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The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

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Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#41

Post by ansy »

xxdarrenxx wrote: post #5

Misleading article. I'm from the netherlands and a lot of police interviews report lack off financial support and manpower. Only criminals that get caught end up in jail.. Criminals who do not get caught are criminals nevertheless.. And they stil do criminal things. Correlation =/= Causation.

That's true everywhere. Nowhere solves 100% of its criminal cases. You must watch too many police procedural TV shows if you think the cops just march out of the office and catch the bad guy by the end of every episode. Lots of times victims don't cooperate with police, it's unclear what really happened, police can't find the perpetrator, the prosecutor decides there isn't enough evidence to pursue a trial, there's corruption involved, the perpetrator has significant financial resources to fight the case, or ultimately the judge or jury thinks the evidence is insufficient. Or most tragically, someone does get convicted and it's the wrong person! The perpetrator is still out there and an innocent person is unjustly punished.

Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#42

Post by tomjen3 »

xxs wrote: post #20
Kaotique wrote: post #10

There are a couple reasons why there are so little people in jail in the Netherlands and not all are positive. Crime reporting rate has never been lower. People have very little confidence that reporting a crime will lead to the criminal getting caught or even convicted. Many crimes are not solved. The crime solve rate is about 2-3% which means out of that small number of actual reported crimes only a marginal amount…

>>It's very common for judges to pass a community services punishment or an electronic ankle bracelet house arrest. But that's a good thing unless you consider sending people to the mines and keep them locked behind bars for years a better alternative.

That would depend on what they did and who they are, no? I hope nobody feels a nano-second sorry for a gang member, for example, but I would totally be willing to allow a kid who shoplifted to pay restitution and do community service/house arrest.

Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#43

Post by vidarh »

the-dude wrote: post #28

Internal report of Dutch police / justice : there is probably 5 times more criminality as in the statistics. I have read here, sometime, from someone, crime statistics are based on a survey in the UK ( instead of relying on the police ).

> I have read here, sometime, from someone, crime statistics are based on a survey in the UK ( instead of relying on the police ).

Both. There are official statistics from the police and Crown Prosecution Service about number of cases reported, investigated, charged and outcomes, but there is separately a survey, which gives important additional information about whether or not people feel it worth reporting crime.

Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#44

Post by dmd »

brianwawok wrote: post #36
Maarten88 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have very little confidence that reporting a crime will lead to the criminal getting caught I thought that way too, but it's not all bad. I was recently positively surprised when the police actually investigated a bike theft that I reported (online) and caught and prosecuted the thief! Court session is next month, I'm going and will take my daughter (who's bike it was) there to learn...

> I'm going and will take my daughter (who's bike it was) there to learn... Risky, as she may learn "The system doesn't care about me, and due to a small technical glitch will let a guilty person walk free" Don't envy having to explain that one...

Isn't that a pretty good lesson to learn?

Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#46

Post by swayvil »

Kaotique wrote: post #10

There are a couple reasons why there are so little people in jail in the Netherlands and not all are positive. Crime reporting rate has never been lower. People have very little confidence that reporting a crime will lead to the criminal getting caught or even convicted. Many crimes are not solved. The crime solve rate is about 2-3% which means out of that small number of actual reported crimes only a marginal amount…

Are you saying that the crime rate isn't actually low?

Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#47

Post by nickff »

ryandrake wrote: post #27

Unthinkable here in the USA. When prisons start emptying, just increase sentence lengths to keep those beds full and corporate prison profits up. EDIT: Also effective: simply increase enforcement. Since so many things are illegal, police just need to fish more if they want to catch more.

Corporate prisons are a (small) minority; the strongest lobby in favor of increased incarceration is from the prison guards' unions (which often supply a majority of a state's prison staff).

Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#48

Post by bkor »

Tepix wrote: post #18
bkor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In loads of cases questionable deaths haven't been investigated on how they died. Meaning: lots of murders aren't being reported/seen as murder. Unfortunately do not have an article/reference for this, despite trying to find it.

What makes you think the percentage of questionable deaths has changed? If it hasn't, an all time low murder rate still stands.

Murder isn't the same as questionable deaths?!? I don't think that has changed. I said that in not enough cases they're checking if someone has been murdered or not. As such, you cannot trust that murder has gone down. This has been reported by Dutch news within the last 12 months I already mentioned I couldn't find that report via Google.

This is exactly the same as the crime rate. Less reported figures doesn't mean crime rate has gone down. For that one I gave elsewhere their own investigation which shows that crime rate went up.

Re: The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners

#49

Post by deelowe »

ska wrote: post #39
gman2345 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98% accused of the crime in US plead guilty.

How many of those to the original crime though? I've read (this could be wrong) that plea bargaining has become endemic, which makes many of these statistics biased-to-useless.

It's so endemic that plea bargaining is a part of the official process for minor traffic violations. I used to get a lot of speeding tickets and I would always take them to court, because the solicitor would always negotiate just prior to the trail. It usually saves you some money if you do this (depends on the jurisdiction) The process was almost always for the DA or solicitor to recommend you plea guilty or no contest. If you plead guilty, you would not see the judge and you'd get a reduced sentence (typically increased fine, but no points on your license). No contest would have different rules depending on the court, but would also end up better for you in the long run most times.

The one time I please innocent (I truly felt I was), I ended up with 6 months probation, 2x the fine, and double the points on my license. In the end, the cost was well over double what I would have paid if I had just not contested and dealt with the solicitor. The judge even commented during the proceedings how taking such a simple case of speeding in front of the court wastes everyone's time and I should have been ashamed.

BTW, I was contesting the case, because there was no speed limit sign posted where I was pulled over. Evidently there had been construction completed recently which changed the number of lanes and intersections. This caused the county to reduce the speed limit, but they failed to install a new sign. The old one was removed during the construction.

That sign was never installed. It only got fixed after additional changes were made several years later.

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