In any society, a court system will always be needed and this was also the case, when the colony of Scoresbysund was established in 1925. A district board was established, to take care of the interest of the inhabitants and the colony, but there weren’t exactly much of a democracy, since most members were pointed out because of their position, such as the colony inspector, who became the chairman and the priest, catechist, nurse and so on were permanent members. The system of justice were appointed as a district court, in which there also were a permanent number of members, so because of that the court had an imbalance, with members of both the judical powers and the executive power, since the colony inspector also had police authority. In a lot of years, this had to be looked away from and one had to hope for a fair and neutral judge power and this also went well for several decades. This continued until the municipal reform in the 1960’s, where it was nationally decided that also East Greenland – which had been “closed land” until then – should have the same opportunities as the rest of Greenland. Scoresbysund got status as a town and this brought a lot of new things, good as bad. The town now got a municipal council, which had been pointed out by a citizen’s election and also a social council, economics council, town planning council and many others. Also the court system of the town became a part of the already existing “ Courtsystem of Greenland”, which as the court of first instance had High Court of Greenland and a number of district courts in the towns at the West coast of Greenland. In Scoresbysund, the district court : court XIX was established. The system of justice is based on announcement about the administration of justice in Greenland, which as § 1 says : “The jurisdiction is being practised by High Court of Greenland and by the district courts in Greenland “. High Court judges in appeals and cases, which the High Court judge in advance has found important to give priority to. For the district court, the High Court judge points out a district judge, 2 permanent lay assessors, a number of substitutes. All are inhabitants of the town and all have to be approved of the municipality committee. Those selected persons are being trained partly by private studying and partly by courses, held by High Court of Greenland. The district court deals with all sorts of court cases ; crime cases, paternity suits, probate cases, civil cases, divorces etc. It is an advantage that the district court consists of local citizens, since they have a great local knowledge, which can often become for the good of the courts vote in cases, where the “tough” law only is able to judge after the law sections and this has in several cases affected the final sentence. The purpose of the procedure law is to rehabilitate a criminal with a certain form of punishment, so that he/she can return to society again. Through time, a lot of hard words have been said about mild sentences – “Kill someone and you’ll get a free education” among others, but in all it can be said that the procedure law through many years has fulfilled its purpose. Around 1990 the public demanded a tightening of the convicted criminals and also people wanted to stop that the convicts sometimes were sent to Denmark, to serve their sentence. The system of justice commission were founded because of this and it has been working to change the rules and the question about the future existence of the district courts, for more than a decade. A lot of good things have come out of this, which can help the court system in the future, but everything cannot be changed in one day and we will so far keep our district court in Ittoqqortoormiit …And luckily for that !
