Nearly half of the prisoners in overcrowded Dutch prisons are in pre-trial detention

Due to staff shortages and a shortage of cells, Dutch prisons have been overcrowded for some time. Despite this, nearly half of the people detained last year were in pretrial detention - they have not been convicted and are therefore legally innocent. Criminal law experts and lawyers warn that suspects are being remanded into custody too often or too quickly, NOS reports.

NOS surveyed nearly 300 criminal defense lawyers and found that 90 percent of them believe that suspects are held in custody too often or for too long during the investigation into the crime they allegedly committed. There are strict criteria for detaining someone awaiting trial. But according to the lawyers, these are applied too leniently in practice.

“It should be an exception to lock up these people, but in the Netherlands, the practice is different,” criminal law expert Jacques Claessen of Maastricht University told the broadcaster.

The Netherlands has been reprimanded by the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights in 2017 and this year, and the European Court of Human Rights in 2021, for the number of people in pre-trial detention. The European Court ruled that the Netherlands was detaining people too easily without providing sufficient reasons for wh.y this was necessary. Despite this, little has changed.

The fact that so many suspects are in pre-trial detention is also striking, given the overcrowded prisons. To relieve the pressure, prisoners are being released two weeks earlier.

In certain cases, judges can opt for electronic pre-trial detention instead of prison, criminal law expert Claessen said. Then suspects await their trial at home with an ankle monitor. That could help reduce pressure on the prison system.