Floating Dutch prison for illegal aliens

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Floating Dutch prison for illegal aliens

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The
Netherlands already has two prison boats and this month they will open
a floating detention centre to house illegal aliens in Zaandam near
Amsterdam.

"We built this floating detention platform because the city of
Zaandam had no building ground to offer us, but did have a mooring
site," said Erik Nijman who heads up the Justice Ministry's special
provisions sector.

"It's not a boat, but a detention building built much the same as we
would do on dry land but floating on a moored concrete caisson," Nijman
said. The floating centres cost about the same as their landlocked
cousins.

Zaandam's floating platforms, which can house a maximum of 576
detainees at two men to a cell, were built to last around 25 years.

Once inside the only thing that reminds prisoners that they are not
on dry land is the view of the canal and the surrounding industrial
estate.

While detainees await their expulsion they are subjected to a fairly
mild prison regime with the cell doors opened during the day. There is
television in every cell and a communal fitness room, a recreation
room, a library, a room for religious services, a film room and an arts
and crafts room.

"Idle hands are the devils play things," says warden Jantien Leegwater.

"We want them to keep busy and that's why we offer such a range of activities," she adds.

The prisoners can only leave the platform for dry land when they are
moved or to play sports in one of two outdoor sports domes especially
designed by a Dutch artist.

In the last decade, the Netherlands has gradually introduced harsher
immigration measures. As a result, a lot more illegal aliens, some
20,000 each year, need to be held while awaiting deportation.

Previously they were housed in regular jails.
"We don't want to
mix the criminals with illegal aliens and this way we keep the same
kind of detainees together and can concentrate the services we need
like our unit which helps return people to their country of origin,"
Nijman explains.

"This way we can also limit the length of detention needed before
people are returned to their country and that is best for everyone
involved," he says.
The new floating prison will not lead to a new crackdown, the justice ministry stressed.

"We're not suddenly going to do street sweeps to round up illegal aliens to fill up this place," Nijdam adds.

The Dutch authorities do not actively hunt illegal aliens but if
people are stopped or arrested in connection with other things and they
turn out to reside here illegally, they end up in the special detention
units.

When the platform opens on 5 November, the detainees will be mostly transferred from general prisons.

Apart from the justice's ministry's own unit to facilitate forced
deportations, the detention unit will also have representatives of the
International Organisation of Migration (IOM) which helps people who
are voluntarily returning to their country of origin.

As it stands now the Zaandam platforms will be the last of the new wave of floating prisons in the Netherlands.

After a flurry of building activity in recent years, the Netherlands
no longer has problems with its prison capacity, Nijdam explained.

"There is a lot of interest from abroad in the way we are doing things here," Nijdam says.

The building of the prison boats has also been the focus of activist groups who object to the making of migration a criminal offence – something which is in itself is a contradiction of freedom of movement in a globalising world. 

Source: Expatica / AFP