Name Oystein Maeland Party Labour Party | Role Politician | |
Police lower death toll in youth camp shootings to 68
Øystein Mæland (born 26 March 1960) is a Norwegian psychiatrist, civil servant and politician for the Labour Party.
Contents
Career
He attended medical school and took the cand.med. degree in 1986, worked as a physician from 1989 to 1994 and 1997 to 2000, and was chief physician at Aker University Hospital before becoming head of division at Ullevål University Hospital in 2002. Between 1989 and 1990 he was the prison doctor at Ullersmo Prison.
Mæland led the Oslo chapter of the Workers' Youth League from 1979 to 1982, and was a central board member from 1983 to 1989. He was a member of Oslo city council from 1983 to 1986. During Brundtland's Second Cabinet, he was a personal secretary both in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1988-89) and the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (1988).
In 1994, during the Brundtland's Third Cabinet, Mælend was a State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice. He held the position for the remainder of Brundtland's tenure, and then a year into Jagland's Cabinet under two different Ministers of Justice Anne Holt and Gerd-Liv Valla. In 2000, when another Labour cabinet Stoltenberg 1 took over, Mæland was again appointed State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice. He held that position until after the 2001 elections, which caused the cabinet to fall. He was also a member of the Norwegian Criminal Cases Review Commission.
In 2011, Mæland was one of two applicants to the position as director of the National Police Directorate. He was appointed on 27 May 2011. On 13 August 2012 the Gjørv Report was released. It found that the authorities in general, and the police in particular, failed massively in protecting the public during the 2011 Norway attacks. Calls for Mæland's immediate resignation were repeatedly rejected. He fully accepted the criticism of the commission's findings and resigned on 16 August 2012. He became assisting director of the Norwegian Directorate for Health, then in 2014 director of the Akershus University Hospital.
Personal life
Mæland was born in Rjukan in 1960, but grew up in the borough Skøyen in Oslo. His father was a foreman at Ringnes, his mother attended to the office of the Norwegian Union of Municipal Employees.
Mæland is openly gay, is married to the psychotherapist Rolf Nicolay Aspestrand and has two children.
