‘There is more behind this gate’, appeared this summer in white cow letters on the blue sliding gate of the Vught PI to attract people to work in the prison system. “Going to jail,” was the slogan on a large sign at the prison in Lelystad.
The recruitment campaigns did not have the desired effect. A month ago, outgoing Minister for Legal Protection Franc Weerwind (D66) announced that due to staff shortages it is no longer possible to actually lock up all criminals sentenced to prison. Therefore, self-reporters (convicts who are allowed to wait for their prison sentence in freedom) will temporarily no longer be called up. According to the ministry, this will affect 670 people until the end of March. And if it is up to Weerwind, even more drastic measures will soon follow, namely that criminals sentenced to a maximum of 1 year in prison will be allowed to serve part of their sentence at home – with an ankle bracelet.
It leads to disapproving reactions. The Council for the Judiciary emphasizes that judges carefully decide on a sentence and that the imposed sentence must then also be executed. “If the judge’s decision is tampered with, it can damage the authority and credibility of the judiciary,” chairman Henk Naves recently said in NRC.
Victim Support Netherlands is also showing up not amused. When asked, it calls the ankle bracelet plan unfair and painful for victims who assume that an perpetrator will actually undergo the punishment imposed by the judge.
What’s going on in the prison system? And what other consequences does this have, in addition to postponing and shortening prison sentences?
Heavy shoes
The fact that, as Minister Weerwind wrote to the House of Representatives, the Dutch labor market is experiencing “unprecedented tightness” and the Judicial Institutions Agency (DJI) is experiencing the consequences of this, is only part of the story. The staff shortages at DJI, which runs 29 penitentiaries and ten youth prisons in the country, have been going on for many years.
“The seeds of the current problems lie in the Master Plan that the Rutte II cabinet implemented more than ten years ago,” says FNV trade union director David Schreuders. As part of broad cutbacks, which required the entire justice chain to compromise, nineteen prisons had to close. It led to an exodus of experienced personnel at DJI. In the meantime, the workload increased, not least because the number of prisoners, after years of declines, has actually increased again in recent years due to higher sentences. This year the Netherlands had an average of around 9,000 detainees.
Trade union FNV frequently raised the alarm about staff shortages at DJI (17,000 employees; 15,796 FTE) and the resulting high workload. After an alarming FNV investigation in 2017, people were still in good spirits the covenant “Working on a solid personnel policy” signed with DJI. But there was no significant improvement. The union released in 2020 the report Code Red out. It outlines that the high workload is putting increasing pressure on the safety of employees and detainees. That also did not lead to any improvement and this summer FNV followed suit a survey the alarm has again been raised among more than 700 DJI employees. Now because staff indicate that the workload has increased even more, they feel unsafe and can no longer do their work properly.
The number of vacancies at DJI has been close to a thousand for years. The results of recruitment campaigns are negligible because staff are also closing the prison gates en masse. Over the past three years, the annual outflow increased by fifty percent to more than 1,600 employees per year, according to figures from the ministry. At the same time, absenteeism due to illness rose sharply to 8.7 percent: more than 40 percent above the average that Statistics Netherlands records for similar security professions (including the police).
“I have colleagues who think: ‘I’m going to work as a security guard at Schiphol, where I have the same employment conditions, so why should I work in jail and be threatened and verbally abused every day and come home exhausted?’” says a DJI employee. from the Zaanstad PI. He wants it, just like the other DJI employees NRC spoke, did not have his name in the newspaper for fear of repercussions from the management. The man explains how the workload has only increased in recent years.
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By way of illustration, he points to the daily duty list, which is normally full of ‘red lines’: locations in the prison where security guards are in short supply. The old standard of 1 prison guard for every 12 detainees has long been abandoned. But the new standard of 3 guards for 48 prisoners is also not being achieved. In practice, there are often only 2 security guards for every 48 detainees and the duty list shows a red line.
Guards are told from higher up that if they find the occupancy unsafe, they can choose not to ‘open’, leave the detainees in their cells and skip the day’s program. But according to the DJI’er, that is not an option. “If I don’t open up, 48 men will know I ruined their day. I cannot make that choice, because I have to work with them every day,” says the man who goes to work “with very heavy shoes” every time. His sketch corresponds to that of a colleague from the same institution who NRC spoke separately.
Prison population
The work on the prison floor, say the two men and a colleague from another institution, is not only difficult because of the staff shortages, but also because of the changing prison population. The men see more and more people with mild intellectual disabilities who, apparently without conscience, have committed very violent crimes. And they are increasingly confronted with detainees who actually belong elsewhere. For example, they regularly smear their cells with feces – and belong in the mental health care system. Or they are very aggressive and unpredictable and should receive TBS treatment. However, they stay in regular cells because the specialized (treatment) places are full.
What doesn’t help is that thousands of experienced workers have left DJI since the Master Plan, DJI employees say. New, inexperienced staff who are also not adequately trained, do not yet know how to act and do not immediately see what kind of meat they have in store. This regularly results in unsafe situations for staff and other detainees.
Lack of experience and training, as well as high work pressure, can be life-threatening, it turns out research from the Justice and Security Inspectorate, Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate, Education Inspectorate and the Dutch Labor Inspectorate into two separate deaths at the Den Hey-Acker youth prison in Breda. According to the inspections, high workload and lack of experience were partly the cause of two separate fatal incidents there in 2022. At TBS clinic Veldzicht – an employee was murdered in 2022 – inadequate training and experience as well as high workload also played a role, it turned out. research of the Justice and Security Inspectorate.
No cell inspections
In addition to the safety problems for the staff themselves, the understaffing and the resulting high workload also have other consequences: the reintegration of detainees and the prevention of continued criminal activity comes under pressure.
For example, PI Zaanstad employees say that due to staff shortages they often do not have time for urine checks and sufficient cell inspections and that the inspections that do take place are often not thorough. “I don’t have a colleague who thinks the facility is drug and telephone free.”
In addition, prisoners do not receive the attention they deserve, which means that their resocialization – a pillar of the Dutch detention regime – is not proceeding properly. For example, detainees sometimes do not have a ‘case manager’ who has to take care of reintegration for a long time and prison guards do not have time for other forms of guidance. Certain basic facilities are also under pressure, such as a day and evening program with meaningful expenditure such as work and education.
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This sketch transcends the account of individual DJI members, says FNV director Schreuders. “I speak to DJI employees from prisons throughout the Netherlands and hear similar stories from them.” Jan Keijser, vice-chairman of the Central Works Council of DJI, also confirms that due to the workload, the reintegration of detainees is under pressure and cell and urine checks are not carried out as planned.
What the Justice and Security Inspectorate already warned about in 2018 seems to be becoming reality in prisons: the “effectiveness of the enforcement of prison sentences” is in danger of being jeopardized, with all the consequences that entails “for reducing recidivism and continued criminal conduct”.
In the research at six prisons, which was considered representative for the entire country, the Inspectorate found at the time that task performance in the PIs was “substandard”. The precondition – sufficient and qualified personnel – was not met at the time. And that already had all kinds of consequences that the DJI people in 2023 also opposed NRC describe: from insufficient capacity to carry out cell inspections (and therefore discover telephones, drugs and weapons), to insufficient time for guiding detainees in reintegration and a great sense of insecurity among staff.
Situation worsens
“This has been going on for years, but fundamentally little has changed. The situation is even worsening,” says FNV director Schreuders. That DJI is facing significant financial deficits, as PwC did for the ministry last year mapped out, does not detract from his plea for fundamental intervention and a substantial improvement in the employment conditions for staff: from salary to more say. The union also believes that unorthodox measures should not be avoided to ensure the safety of staff. For example, FNV supports the call from staff of the Zaanstad PI, who advocated closing an entire prison wing in an urgent letter last September. That would mean fewer places for detainees, but would free up 70 staff members and reduce the workload in the rest of the institution.
Vice-chairman Keijser of the Central Works Council is also in favor of drastic measures to maintain staff levels and reduce workload. He points out that DJI is currently doing “everything it can” to recruit staff, but that with the high outflow it is a mission impossible is. DJI, says Keijser, is fishing in the same pond with defense, police, customs and private security companies for personnel, among others. “The work must be attractive. Our employment conditions are currently not sufficiently competitive. These are people who keep the Netherlands safe. The state should take more responsibility for this.”