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?
“Is it drug decriminalization?”
I’d bet on it. Criminalizing self-medicating and/or pleasure seeking behavior is beyond pointless. It does more damage than the actual behavior; think drug cartels and the associated criminal behavior in supplying the demand. Deal with the social aspects and accept that sadly, a certain percentage of people will destroy their own lives no matter what we do to help. Just because it’s legal or decriminalized doesn’t mean everyone is going to run out and start doing heroin or meth. I know I won’t
You just create more criminals when incarcerate drug users.
Why was my Kaptcha code for the previous comment 5DEA? Should I be paranoid? đ
If they are taking prisoners, I know some in Cuba we’d like to get rid of.
“The table shows 101,143 violent crimes and 919,262 property crimes in 2001. With a population of 16,171,520 (September 2002), this works out as 625.4 violent crimes per 100,000 people and 5684.4 proprety crimes. Or, to put it differently, the violent crime rate in the Netherlands in 24% higher than in the US, and the property crime rate is 55% higher.”
I’m afraid that along the decriminalized softdrugs it also has another cause. The dutch police seems to be too lazy to actually go and arrest known criminals. Last sunday there was documentary on tv about this and investigations into it have now started.
Here is a bad google translation of the site:
http://translate.google.nl/translate?prev=hp&hl=nl&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.peterrdevries.nl%2Ftekst%2Fuitdeuitzending-motor-tot.htm&sl=nl&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1
If they are taking prisoners, I know some in Cuba weâd like to get rid of.
You mean the dangerous terrorists who are able to use telekinesis, mind control, voodoo and falafel-breath to smite anyone within a 10 county radius, thus making them TOO RISKY to house anywhere in the US?
Nah.
# 4 Patrick
Thats what we call in the Netherlands “A little too fast through the turn”
The population density of Netherlands vs USA is 485 people/km^2 vs 33 people/km^2.
I imagine if you take the crime figures of comparable densely populated areas in NL and USA the figures would be more close to each other.
#6. Sorry, crime per capita is just that. Justify all you want, doesn’t change the facts of life in Holland.
#5 Ubiquitous
LOL! That was good. I needed a laugh!
Yes, drug decriminalization helps, but it is not the main reason for empty prisons.
Dutch prisons are not used as much since more and more punishments are dealt with in the form of mandatory community service. Which isn’t necessarily preventing repetitive criminal behaviour.
#6 Jopie: right on!
Whatever the cause, it’s worth looking into the how’s and why’s. I mean having one of the world’s largest prison populations isn’t some thing to be proud of.
Britain has some that we could offload!
# 10 amodedoma said, “Whatever the cause, itâs worth looking into the howâs and whyâs.”
Well, people who have no real education have little hope. One step would be to abolish Fed, State & Union control over K-12 EDU and return to local community control.
I’ll bet the main reason is that there are fewer individuals in the age group that is responsible for a majority of the crime. They aged out of their hell raising years.
Netherlands Closes Prisons Due to Lack of Catching and Jailing Criminals
I fixed it for you McCullough.
For me the interesting concept is the outsourcing of prisons from one country to another.
Imagine how much money we Californians could save if we outsourced our overcrowded prison system to China. I would say we could easily reduce the costs from $50,000 per year per prisoner down to $500-$600. After easily balancing the state budget we could put all the rest of the costs savings back in to Education, and the Environment too.
During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, and built several new prisons. But they overshot the mark. Thanks to the new prisons, the country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.
#15, The way CA has screwed up the school system while spending record amounts we should outsource that to China also…
Send ’em the Gitmo detainees.
#17 The way CA has screwed up the school system while spending record amounts we should outsource that to China alsoâŚ
Oh come now, that wouldn’t work very well. Children should be raised by their family, not anonymous Chinese teachers. Plus there’s the language problem.
But prisoners would be a different story. There wouldn’t have to be much of a language problem as the prisoners would only need to learn a limited amount of Chinese. They could be taught this in a few days, if they were open to learning.
More than anything else, how many criminals you have is a function of how many laws you have that the people don’t want to follow.
Blaming the school systems would be the position of someone who schools systems failed.
Heh, heh.
Suggesting that crime rate is determined by population density is like suggesting that bad weather is determined by air density.
# 19 dwight david diddlehopper said, “Oh come now, that wouldnât work very well. Children should be raised by their family, not anonymous Chinese teachers. Plus thereâs the language problem.”
Naw, there’s plenty of Chinese that speak English. Just import them and have them run the schools.
# 20 bobbo said, “More than anything else, how many criminals you have is a function of how many laws you have that the people donât want to follow.”
So we do away with murder laws and then your family gets murdered. You wouldn’t consider it a crime. Got it. ROFL
Looking at these numbers, holland seems to do better than the US. Havent checked all categories though.
http://nationmaster.com/cat/cri-crime
Just imagine how many fewer prisoners they’d have if drugs were illegal!
(sarcasm, btw)
#24. Methinks the Paddy-trOll has returned. Oh well, nice while it lasted.
booboo said, “As âmurderâ is against the law in every country, probably it is not a significant player in why Denmark has fewer prisoners than does the USA.”
Denmark?
#19 Naw, thereâs plenty of Chinese that speak English. Just import them and have them run the schools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_DeMpg_b_o
#28–Patrick==so you can’t do better.
Sad.