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Walk the Line: Assessing Prison Conduct for Parole in the Netherlands

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Parole and Beyond

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology ((PSIPP))

Abstract

The experience of parole is not restricted to the license period; it starts long before parole is even granted. In many jurisdictions, prisoners have to pass through an extensive assessment and decision-making process in the preparatory phase of parole. In the Netherlands, behaviour during incarceration is taken into account in parole decisions. Prisoners’ behaviour is observed and recorded through the whole course of their sentence and profoundly assessed when the time for release draws near. This chapter describes prisoners’ experiences of being subjected to behavioural assessment with something as valuable as their release at stake. The findings reveal that the continuous assessment and scrutiny, the uncertainty inherent to discretionary assessment practices and the considerable weight attached to good prison behaviour fundamentally shapes the experience of incarceration for Dutch prisoners.

The term ‘walk the line’ refers to exercise yards in American prisons during the nineteenth century where prisoners had to walk around in a wide circle on a yellow or white line painted on the ground for as long as exercise time permitted. If a prisoner went to far astray from the line he was punished. The expression also refers to behaving in an authorized or socially accepted manner, especially as prescribed by law or morality. According to the urban dictionary, the expression not only refers to simply behaving or abiding by the law or moral standards, but to a more complex exercise of maintaining a fragile balance between one extreme and another, such as good and evil, sanity and insanity, decency and decadence. ‘i walk the line’ is also a song written and recorded by country singer Johnny Cash in 1956. Cash regularly sang about and performed for prisoners.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Good time’ approaches refer to a guaranteed reduction of the time spent in prison for prisoners who work, participate in resocialization programs or in some cases simply behave well.

  2. 2.

    Criminal Code article 15d section 1, subsection b 1° and 2°.

  3. 3.

    Implementing Order Parole Act, stcrt. 2012/5379, 21 March 2012. This phrase was removed from the new implementing order that came into force on 1 January 2017 (Implementing Order Parole Act, stcrt. 2016/68521, 1 January 2017).

  4. 4.

    The prison authorities do not have decisional power over parole. However, the Public Prosecutor’s decision whether to submit an order to the court to postpone or dismiss parole is predominantly based on the prison governor’s assessment and advice. In their capacity as an advisory party, the prison authorities thus play an important role in the eventual decision.

  5. 5.

    Of the 33 parole advice reports that were examined, the prison governor advised the Public Prosecutor to grant parole in 26 cases. Six prisoners received an advice to postpone or dismiss parole of which two were solely based on the ground of misbehaviour in prison and two were based on both the grounds of misbehaviour in prison and the risk of re-offense. One prisoner received a positive advice despite having committed a new criminal offence during the execution of his sentence.

  6. 6.

    All names used are pseudonyms. The prisoners in the sample of parole advices and the prisoners I met during the participant observation only partly overlap. This means I spoke with some of the men whose advice reports I investigated, though most of them had been released of transferred by the time the empirical research phase started.

  7. 7.

    As this chapter focuses on the prisoner’s perspective, additional interviews with several decision-makers on the level of the prison authorities are not explicitly described in this chapter, though the findings from the interview were kept in mind in the analysis.

  8. 8.

    The penitentiary chamber of the court of Arnhem.

  9. 9.

    Conditional Release Act of 1 July 2008.

  10. 10.

    Report committee Revison early release (committee Vegter), 2002, p. 25.

  11. 11.

    Criminal Code article 15d section 1, subsection a-e.

  12. 12.

    Centrale Voorziening VI (CVvi) is a special section of the Public Prosecution Service that has traditionally been in charge of and specialized in early release decision-making.

  13. 13.

    In most but not all cases, the Probation Service is asked to provide advice on the risk of re-offence. In cases where an ‘execution-indicator’ is attached to the case, the local Public Prosecutor serves as a third advisory party. An execution indicator is an annotation made by the Public Prosecutor in case of so-called ‘speak worthy offences’ (offences that attract sentences of a minimum of eight years imprisonment and specific offences in which victims are involved in such as certain sexual offenses, stalking, threatening or traffic offences resulting in death or serious injury (implementing order Parole Act and implementing order execution indicator).

  14. 14.

    Art. 4 Temporary Leave Regulation, 24 December 1998.

  15. 15.

    The system of phased detention (‘detentiefasering’). A brief overview of the course of a prison sentence in a typical case is as follows: During the first phase of their sentence, prisoners are placed in a regularly secured institution. As their sentence progresses, they are placed in an institution with a lower security level and eventually to an institution with a highly reduced security level (De Jonge & Cremers, 2008).

  16. 16.

    Prisoners who obtain a positive (green) score for all parts of a list of behaviour prescriptions for a period of six weeks qualify for promotion to a ‘plus programme’ of 48 hours of activities per week. Red behaviour results in relegation to the basic programme of 43 hours and may additionally be followed by disciplinary measures. In case of orange behaviour, the prison director has a wider margin of discretion to assess the context of the situation (these regulations are contained in the ‘day program security and surveillance’).

  17. 17.

    Manual Assessment Framework, Ministry of Security and Justice, 20 December 2013.

  18. 18.

    With regard to the latter, no conviction is required to invoke this ground for postponement or dismissal (Criminal Code article 15d section 1 subsection b 1°)

  19. 19.

    For the purpose of this chapter, motivation and attitude are used interchangeably. Both refer to a prisoner’s standpoint as communicated explicitly and verbally or implicitly by their actions or the lack thereof.

  20. 20.

    The Reflector: a digital questionnaire that aims to map prisoners’ consciousness of criminogenic factors.

  21. 21.

    A written notification that prisoners receive upon disciplinary punishment solely states that “decisions to take disciplinary action during your stay in this correctional facility affect your release date”.

  22. 22.

    Its relevance in Dutch parole decision-making can be illustrated by Aldo who received positive advice from the prison governor in spite of fulfilling the formal criteria of ‘considerable misconduct’ as his positive behaviour and attitude during imprisonment apparently counterbalanced the fact that he committed a new offence while on furlough.

  23. 23.

    Both Randy and Jayden’s disciplinary records involve 14 disciplinary sanctions.

  24. 24.

    Each prisoner is assigned to a mentor who supervises them during detention and writes reports on them on a frequent base.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Free University Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

    Maaike M. Beckmann

  2. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Maaike M. Beckmann

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  1. Maaike M. Beckmann
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Correspondence to Maaike M. Beckmann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Ruth Armstrong

  2. Faculty of Sociology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Ioan Durnescu

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Beckmann, M.M. (2016). Walk the Line: Assessing Prison Conduct for Parole in the Netherlands. In: Armstrong, R., Durnescu, I. (eds) Parole and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95118-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95118-5_4

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