State redress for abuse and neglect in children’s homes has been debated in all Scandinavian countries since early 2000s. In Sweden, an official apology was issued in 2011, and a temporary law enabled Swedish care leavers to apply for compensation of SEK 250,000 during 2013 and 2014. In Denmark, proposals for an official apology have repeatedly been turned down in Parliament. In this article, I compare argumentation for and against state redress in the two countries. Any claim for historical justice raises questions about how to understand the injustices committed: do they safely belong to the past, or to an extended present? Using the concept ‘politics of time’, I show that Danish opponents of the proposed apology have stressed the time distance, while proponents for state redress in both countries have stressed the need to deal with all too present memories of abuse. Another main argument against state redress in the Danish political debate was that we should not anachronistically judge historical actors against the moral framework of the present. I argue that a ‘retroactivity dilemma’ is inevitably raised in redress processes, and discuss the changing notions of retroactive responsibility during the Swedish policy process.

中文翻译：

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追溯责任：

自 2000 年代初以来，所有斯堪的纳维亚国家都在争论国家对儿童之家中虐待和忽视的补救措施。瑞典于 2011 年发布了正式道歉，一项临时法律允许瑞典的护理人员在 2013 年和 2014 年期间申请 250,000 瑞典克朗的赔偿。在丹麦，正式道歉的提议一再被议会拒绝。在这篇文章中，我比较了两国支持和反对国家救济的论点。任何对历史正义的主张都会引发关于如何理解所犯的不公正的问题：它们是否安全地属于过去，还是属于一个延伸的现在？使用“时间政治”的概念，我表明反对提议道歉的丹麦人强调了时间距离，虽然这两个国家的国家补救支持者都强调需要处理所有现在的虐待记忆。丹麦政治辩论中反对国家补救的另一个主要论点是，我们不应该根据当前的道德框架不合时宜地判断历史行为者。我认为在补救过程中不可避免地会出现“追溯困境”，并讨论瑞典政策过程中追溯责任概念的变化。