Dutch Prison Crisis - A Crisis To Be Desired?

[Harrowby Hall]

Here is a story from BBC Magazine which I found interesting.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37904263

In contrast with the UK, where prison populations are growing, in the Netherlands they have the opposite problem - there are too many prison places for the numbers of criminals they have to send there.

One of the reasons for this is that the Dutch prison service evaluates the behaviour of prisoners and then attempts to meet those needs, so violent prisoners receive anger management counselling, drug addicts receive appropriate therapy and so on. And, if the statistics about prison occupation are accurate this approach appears to be working, I don't think that anyone is suggesting that all criminals can be reformed but that there are many people in prison whose lives can be put back on track with appropriate intervention.

Of course, this does have a significant cost. In the British government system it seems that the highest artistic, cultural and intellectual achievement in the entire history of humankind has been the invention of cost accounting. All institutions should aim for maximum efficiency, not maximum effectiveness. A consequence of this is the current spate of prison-related problems.

Is this worth trying?

[ad_orientem]

Absolutely.

[Brownie]

Yes!

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

You're probably right. Michael Moore did a documentary called "Where To Invade Next". One of the segments in the documentary showed the prison system in Norway, which was apparently working. A non-neutral review of the documentary gives some info on how doing things differently is working in other countries:

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/10/where-to-invade-next-is-the-most-subversive-movie-michael-moore-has-ever-made/

The Norwegian philosophy is to create a normal environment with as few external controls as possible so that when prisoners get out, they know how to control themselves. It works so well that Norway has one of the world’s lowest murder rates, and its recidivism rate is about 20 percent, two to three times lower than in the U.S. (Moore also visits a standard Norwegian maximum security prison that’s less spa-like but totally free of the brutality and spiritual darkness of U.S. prisons.)