The Dutch government has entered into a deal with neighbouring Belgium to lease prison space for about 500 convicts. The deal is worth about TT$275 million (30M euros).
The Dutch has surplus prison space because of a continuing decline in crime. Things are so bad (or good, perhaps?) that the justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system.
The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but the prison population is only about 12,000.
And since the ministry's research department expects to crime to continue to decline for some time, the government had to get creative.
That's when it turned to Belgium, which is facing overpopulation in its prisons.
The deal that takes effect in 2010 would see about 500 Belgian prisoners to be transferred to a Dutch prison. The Netherlands still have to close some prisons but it would postpone shutting down at least two large ones until at least 2012.
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