“You just have filter coffee? That is the tastiest coffee. ” Energetic, PVV State Secretary Ingrid Coenradie steps into the coffee room for prisoners, walks on the bald, tattined prisoner at the coffee pot and sticks out of her hand. “Hi, I’m Ingrid.”
The muscular man, who wears a tight dark green T-shirt from Moschino, likes to see the State Secretary about prisons ‘live’. “Sure we keep it up,” he refers to the capacity crisis in the prison system. And when NRC He also has a solution. “If you have the people with good Send behavior home with an ankle band, then you don’t keep those places occupied, “he says with Brabant tongue.
Prisoners who are in the limited secure department of the prison are allowed to work outside the gate towards the end of their prison sentence during the day. “They actually get accommodation with breakfast,” says the prisoner. They go to work in the morning and come back in the evening, but occupy a complete prison place. “If you send it home, you will get through and the police station will also run so empty.” Coincidentally, says Coenradie, that is one of the possibilities that she is investigating.
The crisis in the prison system caused by staff shortages was already bubbling under Coenradies predecessor Franc Weerwind (D66), but has flows over in recent months. More than four thousand convicts walk around freely in anticipation of the moment they have to serve their imposed prison sentence.
Last December, Coenradie proclaimed ‘Code Zwart’: all penitentiary institutions and cellar complexes on police stations were full. That meant that no new suspects could be arrested.
The need is so high that Coenradie is considering releasing detainees two weeks earlier. When this news leaked earlier this month, PVV leader Geert Wilders became so angry that the shouting through the walls of Coenradies office sounded. “No way,” Wilders tweeted. “The PVV group never agrees. Stop more people on a cell. “
Coenradie then did something politically unusual, especially for the PVV. She publicly competed against her party leader. More people on a cell than now, she does not consider them justified. “No way,” she answered in the talk show of Eva Jinek to the question if she would leave – something Wilders would have suggested during the fight. “If I get on, then the problem remains.”
After the talk show performance, working visits followed to various prisons, for which journalists were invited. And although nothing has been budgeted in the coalition agreement, Coenradie asked for “hundreds of millions” for the solution of the problems in the prison system.
Huge puzzle
Walking through the concrete corridors and departure from the judicial complex Zaanstad, Coenradie is looking for her right. She inquires with the prison director about sick leave (15 percent), wants to know from employees how they experience the work pressure (high) and asks through when a jailer tells about the prisoner who came in with a psychosis and had to be on a cell because of a lack of space . “We have to keep an eye on that,” says De Cipier. “Actually, people like that in GGZ belong, not here.”
All regular cells in Zaanstad – the country’s largest and with year of construction 2016 also the most modern detention complex – are set up as a double bed, with a bunk bed. “I would not know how to place a third bed here,” Coenradie points to a narrow cell of 12 square meters behind her. There is an expressed cigarette in an ashtray. And despite the bunk bed, the cell has only a mattress.
Of the 484 double cells in Zaanstad, ‘only’ 75 percent is actually used as such. That this does not happen at a quarter is, according to Coenradie because of the “huge puzzle” that must be laid when placing prisoners together on a cell.
She also hears about the complexity of laying that puzzle in Zaanstad, her twelfth visit to a penitentiary institution since she took office in July. Some are not psychologically suitable for sharing a cell. In addition, the criminal background plays a role: it is not the intention that criminal collaborations arise, are continued or that someone is placed in a rival group. Moreover, multi -person cells require more supervision and therefore staff – that there is no.
Annoying options
Against that background, Coenradie already calculated last December that there are at most 20 extra places in the Netherlands by placing more prisoners together. The Netherlands has 8,004 prison places, of which 3,684 places in a multi -person cell, that seems just about the maximum.
“Here it appears that you can no longer put more people on a cell,” says Coenradie. That makes them, it acknowledges, that in the short term it is almost inevitable to send certain prisoners home earlier. Everyone within the prison system believes that according to her “of all annoying options the best”.
According to the State Secretary for the longer term, “hundreds of millions” are also needed for, among other things, more staff and the renovation of prison closed five years ago in Almere. According to Coenradie, money is not the only solution. There must be a long -term vision about the way in which the Netherlands is punished. According to Coenradie, punishments and detention must be looked at in a smarter way and customization are delivered. When asked, she even says she is in favor of the introduction of electronic detention – the ankle strap – as a new punishment: something that the VVD and her own PVV Mordicus are against.
Whether she is not afraid that this position, just like releasing convicts, will again lead to shouting in her office? Coenradie is briefly quiet and resolutely answers. “I am not guided by fear. You can expect a good director to be decisive and, above all, also have an eye for implementation in practice. ”