It comes as something of a
surprise to learn that from next year, some Norwegian prisoners will be serving
their sentences in the Netherlands. Renovation work in some of Norway’s 42
jails will bring down capacity from the 3,800 places currently available. With
more than a thousand prisoners waiting in a queue to serve their sentence,
ministers must have felt the need to make some emergency provision.
Prisoners serving their
sentences in other states is common practice in the USA. Many of Hawaii’s
prisoners are in a facility in the Arizona desert and in 2012 almost 10,000 of
California’s prisoners were in out of state prisons. Former British Home
Secretary David Blunkett describes in his memoirs how he looked at using space
in Scotland and Northern Ireland when the prison system in England and Wales
came under pressure in 2002. But the first and so far only example of one
country renting an already staffed and equipped prison from another was in 2009
when the Dutch government agreed to
house Belgian prisoners. When the steep rise in the Dutch prison population came
to a halt in the mid 2000’s, Holland was faced with spare capacity. Tilburg prison, near the border, seemed to
provide a temporary solution to Belgium’s chronic overcrowding problem while a
building programme was undertaken.
Five years on Norway seems
to be following the Belgian lead. It’s much further away of course (more than
1000 kms from Oslo to Amsterdam or a 14 hour drive). Few Dutch speak Norwegian. But perhaps this
won’t matter. The Belgians chose to select prisoners not in frequent need of transfers
to Belgium for medical or family reasons, and in respect of whom pressure in
terms of rehabilitation is low. This meant to a large extent foreign national
prisoners and it is likely that Norway ,
a third of whose prisoners are foreign nationals plan to do the same.
When the Committee for thePrevention of Torture (CPT) visited Tilburg in 2011, they took the view that as
a matter of principle, a prisoner who has been sentenced to imprisonment in one
State should not, on the basis of an administrative decision, be forced to
serve the sentence in another State. Prisoners should therefore be able to
choose. Will they do so? Conditions in
the Netherlands may not be as good as in Norway (where prison costs 270 euros
per prisoner per day- among the highest amount in Europe). The CPT found serious
problems of overcrowding and violence at Tilburg and a lack of regime. Norway
may need to insist on certain standards in the places it’s buying but if its
needs are so urgent it may have to accept what’s on offer. But is the need that
urgent?
The prison waiting list is
reportedly 1,300 but it has been higher - more than twice that number back in2006. In much of Europe, people
sentenced to prison do not always start their sentence immediately. If they
have been on bail they return home to arrange their affairs before receiving an
invitation to report to prison. This may be some weeks or months later. In some
countries where prison capacity is limited, the invitations are delayed as a
way of managing the population. The position is different for those remanded to
prison and many foreign nationals, with fewer community ties fall into that
category.
But where someone has abided
by bail conditions and receives a short sentence there is no reason not to
commute that to a period of home detention with some unpaid work of community
benefit. For more serious cases, the
Government might look to reduce the proportion of sentences served in custody.
Knocking 10% off sentence lengths (replacing them also with a package of tagging
and community service), could free up places and improve resettlement. Renting extra space might no longer be
necessary.
Constructive and imaginative
measures such as these would confirm Norway’s reputation as a leader in prison
reform. It could otherwise be endangered by the risky plans for going Dutch.
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