The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.
During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees. Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.
The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time. Some reprieve might come from a deal with Belgium, which is facing overpopulation in its prisons. The two countries are working out an agreement to house Belgian prisoners in Dutch prisons. Some five-hundred Belgian prisoners could be transferred to the Tilburg prison by 2010.
The Netherlands would get 30 million euros in the deal, and it will allow the closing of the prisons in Rotterdam and Veenhuizen to be postponed until 2012.
So what are they doing right, is it drug decriminalization?
# 29 bobbo said, “#28–Patrick==so you can’t do better.”
I can comprehend what I read. You should try it sometime.
Anyway, McCullough owned due to false post.
#30–Poor Patrick==the issue isn’t what you read, its what you post.
Now the two certainly interact, but lets not miss the forest for the trees.
#4, Cow-Patty,
What table? You pulling numbers out your butt again?
#32 Google is your friend…
#12, Cow-Patty,
And have a race to the bottom? Geeze you’re stupid.
#20, Bobbo,
Blaming the school systems would be the position of someone who schools systems failed.
As my last two posts can attest, very true.
#23, Cow-Patty,
So we do away with murder laws and then your family gets murdered. You wouldn’t consider it a crime. Got it. ROFL
Please read Bobbo’s comment in #20, especially the part that goes: Blaming the school systems would be the position of someone who schools systems failed.
#28, Cow-Patty,
Denmark?
Ya, it’s north of Germany and south of Sweden. Low crime rates and great cheese and beer.
#33, Cow-Patty,
#32 Google is your friend…
Which means you pulled it out your butt again.
#21 JimR
Were you being sarcastic? Because bad weather actually IS determined for a large part determined by air density.
#39, jopie, so you’re telling me that as you go above sea level, bad weather decreases? It’s a lot more complicated than that. I think you are confusing air density with air pressure differentials.
And, what is your definition of bad weather (crime analogy)? Some people consider rainy days as good, some are indifferent, while others get depressed.
No, I wasn’t being sarcastic, I was being profound. 🙂
Hah, hah. And air density, and air pressure differentials, is a minor factor in weather, good or bad. Temperature and humidity are the telling factors, which does NOT MEAN that wind is irrelevant==but it is an effect of temperature.
All interactive but the closer you get to the Sun in causation, the more important the variable.
Good debating point though.
# 42 JimR, please dont put words in my mouth when the analogy is absurd to begin with.
I still stand by the point that in more dense populated area’s the crime rates are higher.
Hah, hah. The dialectic only works when people address the same subject?
Crime rates can go up or down independently of density, as prison vacancies can arise from overbuilding or decreasing crime statistics, again all independent of population density.
Even poor schools contribute to crime rates, but is it the most relevant variable? Is density?
Or could it be your “philosophy” of societal control/freedom?
I bet if they enforced their BANKING LAWS they could EASILY FILL THE EMPTY CELLS !!! We should do the same here, and CLEAN UP WALL STREET TOO !!! There are too many WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS THAT ***NEVER SEE THE INSIDE OF A CELL*** !!! (Bernie Madoff being one of the few exceptions) ….
#44, jopie, I challenge you to prove that with some valid data.
Depending on the plethora of other criteria, arguments can be made for both. There are easily 20 factors besides density that may or may not cause an increase or decrease in crime. Your sweeping statement based on one possible factor is BS.
How much would they charge to take some of ours?
Having just woken from a lovely night’s sleep here in paradise, perhaps I should be hitting the beach before breakfast instead of Dvorak. Seems I’m always checking in here when I’m dog tired and ready to sleep or first thing in the morning right after checking the news. The point being, all this discussion of number of prisoners, population density, etc. just seems unimportant to me. It’s like comparing apples to horse apples, Holland to America. They just ain’t the same. Laws are different, attitudes are different and, in the case of horse apples, the flavor is distinctly different (so I’m told).
What I’m interested in is why it takes 8 prisons to house 2000 offenders? A prison that houses only 250 criminals somehow doesn’t seem like much of a prison to me. And certainly doesn’t seem very efficient. But that’s just me, in the tropical morning with a cup of delicious coffee in my hand.
#51 btw what’s with the name change, o’Troll?
Why did it take 1,200 people to watch 2,000 people? I’m just saying…
huh.. you never were at our prisons!
it must be something like sweet home but only without freedom and babes.
the cons of Russia have expensive cells n pcs at their rooms. the money – cigarretes n ganj.
News flashback:
“Most criminals in the Netherlands should be able to serve their sentence at home in the future. Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin is to introduce house arrest as a new main punishment. Criminals can then also visit friends or a mosque for two hours a day.”
http://www.nisnews.nl/public/050507_1.htm
Now, it is to expected that Netherlands has low numbers of prisoners because drugs are either legal or offences are not prosecuted and prostitution is legal. On the other hand, the police are often unwilling to touch ethnic clashes or minor crimes.
The introduction of house arrest as main punishment would be politically unwise if the number of inmates would be rising. Luckily the statistics seem to support the plans but the skeptic in me would like to see more data on crime in Netherlands.