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Dutch Penal Policy and Prisoners’ Human Rights

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Embedding Human Rights in Prison

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Abstract

In the space of 20 years, Dutch penal policy has undergone major transformations. From being a beacon of humanity and the envy of other Western European countries, it took a punitive turn towards incapacitation and harsher punishment before it returned to a more pragmatic penal politics. Its twists and turns and their impact on prisoners’ treatment and human rights offer valuable lessons to other European prison systems. The return to decarceration has not been accompanied by a return to the formerly practised penological aims of rehabilitation and resocialisation for all. These have been replaced by selective rehabilitation and selective incapacitation for the purposes of public protection. This selective approach has resulted in no frills prison regimes and increases in preventive detention.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The standard regime involves 26 hours’ work per week, 6 hours’ recreation, at least an hour for visits and 1 hour in the fresh air (Kelk 2001: 479).

  2. 2.

    The Nijmegen and Free University of Amsterdam evaluations were the government’s response to the CPT’s recommendation for an independent examination of the regime’s impact on current and former EBI detainees’ psychological well-being.

  3. 3.

    To ease pressure on the penal capacity, in 2000s the Fokkens regulation enabled prisoner transfers to clinics after serving one-third of the prison sentence. This came to an end in 2010 (van Swaaningen 2013: 352).

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  1. Health & Social Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

    Anastasia Karamalidou

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  1. Anastasia Karamalidou
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Karamalidou, A. (2017). Dutch Penal Policy and Prisoners’ Human Rights. In: Embedding Human Rights in Prison. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58502-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58502-8_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

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