Swedish Prison Kept Inmates in Same Cell After Suspected Rape

MJÖLBY - Prison officers found two inmates in the same bed, wrote up the incident as suspected sexual abuse between prisoners - and then left the two men locked in the same cell for another week. Sweden's Parliamentary Ombudsman has now criticised the Swedish Prison and Probation Service over the case.

It happened on the morning of 2 September 2025 at Skänninge prison in Mjölby municipality. During the daily inspection, staff opened the door to a shared cell and found both inmates lying in one bed.

One of the men asked the officers to wait while they got dressed, and was described as overly friendly as he welcomed them in to carry out the search. The other made a very different impression. Staff described him as rattled, ashamed and shaking.

The incident report that followed was explicitly filed under the heading "sexual harassment/abuse between clients".

Kept in the Same Cell

Officers then spoke to each man separately. The one who had seemed shaken said he had not been subjected to anything by his cellmate. The other said he had trouble understanding the language, and that his friendly manner had been a way of showing respect.

The prison decided to step up monitoring of the two men. Over the following week staff checked on them regularly and reported no further unusual behaviour - so the prison concluded the pair could go on sharing a cell.

Only when the prison inspector in charge learned of the suspected rape was the decision taken to split them up. That was roughly a week after the incident report had been written.

"Should Have Been Separated Immediately"

Deputy Ombudsman Katarina Påhlsson, who handled the case, says the prison should have acted far faster. In a decision issued on 27 October she criticises how Skänninge handled the incident.

The concrete observations staff had documented should have led to the men being placed in separate cells at once, she writes. Shared cells should be broken up as soon as there is any suspicion that an inmate has been, or risks being, sexually abused by a cellmate.

People deprived of their liberty are in a particularly vulnerable position, Påhlsson points out. An inmate may be forced to share a cell with someone he is then locked in with for twelve or fourteen hours a day. And the fact that a prisoner denies anything happened is not enough to ignore concrete circumstances that raise suspicion.

The Ombudsman also says it should be obvious that the Prison and Probation Service reports to the police immediately whenever it learns of, or suspects, a sexual assault. It is then up to police and prosecutors to decide whether to open an investigation.

No Rules, No Training

The review also exposes failings at national level. The Prison and Probation Service admits it has no agency-wide procedures for spotting and handling sexual acts between inmates or suspected sexual abuse. Skänninge prison had no written local procedures either.

Staff receive no specific training in how to detect and deal with sexual abuse between prisoners. The agency now says it intends to start drawing up the procedures that have been missing.