Minister of Justice’s Claim on Foreign Criminal Charges Proved Incorrect

2026-02-21 - 11:15

A recent statement from Iceland’s Minister of Justice Þorbjörg Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir regarding the percentage of foreign nationals charged with criminal offences in 2023 has been revealed to be based on a miscalculation. The error, which involved a basic arithmetic mistake, led the minister to incorrectly state that a higher proportion of foreign citizens were charged than was actually the case. What's the Story? Iceland’s Justice Minister miscalculated the proportion of foreign nationals charged in 2023, stating 34.2% instead of 25.5%. The mistake was due to dividing by the number of Icelanders, not total charges. The Ministry corrected the figures, and similar errors were found in the press. Investigators at the scene of the crime. Photo: a screenshot from RÚV. According to the news outlet Gímaldið, the correct percentage is 25.5%, not the 34.2% originally cited by the Minister of Justice in a response to a parliamentary question from Diljár Mistar Einarsdóttir, an MP from the Independence Party. The mistake occurred when the number of foreign nationals indicted was divided by the number of Icelanders, rather than the total number of people charged. The Ministry of Justice has since confirmed the miscalculation and clarified that the correct figures were provided to the Althingi. The updated numbers were subsequently published, correcting the original statement. The same error was reported by the newspaper Morgunblaðið on Thursday. It incorrectly stated that 43.6% of charges in 2024 were filed against foreigners, and 39.6% the previous year. When the correct total population is used for calculation, the actual percentages are 30.4%.