Explaining the collapse of the prison population in the Netherlands: Testing the theories
| Author | Miranda Boone,Francis Pakes,Sigrid van Wingerden |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819896220 |
| Published date | 01 July 2022 |
| Date | 01 July 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819896220
European Journal of Criminology
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370819896220
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Explaining the collapse
of the prison population
in the Netherlands:
Testing the theories
Miranda Boone
Leiden University, Netherlands
Francis Pakes
University of Portsmouth, UK
Sigrid van Wingerden
Leiden University, Netherlands
Abstract
Between 2005 and 2015 the Dutch prison population decreased by 44 percent. Such a rapid
yet sustained reduction in the number of prisoners has no parallel in the Western world in
this period. What are the factors that underlie this unique development? This article charts the
decline of prisoner numbers in the Netherlands and considers areas that may account for it. It
takes a systemic approach which considers publicly available data that has involved the whole of
the criminal justice system. It finds that a serious decline in crimes reported to the police is part
of the explanation. Although the overall percentage of cases solved by the police has not changed
and the prosecution office has not become more reluctant to forward cases to court, fewer cases
that warrant imprisonment have come before the court over this period. In addition, the average
sentence length imposed by judges has gone down. The proportion of acquittals has gone up. This
shows that any explanation should involve developments in policing as well as in the courtroom.
However, questions regarding police capacity to deal with serious and organized crime call into
question any conclusion that the Dutch carceral collapse is simply due to a decrease in crime. The
reality underlying this remarkable reduction in the number of people in prison at any one time in
the Netherlands requires a more multifaceted answer than this.
Keywords
The Netherlands, prison population, systemic analysis, decarceration
Corresponding author:
Francis Pakes, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, Winston Churchill Avenue,
Portsmouth, Hampshire PO1 2UP, UK.
Email: Francis.pakes@port.ac.uk
896220EUC0010.1177/1477370819896220European Journal of CriminologyBoone et al.
research-article2020
Article
2022, Vol. 19(4) 488–505
Introduction
Over the decades, prisons and punishment in the Netherlands have caught the eye of
criminologists. In 1988 David Downes contrasted punishment in the Netherlands with
that of England and Wales, in terms of the size of the prison population but also its pur-
pose, severity and depth. The term he used to denote the essential difference between
the Netherlands and England and Wales was, famously, tolerance (Downes, 1988,
1998). Rightly or wrongly, Dutch tolerance has continued to be associated with Dutch
criminal justice ever since. However, no sooner had his influential book Contrasts in
Tolerance appeared (Downes, 1993), times were changing and the Dutch prison popula-
tion went on a definite upward trajectory (Boone and Moerings, 2007; Downes and Van
Swaaningen, 2007; Pakes, 2000).
Times have changed again. Recently there has been a flurry of global media news
stories focusing on prison closures in the Netherlands. Readers are treated to stories of
former prisons that recently have turned into educational establishments, hotels or apart-
ments. French daily Le Monde headlined ‘Les Pays-Bas ferment leurs prisons’ (‘The
Netherlands closes its prisons’) in 2015, which placed emphasis on fiscal constraints as
a driver for this programme of prison closures. The New York Times talked about the
Dutch luxury problem of having ‘a shortage of prisoners’. It highlighted the new uses for
the buildings and also the issue of unemployment for prison workers. In May 2017,
British newspaper The Independent chipped in by arguing that Dutch prisons are closing
because ‘the country is so safe’ (Weller, 2017). It also talked about ‘relaxed drugs laws,
a focus of rehabilitation over punishment, and an electronic monitoring system’ as pos-
sible reasons for the Dutch decarceration programme. Similar stories have appeared in
the UK on the BBC (10 November 2016), in the Telegraph (22 May 2016), and in the US
in the Washington Post (8 July 2016).
There is no doubt that the prison population has reduced very significantly since 2005.
The Council of Europe’s Space I data place the prison rate (number of prisoners per
100,000 population) at 54.4 in 2018 (Aebi and Tiago, 2018). In 2005 this figure was 94.0
(a corrected figure to allow for comparability). This is a reduction of 42 percent. This is
an amazing and, in the Western world, unparalleled development. Later in this article we
will present, for comparison, data from a number of Western countries to illustrate the
exceptional nature of the Dutch prison decline.
The burning question here is how this unparalleled collapse in the Dutch prison rate
can be explained. Trends in prison rates have quite often received scholarly attention.
Different theoretical explanations for rising and falling prison rates are presented in the
literature (for example, Downes and Van Swaaningen, 2007; Pfaff, 2008, 2012; Snacken
et al., 1995; Tonry, 2004). Pfaff (2008) divides these into four ‘schools of thought’. First,
crime theory, which states that the crime rate affects the prison rate. Second, economic
theory, which states that economic conditions and the labour market affect the prison
rate. Third, the demographics theory, which states that shifts in the age and race of a
country’s population affect the prison rate. And fourth, the political theory, which links
the prison rate to political ideology. Other authors (Snacken et al., 1995; Spelman, 2009)
point out that the prison rate is affected by policy: the way crimes and suspects are being
treated throughout the criminal justice system.
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