Innocent in theory, punished in practice: Assessing the punitiveness of Swedish and Danish pretrial practice

Abstract

How should we understand punitive penal practices in supposedly humane Nordic welfare states? This article examines remand imprisonment in Denmark and Sweden, where pretrial detention regimes challenge prevailing theories of penal exceptionalism. Drawing on a wide range of empirical sources, we analyze the extent to which these practices are punitive despite being pretrial measures. Our findings reveal that Swedish and Danish pretrial practices are structured to inflict and amplify penal harms—particularly through high levels of isolation—and affect substantial shares of the prison population in both countries. Although not formally intended as punishment, remand is experienced and functions as such in practice: a punitiveness operating beneath the surface, obscured by the legal ethos of justice and the presumption of innocence. We argue that these practices reflect not marginal or divergent penal values, but core punitive logics that underpin and define the Swedish and Danish penal systems.