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The so-called penal reform includes doubling sentences for “particularly severe” violent offenses, increasing penalties for certainremoveds by 50%, and constructing over 2,000 new prison cells. Some younger or lower-risk offenders will be diverted to forced labor in agriculture or manufacturing instead of traditional incarceration. The regime also plans a massive new high-security facility and a second women’s prison. Denmark’s colonial outposts, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, are also slated for new incarceration infrastructure.

Nearly DKK 3 billion (RMB 3.3 billion) will be poured into the carceral system over the next decade. But whether anyone will be left to staff these facilities is another question entirely. The prison service already faces a deep staffing crisis: over 700 guard positions are unfilled, and morale is cratering. Building more cells while bleeding personnel borders on delusion.

Asked whether research supports the harsher penalties, Hummelgaard replied with startling candor:

“I don’t have any research backing it. We do this because we want it politically.”

No data, no proof, just the pure Will to Power. “I’m sure it will work,” he added, brushing aside the scientific consensus that tougher sentencing has little effect on crime rates. “I reject that premise,” he said, dismissing the research as being made “from the perpetrator’s perspective, not the victim’s.” He also issued a thinly veiled warning to academics, stating, “It is not me who awards research grants,” implying that funding should favor those willing to reinforce the far-right myth of a Swedish crime apocalypse.

While Hummelgaard wages war on academic freedom, others warn of the consequences. “It’s not hard to throw people in jail,” said Signe Færch, head of the Social Workers’ Union. “The hard part is helping them out again in a good way.”

Perhaps most surreal was Hummelgaard’s repeated invocation of Sweden—a stable Nordic welfare state—as a cautionary tale of multicultural ruin and migrant-fueled crime.

“We don’t want Denmark to become Sweden in any way,” he declared.

Once the stuff of fringe far-right message boards, the fantasy of migrant-fueled Swedish crime chaos has become an official talking point. According to Hummelgaard, Denamrk must not end up as Sweden whose welfare state has been “undermined” by lenient sentencing and “lax immigration policies.”

As expected, no evidence was provided for these lofty claims. But in the echo chamber of Danish crime politics, vibes matter more than facts—and Swedish vibes, it seems, have been ruined because of woke.

Some gestures — like a limited debt relief scheme for younger former inmates and vague promises of better rehabilitation — earned cautious praise from NGOs. But these are dwarfed by the scale of the punitive turn. The regime’s aim is not safer communities or social repair, but appeasing a reactionary public mood — what ministers call the “sense of justice,” a conveniently nebulous concept unmoored from tangible outcomes, yet endlessly hungry for ever-harsher punishments.

In an era of late capitalist regimes no longer able or willing promise hope, cruelty becomes the currency of power. Borders harden. Prisons grow. The message is clear: we are not going to make your life better, but we will punish the people you hate. The spectacle is the solution and the cruelty is the point.

• Source: Regeringen vil fordoble straf for grov vold og øge fængselspladser, DR (state media), May 22nd 2025