post Share on Facebook Iceland claims to have no prisons and free electricity.
Verdict: False
According to the Icelandic National Prison Service website, Iceland currently operates four prisons. Similarly, according to data from Statista, the electricity bill Icelandic residents pay varies depending on the number of kilowatt-hours they consume. A criminology expert confirmed to Check Your Fact in an email that Iceland has four prisons.
Fact check:
New data suggests Iceland's Reykjanes volcano will continue to erupt “for years, decades or even centuries.” ForbesThe chemical similarities between lava samples taken from the two different eruption sites are [Reykjanes Peninsula]” the media reported.
The Facebook post claims that Iceland has no prisons and free electricity: “Iceland: the country with free education and healthcare. No prisons. No army. Electricity is free and people rarely lock their cars or homes!” the caption of the post reads.
This claim is false. A keyword search by Check Your Fact found that WikipediaAccording to the Icelandic Prison and Probation Authority (PPA), the country currently runs five prisons, with Holmsheiði Prison being the largest, according to Wikipedia.
Similarly, the Icelandic State Prison Service lists four prisons: WebsiteHolmsheiser, which according to the website is “a detention and reception prison with a section for female prisoners and facilities for those serving shorter or alternative sentences.”
In addition, Check Your Fact There is no reliable news coverage To back up the claim, the opposite is true. June 27th, Top Stories The allegation is false, the outlet reported. Francis Pakes, a professor of criminology at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, told the outlet that Iceland currently operates four prisons, with a fifth, in Akureyri, closed in 2020. Pakes sent himself to a prison in Iceland, he detailed in a 2018 article for the outlet. conversationthe media reported.
In an email to Check Your Facts, Pakes confirmed that Iceland has four prisons.
“There are four prisons in Iceland, two maximum security prisons and two open prisons. People are sentenced and put in these prisons. The closed prisons are in Littra Hraun in the south and in the new multipurpose facility. “There are three prisons in the country: Holmshøy, outside Reykjavik; open prisons in Sogn in the south and Hvibridge in the west, which means prisons clearly exist, are used and are internationally recognised. The fifth prison was a small facility in the northern town of Akureyri, which closed in 2020. So there used to be five prisons but now there are four,” Pakes said.
“Sometimes people like to portray Nordic societies as peaceful and crime-free, but they are not and prisons play an important role in Iceland. I've heard the same myth about Greenland, but they've built a state-of-the-art prison in Nuuk, the capital, so that's not the case here either,” he added.
The claim that electricity is free in Iceland is also false. Statista data The report states that for Icelanders with a consumption of 2,500-5,000 kilowatt-hours, the average cost will be 15.3 euro cents per kilowatt-hour in the first half of 2023. The same data indicates that for Icelanders with a consumption of 1,000-2,500 kilowatt-hours, the average cost will be 18.5 euro cents per kilowatt-hour in the first half of 2023.
of Icelandic Government Website “Around 85 percent of Iceland's total primary energy supply comes from domestically produced renewable sources. This is the highest share of renewable energy in any country's total energy budget,” it said.
Lead Stories, through the same article on June 27, also debunked the claim that electricity is free in Iceland.
Check Your Fact has also reached out to the Icelandic Prime Minister's Office for comment and will update this article if they respond.
