Criticism of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, Mariefred Prison, for routinely intercepting inmates’ telephone calls to public authorities etc.

Summary of the decision: The Parliamentary Ombudsman has issued a statement concerning the prerequisites for intercepting inmates’ telephone calls to public authorities when calls are placed outside the Swedish Prison and Probation Service’s INTIK system for controlled telephone calls by inmates. According to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the prison must make an assessment prior to each telephone call and assume that interception is only permitted if it is necessary for security reasons. When making this assessment, among other things the Swedish Prison and Probation Service’s legitimate interest in maintaining security must be weighed against the requirement to respect the inmate’s privacy and dignity. Consideration should then be given to the possibility that a call to a public authority may involve sensitive information about the inmate or other people.

In practice, Mariefred Prison has applied the opposite general rule; inmates’ calls to public authorities outside the INTIK system are routinely intercepted without any real consideration or documentation of how interests have been weighed against one another. The Parliamentary Ombudsman criticises the prison for this and for the formal processing of two inmates’ requests to make unmonitored calls to public authorities.