Do the Dutch have the answer to UK prison crisis?

The Prisons and Court Reform Bill is set to be published amid reports of a crisis - but is the answer to lock fewer offenders up?
It’s the quietness that hits you first.

Standing in a Dutch jail housing a range of criminals, some violent murderers and rapists, I was surprised by how calm and controlled everything seemed.

Guards carrying alarms, not batons, lead us through a string of unlocked doors which allow prisoners to walk freely to the library or workshops during the day.

Every new inmate is given a key to his own cell.

Whereas figures from the Howard League show around two thirds of prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded in January, here in the Netherlands there aren’t enough prisoners to fill the cells.

Karin Winkelman, the Governor of Dordrecht jail, shows me a whole wing which lies empty.

They have capacity for 472 inmates but currently only house 336.

This isn’t a one off.

On average a third of cells in the Netherlands is now empty, space is even being rented to Belgium and Norway- a stark contrast to British jails which are often overstretched and overcrowded.

This wasn’t always the case, a decade ago the Dutch had one of the highest imprisonment rates in Western Europe after England & Wales but they found that it was expensive and wasn’t cutting reoffending so looked for alternatives punishments.

“In Holland we take different sentences at this moment. For minor offences we choose to give people fines, community services or [electronic] tags” Winkelman explains, “ In prison we focus on rehabilitation so that’s why they stay out of prison and don’t come back.“

Official figures show in 2005 there were 14,468 prisoners by 2015 that had dropped to 8245.

More controversially, 19 jails have closed in the last few years.

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