Norwegian Police University College

Abstract This chapter first provides an overview of three primary forms of extremism in contemporary Norway: right-wing extremism, Islamist extremism, and left-wing extremism. Then, it offers a novel analysis of government responses to extremism in Norway by reviewing public policies and strategies aimed at countering extremism, with an emphasis on violent forms of extremism. The key argument is that, despite low levels of extremism, Norwegian policies to counter extremism have developed from being rather contained to becoming more proactive and intrusive—which we refer to as the ‘preventive turn’—following major terrorist attacks abroad and at home. Yet, historical experience with overly intrusive surveillance of the extreme Left has served as a counterweight to this development. To ensure that this balance between security and liberty is kept intact in the future, more research and public debate is needed about the scope and scale of extremism and counter-extremism in Norway.

BackgroundResearch consistently demonstrates significantly higher rates of mental health disorders among incarcerated individuals compared to the general population. This paper examines the prevalence of mental health disorders among all individuals serving preventive detention in Norway between 2009 and 2022, and compares the prevalence of mental health disorders in this group with a comparison group of individuals convicted of serious violent and sexual offences, and with the total prison population.MethodsWe conducted a registry-based study to investigate the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity within this population in Norwegian prisons, using a subset of the data from the nPRIS-cohort including all people imprisoned in Norway between January 1st, 2000, and December 31st, 2022 (n = 112,877). The cohort, including 202 individuals serving preventive detention in the period 2009–2022, were linked to the Norwegian Patient Registry (NPR) and socio-economic data from Statistics Norway.ResultsThe prevalence of mental health disorders was high across all three comparison groups. However, of the preventive detention population (n = 202) almost all (95.0%) had at least one mental health diagnosis during the study period. In addition, 73.8% of the preventive detention population had received a severe mental health disorder diagnosis during the observation period (compared to 23.7% for the comparison group and 28.3% for the total prison population). Approximately one third of the preventive detention population had a combination of three or more of the five most common diagnoses.ConclusionThe preventive detention population in Norway is clearly a group with significant mental health treatment needs – even when compared to a prison population that is itself showing increasing prevalence of mental health disorders, indicating that they represent a particularly vulnerable population within the prison system.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-025-07357-3.

Norway uses indefinite post-conviction detention, or forvaring, as its most severe penal sanction. This article will be the first to describe how people who have served a forvaring sentence experience conditional release on parole. We develop an analytical framework that builds on the ‘pains of imprisonment’ literature and Sexton's work on penal consciousness. Based on interviews with eight people who have been released from forvaring under the supervision of the Norwegian Correctional Service, we set out three key themes: feeling imprisoned despite being free, fear of re-imprisonment, and frustrations connected to social networks including friends and family. Our analysis shows a significant gap between expectations and experiences of punishment and adds to recent arguments that punishment in Norway has more pervasive aspects than previously thought.