“Crisis” in The Netherlands: The Netherlands is facing a “crisis” different from any of those faced by different countries across the world: it’s prisons are too empty. The country “is actually short of people to lock up. In the past few years 19 prisons have closed down and more are slated for closure next year,” according to a report by The BBC. The decrease in incarceration rates is partly to “blame,” so is improved “screening at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, which resulted in an explosion in the numbers of drug mules caught carrying [narcotics]” as well as a judicial shift towards alternatives to incarceration like community service, fines, and electronic tagging.

What to do with near-empty prisons? The Netherlands is “importing” convicts from Belgium and Norway (which is known for its cushy prisons itself) to serve time there. Why is this viewed as crisis, then? It’s resulting in budget cuts for law enforcement, which, in return, is stretching Dutch police too thin and making crime harder to report. “The police are overwhelmed and can’t handle their work load,” Madeleine Van Toorenburg, a former prison governor and now the opposition Christian Democratic Appeal party’s spokeswoman on criminal justice, says. There are also vested interests. A prison guards’ representative says his colleagues are “angry and a little bit depressed” as young people are reluctant to join the prison service now. “There is no future in it any more — you never know when your prison will be closed,” he says. You can also listen to the documentary on which the report is based (runtime 26:29).