Press releases and news 2018

The Criminal Sanctions Agency has released a whiteboard animation of its strategy in Finnish, Swedish, and English. The purpose of the whiteboard animation is to promote the strategy of the Criminal Sanctions Agency to its staff members and cooperation partners as well as the general public.

Director General of the Criminal Sanctions Agency of Finland Esa Vesterbacka was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Corrections and Prisons Association ICPA for 2018-2021 in the annual general meeting held in Montreal on 23 October 2018.

At present, approximately 18 per cent of all prisoners are foreigners. They represent 69 different nationalities. Therefore, we need to provide information about prison life in several languages. The Criminal Sanctions Agency has already published a glossary of the terms used in the field in ten different languages and three new languages are still coming. Now, we have also released a video in five languages for sentenced people arriving in prison.

A dance project involving female prisoners from Vanaja Prison was kicked off in March 2018. During the project, the participants created and rehearsed a dance piece, which was filmed in the surroundings of the women's unit of Vanaja Prison in June. The video was released on YouTube on 27 June.

The aim of the project called Prison Term as a Possibility is to help people with a criminal background to reintegrate into society and desist from crime by way of individual work with the clients, experiments on new forms of service, network cooperation, joint development, and recommendations.

The Central Administration of the Criminal Sanctions Agency moves to the building adjacent to the current office on 1 March 2018.

A report drawn up by the Criminal Sanctions Agency supports the option to merge two existing prisons into one new prison in Northern Finland. According to the report, this option is clearly more beneficial from both an economic and operational viewpoint. The prisoner places needed in Northern Finland would be guaranteed by building one prison in Oulu, which would replace the existing Oulu Prison and Pelso Prison, which is located in the municipality of Vaala.

The payment of the financial benefits of prisoners is made clearer. The changes affect mainly the amounts of the expense allowance, the activity allowance, and the wages as well as when each benefit is paid. The legislative amendments were approved in a Government plenary session on 30 November 2017. The amendments enter into force on 1 January 2018.