While many countries grapple with overcrowded prisons, the Netherlands faces a unique challenge: too few inmates. Unlike the UK and other nations, the Dutch prison system struggles with empty cells due to low crime rates.

According to a BBC report, in the past few years, 19 prisons have closed down, and more are slated for closure next year. How has this happened, and why do some people think it’s a problem? A decade ago, the Netherlands had one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe, but it now claims one of the lowest.

One empty prison was turned into a fancy hotel south of Amsterdam, with its four most expensive suites named The Lawyer, The Judge, The Governor, and The Jailer. But others, converted into asylum reception centres, have provided work for some former prison guards.

According to The Guardian, since 2014, 23 prisons have been shut down, turning into temporary asylum centres, housing, and hotels. The country has Europe’s third-lowest incarceration rate, at 54.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. According to the justice ministry’s WODC Research and Documentation Centre, the number of prison sentences imposed fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2018, along with a two-thirds drop in jail terms for young offenders. Registered crimes plummeted by 40% in the same period, to 785,000 in 2018.

Miranda Boone, a professor of criminology at Leiden University, has studied the collapse in the prison population. “There is no doubt that the prison population has been reduced very significantly in the last 13 years-an amazing and, in the western world, unparalleled development,” she says.

Interestingly, one vacant prison in south of Amsterdam was transformed into a luxury hotel, with its four premium suites aptly named The Lawyer, The Judge, The Governor, and The Jailer. Meanwhile, other empty prisons were repurposed into asylum reception centers, offering employment opportunities to former prison guards. This creative reuse of space reflects the Netherlands’ unique approach to addressing its shortage of inmates.