'Reintegratie? Me reet!' De Nederlandse gevangenis: insluiting of uitsluiting?

Samenvatting

The goals of resocialization and reintegration that keep appearing in policy statements on the prison system are critically reviewed by means of a comparison to daily prison practice. Based on interviews and excerpts from letters, a picture of the modern Dutch prison is sketched. It appears that, in practice, there is a lack of effort toward reintegration and resocialization. This difference between the practice of prison and the theory of policy and politics can be captured in a Durkheimian perspective. Lack of genuine resocialization shows an exclusion of the criminal, revealed by means of the discourse on resocialization, which, in its very formulation, excludes the criminal from "society" a priori. This exclusion is strengthened by means of two mechanisms of social control: (1) the systematic discursive separation of an "inside" and an "outside" of society, which is apparent in political and popular discourse; and (2) an association of the criminal with the perverse and radically "different.". 22 References. Adapted from the source document.