Fewer Dutch in foreign prisons

The Number of Dutch people in foreign prisons is falling rapidly. For the first time in years there are fewer than 2 thousand Dutch in a foreign cell, AD reports based on figures from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Five years ago 2,542 Dutch were in prison abroad. As of January 1st of this year, that number dropped to 1,935. The number of Dutch imprisoned in a foreign country for drug-related crimes dropped especially sharply: from 1,679 to 971.

AD attributes the decrease partly to relatively new laws that make it easier for Dutch prisoners in Europe to serve the last part of their sentence in the Netherlands. "And we like that", Marjolein Groot, head of the Dutch Probation Service's foreign office, said to the newspaper. "From a Dutch prison we can more easily prepare detainees for their return to society, so that they don't fall back to old mistakes."

Shifts in the drug market also play a role. Cocaine is less popular, for example. "And for pills, for example, you don't have to go abroad. You can put pill factories in every country in the world", Groot said to the newspaper.