Esther van Ginneken in NRC: 'Stop further austerity at prisons'
Cuts in the prison system threaten to be at the expense of security, including that of society, writes university lecturer Esther van Ginneken in an opinion piece in Dutch newspaper NRC.
'Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection, D66 party) faces a major challenge now that it has been revealed that the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency (DJI) has been structurally short of money in recent years,' Van Ginneken begins her article. 'The minister has already dismissed a number of radical proposals for cutbacks in a recent letter to the House of Representatives.'
'It’s not easy to draw attention to the prison system when there are many other pressing issues, some also on Minister Weerwind's desk. How things work in prisons is less visible and also concerns people who have lost the sympathy of society. Yet policy on the prison system is also social and security policy – it affects the whole of the Netherlands.'