Crime
is down, and sentences are, too.
Five
prisons in the Netherlands were marked for closure in 2016. That
follows eight closures of in 2009 and 19 in 2014. Because there are
fewer and fewer inmates to put in the cells, the Netherlands' jails
are just too costly to run. It's not a bad problem to have, unless
you're one of the 1,900 prison workers losing their jobs.
The
drop in supply of prisoners is because of two factors. One is that
simply fewer crimes are being committed. Rates are falling around
0.9% per year. This, says the Dutch News, means 3,000 prison cells
and 300 youth detention places will not longer be needed by 2021.
Former justice minister Ard van der Steur said that serious crimes
are less frequent, and that judges are imposing shorter sentences for
those that are convicted.
This
surplus has also had an unexpected effect. According to the Guardian,
Norway has the opposite problem: too many criminals and not enough
cells. So in 2015 it exported 1,000 inmates to Dutch jails. Sweden is
also closing jails for the same reason as the Netherlands. It shut
down four facilities in 2013, says Quartz, thanks to a 6% decline in
inmates numbers over the preceding two years, partly down to a
supreme court ruling in 2011 that reduced sentences for drug
offenses. Meanwhile, the U.S. enjoys the largest prison population in
the world, with 2.2 million incarcerated adults as of 2013.
Closing
prisons is good news in many ways. It means less money wasted, and
signals that there is less crime. It also leaves empty facilities
that can be repurposed, like an old jail in Colorado which was turned
into a transitional housing facility for the homeless, with a focus
on homeless veterans.
Not
that the Netherlands has it easy, politically, when it closes jails.
There is still opposition in government. “If this cabinet was
really working to catch crooks, we wouldn’t have this problem of
empty cells,” said Socialist Party MP Nine Kooiman told the
Telegraaf.
Source
and links:
Comments
Post a Comment