Justice In Greenland (From Self-Sufficiency in Northern Justice Issues, P 121-140, 1992, Curt Taylor Griffiths, ed. -- See NCJ-141302)

• NCJ Number: 141305
• Author(s): H G Jensen
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 20 pages
• Sale Source: Northern Justice Soc
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Canada
• Note: From a workshop at the fifth meeting of the Northern Justice Society held in Sitka, Alaska, April 1991.

Annotation

This description of Greenland's justice system examines the development and current application of the Greenland Criminal Code.

Abstract

According to the Greenland Administration of Justice Act, there is a court in each local district of the country. Greenland is divided into 16 legal districts, each having one law district magistrate and two assessors. The appeal court is the High Court of Greenland and consists of one legally trained high court justice, four deputies, and lay assessors. The district magistrate is appointed for a period of 4 years by the high court justice. The Greenland Criminal Code of March 5, 1954, is unique in its creation of a system of sanctions that are inspired, not by the severity of the offense itself, but by a desire to rehabilitate the offender and to protect society. It is sufficiently flexible to tailor the sanction to the individual based on humanitarian and rehabilitative goals. The outstanding characteristics of the informal system of sanctions introduced in 1948-49 is its flexibility and rejection of the use of prisons. Fines are the most frequently used sanction. There is no prison in Greenland, only what can be called nighttime correctional institutions, where offenders reside at night after working in the community during the day. What Greenland now needs are modern correctional institutions where offenders can be placed to protect potential victims. A table shows the average daily number of persons kept in various kinds of homes according to the criminal code for the period 1975-89.