161–170 of 183 posts
> Frans Carbo, the prison guards' representative from the FNV union, says his members are "angry and a little bit depressed". Young people don't want to join the prison service he adds "because there is no future in it any more - you never know when your prison will be closed". Well this truly sounds abhorrent.
Actually no, it sounds utopian - closing prisons because crime is low is a good thing.
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If that's true, then there are lots of genuinely bad people wandering the streets of the Netherlands. If that's true then either 1) they're doing terrible things all the time and the state just isn't doing anything about it (this doesn't seem to be the case), or 2) these "bad" people, bad as they may be, aren't causing much trouble by being amongst the general public.
There are dutch people in this comments section saying that laws are too lenient and that harsher prison sentences are needed. That should count for something. There was one commentor talking about how someone had assassinated a front-running political candidate and gotten off after a measly 12 years. That suggests to me that something is wrong.
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No, lock him up to prevent him committing more crimes. You might call them "petty" crimes as if they are nothing, but to the person involved they are a very big deal.
>No, lock him up to prevent him committing more crimes. for how long, indefinitely?
Yes. 144 crimes? He's not going to stop, so yes, indefinitely.
This isn't about punishing him, it's about keeping him away from everyone else.
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If I have proposition to kill someone else for money, e.g. $10M, for exchange of 7 years in comfortable Dutch prison, I will grab the money.
Unlike in most other European countries, Dutch law allows for life imprisonment without parole, from which only a royal pardon can save you. Since 1970, 43 people have been convicted, 2 of whom were eventually pardoned, both because of terminal illness. A quick glance through the recent list of convictions[1] shows that most life sentences were imposed in cases of multiple homicide, homicide for financial gain and ho…
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To me, going in at age 20 and coming out at age 34-41 seems like a pretty big chunk of your life gone?
It is, I'm not saying it's not. But the other person is dead and gone forever? Imagine if someone killed your wife/child/brother/mother/etc. Does that seem like a correct punishment? I'm not talking about accidents (e.g. a car crash), but premeditated murder? I personally think the length of that punishment is not in line with the crime. But hey, I'm getting downvoted to hell, so I guess most people think it is.
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>No, lock him up to prevent him committing more crimes. for how long, indefinitely?
> indefinitely Yes. 144 crimes? He's not going to stop, so yes, indefinitely. This isn't about punishing him, it's about keeping him away from everyone else.
Maybe some prisons can fundamentally change to becoming some sort of YMCA-like environment. I imagine a lot of the prisoners are non violent. If so, I wonder if you could co-mingle those who live at the "prison" with those who go for the social activities and whatnot.
They can sometimes have social contact with the outside world, e.g. by having a football or chess team that plays in the league. Only home matches of course.
I played chess against some of these people inside once, you do keep wondering what they did to be there...
The article says right at the top that a significant chunk of the decline is the police turning an blind eye towards drug use and even trafficking. I wonder how much their immigration policy has to do with it as well? If they were accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees from war torn countries their crime rate might not be so low.
It's the illegal immigrants for economic reasons that find life is very hard that are a problem.
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I notice that most of the people who disagree live in Amsterdam. Maybe it's different in other cities. Or in more rural areas.
Most Dutch people I've met consider Amsterdam to be one of the most dangerous places in the country and prefer to raise kids in more suburban setting. The statistics do say a few other cities are more dangerous, but overall Amsterdam is representative.
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> indefinitely Yes. 144 crimes? He's not going to stop, so yes, indefinitely. This isn't about punishing him, it's about keeping him away from everyone else.
So child molesters and murders will get out of prison before someone who commits a lot of petty crimes. That doesn't sound very logical to me.
For child molesters and murder, the goal is punishment, and then it's a specific amount of years which are determined as an appropriate punishment.
But here the goal is prevention.
The two categories can not be compared to each other because they are not the same. They have different goals, target different people, and have different time frames.
They just both happen to be implemented via jail which leads you to compare them, but it doesn't have to be that way - for example punishment can be corporal, and prevention can theoretically be done other ways (none practical at the moment, but things like an AI that watches behavior and stops the person or sounds an alarm may be possible in the future).