Arctic Crime and Punishment

Frank documentary about Greenland; a country in transition.

"Greenland's hunters are no longer the nomads they used to be. Now they must return to towns and all the comforts and problems of modern life".

The majority of Greenland's violence is by men on women. The men are deeply frustrated because in less than a generation, they have left behind the hunter-gatherer society of their ancestors and become mostly wage-paid. But does this alienation from their traditions excuse acts of violence? And should men be punished for them in the same way that they would be in any other western democracy?

In Ilulissat, Greenland, a frontier town 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle, lives a community of hunters and fishermen with five regular policemen, one amateur judge and a crime rate 18 times higher than that of Denmark.

"There's a lot of violence within partnerships and marriages," says local chief of police Bernt Heiselberg, "and most of it is not reported. People tend not to interfere." But his men are called out to investigate a murder. Naalu Jeremiassen, a mother of four, has stabbed her 32-year-old husband and his body is lying on the kitchen floor. In a separate incident, Jens Reimer, a hunter, inflicts serious head and internal injuries on his wife in a brutal drunken beating.

Greenland operates a system of open prisons where inmates are free to work in the community during the day and are locked up at night, but lately it has come under pressure from the Danish high court to modernise.

Jens Reimer, the wife-beater, hopes he will be judged by the old system of rehabilitation: "The most important thing is for me to be able to hunt," he says. "That's how I've been raised. That's the way of my forefathers." Reimer fits the profile built up by the Ilulissat police of the 'typical' violent criminal: he's in his early 30s, he was under the influence of alcohol and his act of violence was towards someone he knows.

Naalu's dead husband also fitted this profile. She had reported violence before, but never pursued it once the police arrived for the children's sake. "I think my husband's way of thinking was the traditional one," she says.

The fate of both is in the hands of Greenland's unique system of justice.

P2: Facts about domestic violence in the UK, plus support organisations