‘Rot measure’ that nobody wants can now be implemented: prisoners free

The political twist between coalition parties PVV, VVD and BBB and the cabinet over the release of prisoners two weeks earlier was settled on Tuesday in favor of the government. For the second week in a row, the votes in the House of Representatives stopped to not implement her emergency plan in the Lower House about a motion that Justice State Secretary Ingrid Coenradie (PVV). The motion is definitely not assumed.

For Coenradie, the road is therefore open to release detainees a maximum of two weeks earlier. She would rather not take the ‘rotten measure’ either, Coenradie told everyone who wanted to hear it in recent weeks. But she simply stands with her « back to the wall. »

It is crisis in the Judicial Institutions Agency (DJI). Since 2012, 26 prisons have been closed in the Netherlands and around 2,600 full -time jobs at DJI disappeared. Because the Netherlands punishes more stricter and the number of convicts have grown in recent years, there is no place in the cell for many of them. More than four thousand convicts walk around freely in anticipation of undergoing their prison sentence. Even for thousands of people who did not carry out their community service or did not pay a fine and therefore have to undergo replacement detention, there is no cell.

ACTURE ON A CELL

Last December the situation became so pen -of the Coenradie ‘Code Zwart’: both the prisons and houses of custody and the cells at the police station are full. As a result, no transfer is possible. If no air is created, suspects who are arrested by the police must be released again.

While in the long term, new (emergency) prisons can help, Coenradie had to choose between two evils for now. And because she considered the release of suspects from police cells even more undesirable than releasing a specific group of prisoners two weeks earlier, she chose the latter.

This to the anger of her own PVV, which is stricter punishment and a prison regime that is as sober as possible. ‘No Way’, as party leader Geert Wilders publicly lost his state secretary. PVV MP Emiel van Dijk suggested if necessary Eight prisoners Placing together on a cell if they were not released before. The fact that Coenradie had investigated all the possibilities in recent months to still win cell space, did not impress the PVV, VVD and BBB. That she considered it irresponsible because of the safety of the staff to put even more people together on a cell than already happens.

The three coalition parties supported a motion by BBB MP Marieke Wijen-Nass last week so as not to implement the formerly-Free Plan. It is not often that coalition parties try to steal a minister in such a way, certainly not a minister from his own party. And although Coenradie did not formally need the room for the early release, a against her and the cabinet and a difficult position would have brought.

Thanks to political back coverage of opposition parties such as PvdA-GroenLinks, SP, D66, CDA and coalition partner NSC, things are not going that far. They all brought explanations that they also do not want prisoners to be released earlier, but see that Coenradie – with the safety of staff in mind – has no other choice. CDA’er Derk Boswijk was not the only one who called the ‘paw crochet’ of Coenradie ‘irresponsible and immature’.

To share

Mail the editors