Norway opens rented prison in Netherlands to avoid overcrowding

Norway on Wednesday opened a prison it has rented from the Netherlands to tackle the problem of prison overcrowding in the Scandinavian country, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security said.

Anders Anundsen, Norway's justice minister, participated in the handover ceremony in the Norgerhaven Prison, which is located in the village of Veenhuizen in the northern part of the Netherlands.

"I am proud that we have been able to establish 242 prison places in a very short time. Larger prison capacity is important to reduce the prison queues Norway has struggled with for years," Anundsen was quoted as saying.

Norway signed an agreement with the Netherlands on March 2 to rent prison places in the Norgerhaven Prison for a period of three years from September. The prison will be a unit of Ullersmo Prison in Norway, with Norwegian management and Dutch prison officers.

The prison will be filled with sentenced persons during the coming weeks. So far 112 transfers have been decided and 79 of them are voluntary.

Sentences served in the Netherlands will be served in line with Norwegian law, which means inmates in the Netherlands will have the same rights and responsibilities as inmates in Norway. If an inmate commits a new criminal offence in the Netherlands, they will be prosecuted in the Netherlands.

Inmates will be able to receive visits from their family in specially designed family rooms. Families will have to pay their own travel costs from home to the prison, like they have to when sentences are served in Norway.

Inmates will be able to receive visits for several days in a row if the visitors have travelled from Norway or another country outside the Netherlands.

Inmates will be transferred from the Netherlands to a prison in Norway when they have at least two months left of their sentence. Enditem