The main purpose of prison and probation work is to reduce criminality in Danish society. All prison and probation work is required to respect the individual offender and generally accepted human rights, refrain from placing more restrictions on offenders than those mandated by law, enforce the law, and take account of the general sense of justice in society and among the victims of crime. The primary task for those in the correctional field is to implement the sanction imposed by the courts on a particular offender. Six principles for prison and probation work outlined here include normalization, openness, exercise of responsibility, security, least possible intervention, and optimum use of resources. Outcome precepts flow from each of these principles and are described here.