detention. Moreover, the authors highlight a cross-cutting challenge within Norway has-the near absence of specialization with regard to youth criminal justice, and conclude that there is a need for the further development of alternatives to traditional criminal justice detention. KEYWORDS criminal justice | police custody | pre-trial custody | punishment | CRC | children's rights 1. We wish to thank the informants from the Norwegian Correctional Services, the National Police Directorate, key personnel at Bergen and Oslo Police Districts and the Norwegian Bar Association who all provided valuable information to the work with this chapter. We also want to thank Ingun Fornes, the editors of this book, and the reviewer, for productive comments on the content of the chapter.

Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory Assessments as Predictors of Behavioral Change in Multisystemic Therapy and Functional Family Therapy in Norway

“…However, whereas US-based MST teams typically are found in the juvenile justice system, MST teams in Norway were established in the child welfare system, since most youths in Norway with serious behavior problems under the age of 18 are transferred to child welfare. Only those who commit extremely serious criminal offenses (e.g., murder) are relayed to the justice system (Gröning & Sætre, 2019). Other than this accommodation to systems, translation, and cultural adaptation of materials, the MST program was implemented in Norway as prescribed by the US-developer organization.…”