There is actually a country where the crime rate is so low that they have to import prisoners from neighbouring countries. In 2013, the Netherlands decided to shut down almost half of the country’s prisons.
The problem of empty jail cells even got to the point where, in September 2016, the country imported 240 prisoners from Norway just to keep the facilit
ies full.
Two years later in 2018, the same Dutch government decided to close four more prisons. Some of the now-empty buildings are being sold off, while others offer temporary shelter for refugees.
A drop in the country’s crime rate in part explains why the Netherlands’ prisons are emptying. The Netherlands now has just 61 prisoners per 100,000 people in the
general population, ranking among the lowest in Europe.
In comparison, the United States has more than 10 times that figure (655 per 100,000), the highest in the world, according to data from the World Prison Brief, an online database hosted by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at the University of London.
The Dutch justice department predicts that by 2023, the total prison population will drop to just 9,810 people out of the total population of 17.28 million people.
A number of factors are responsible for the Netherlands’ ability to keep its crime rate so low, namely, relaxed drug laws, a focus on rehabilitation over punishment, and an electronic ankle monitoring system that allows people to re-enter the workforce.
“Compared to the U.S., Dutch judges are much less likely to give a prison sentence. More often they give a financial penalty or community service,” says Hilde Wermink, assistant profe
ssor of criminology at Leiden University.
Criminology researchers for years have pointed to the effectiveness of both community service and electronic monitoring as they believe that it yields better results.
Their studies found out that the subjects who completed their sentence at home wearing detectable ankle bracelets were less likely to re-offend than peers who had completed their sentence behin
d bars.
