WILLEMSTAD - The way in which the countries in the kingdom treat prisoners is generally good. This is according to the Law Enforcement Council (LEC), which investigated this.  

The Council's Report evaluates the mutual detention arrangements, the so-called ORDs for the Caribbean Netherlands and Curaçao, Aruba, and Sint Maarten. These concerns agreements to transfer a prisoner within the Kingdom to an institution in another country if the own judicial institution is full.  

There is room for improvement in some areas, and in particular in the implementation of the schemes.  

The countries of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, and the Caribbean part of the Netherlands each have only one judicial institution. For that reason alone, it is good that it has been arranged that and under what conditions transfer is possible in the event of a shortage of capacity or safety issues, for example. And sometimes in another country of the Kingdom more is possible in the medical field than in the country where someone is in detention.  

The Council is of the opinion that more attention should be paid to the interests of detainees in terms of information provision and legal protection if they have to serve their sentence elsewhere. 

Bottleneck  

One of the agreements is aimed at ensuring that the transport of detainees between Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba runs smoothly. In itself, the transmissions proceed properly, but not always according to an agreement.  

Such as, for example, informing the Ministers of Justice of Curaçao and Sint Maarten in advance about a detainee being transported. That doesn't always happen.  

Another bottleneck is the reimbursement of the costs, especially those of the return journey. The Board notes that the agreements on this are clear, but that they are not being implemented correctly. Incidentally, detainees were not asked about their experiences with the implementation of the agreements.  

The Council has established that a number of recommendations from the interim evaluation committee have already led to improvements, particularly in the areas of amendments to the Manual, provision of information, communication and cooperation.  

However, the Council's evaluation has shown that there is still room for improvement in these areas as well. The Council makes a total of 39 recommendations in this report.  

Part of this concerns the schemes themselves and another part only concerns the implementation. According to the Council, compliance with these recommendations will contribute to even better implementation of regulations on the one hand and better actual implementation on the other hand. Both the countries involved and the detainees involved will benefit from this.