Deduction in preventive detention for illegal body searches

A man was sentenced to preventive detention for several serious crimes of violence and profit. The final sentence was determined by the Supreme Court in a judgment from 2019.

In 2023, the Criminal Cases Review Commission decided that the sentencing should be reviewed. The reason was new information that the defendant had been subjected to a large number of illegal body searches (strip searches) in Oslo Prison and Ullersmo Prison from 2015 to 2019.

During the Supreme Court’s new hearing, the parties agreed that the man was entitled to a deduction in his sentence as compensation for the illegal body searches. This follows from previous Supreme Court case law. The key questions were how many searches had been conducted and which standard of proof applied to this assessment.

The Supreme Court bases its findings of fact on a requirement of preponderance of the evidence. After an individual assessment, the Supreme Court found it more probable than not that the defendant had been body-searched 287 times, as estimated by the Prosecution Authority. As compensation, he was granted a deduction of 144 days in the time frame and minimum period of the preventive detention, which gave one day’s deduction for every two body searches.

Read the judgment from the Supreme Court (Norwegian only) (PDF)

Areas of law: Criminal law. Article 3 of the ECHR and Article 93 subsection 2 of the Constitution. 

Key paragraphs: 25–26, 49–53

Justices: Indreberg, Noer, Ringnes, Østensen Berglund, Sivertsen