The arrival of the youth prison in Veenhuizen provides more employment for the village. This is what René Hut, spokesperson for the Custodial Institutions Agency, says. It is not yet known how many additional jobs will be created.
However, he says that finding staff will be a challenge. “Because there are more jobs than workers.” Moreover, more guidance is needed for juvenile prisoners. At the time, a hundred people worked in the previous youth prison in Veenhuizen.
Yesterday it was announced that the village will have a youth prison again after three years. A maximum of seventy juvenile criminals will soon be housed in Klein Bankenbosch, where adult detainees are currently held. That group will not be moved to a prison elsewhere in the country, but will remain in Veenhuizen.
“They are distributed across three locations of the penitentiary: Groot Bankenbosch (which is currently being renovated, ed.), Esserheem and Norgerhaven. The number of detainees remains the same and therefore also the number of employees.”
Next year, the youth prison will no longer be run by the Elker youth care organization, but will become a so-called state prison. The judicial institution will not open until the second quarter of 2024 at the earliest. The speed of this largely depends on how quickly new staff is found.
There was a lot of resistance among Elker staff against the closure three years ago. Not long afterwards it became clear that the remaining youth prisons were under strict supervision by the Justice and Security Inspectorate. For example, the inspectorate has long expressed concerns about the lack of places and staff. That strict supervision ended at the beginning of this month.
However, according to the inspectorate, there are still concerns about capacity. Due to renovations and adjustments in various prisons, the number of so-called high security places decreased. The ministry was therefore called on to quickly realize more such places. In addition, a prison in Horsterveen had become unusable due to leakage. This meant that the capacity shortage would only increase. Young adults were therefore placed in a detention center.
Research showed that only one location was suitable: Veenhuizen. This is because the location also served as a youth prison in the past. The building is therefore still suitable and easy to convert.