If you were to visit a prison in the Netherlands anytime soon, you might find it surprisingly empty.
Just this week, the Dutch Justice Ministry announced that the total number of inmates held in Dutch prisons fell by 27 percent between 2011 and 2015.
The situation in the Netherlands would seem to buck a broader and longer global trend of rising prison populations. In February, the Institute for Criminal Policy Research published a report that estimated the world’s prison population had grown by almost 20 percent between 2000 and 2015, a margin above the 18 percent growth in the general population during that period.
In its own report, the Dutch prison ministry notes that it now has one of the lowest incarceration rates in Europe, with 57 out of 100,000 citizens imprisoned, second only to Finland at 54 per 100,000. England and Wales had the highest in Europe at 148 per 100,000.
South Africa has 292 prisoners per 100,000!
The latest decline in the Dutch prison population can be attributed to both a changing environment and changing tactics. The country’s crime rate has dipped by about 0.9 percent a year during the past few years. At the same time, there has also been a switch toward using community service sentences and ankle-bracelet monitoring systems.
The decline in the use of prisons has led to the closure of a number of them.
In 2013, 19 prisons in the country were shut. In March, De Telegraaf reported that a further five were likely to close. Meanwhile, prisons that sit empty have been put to different uses.
The country has rented out unused prisons to the Norwegian and Belgian governments to house their own prisoners. Some empty prisons have even been used to house refugees and migrants.
The Netherlands isn’t the only country seeing a dip in prison populations. Sweden’s prison population fell from 5,722 in 2004 to 4,500 in 2014, and the country has also had to close some underused prisons. Experts who spoke to the Guardian in 2013 suggested that the humane and comfortable nature of Swedish prisons had led to a better chance of rehabilitation for prisoners.
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