The staff of the youth prison Den Hey-Acker in Breda failed last year in a hostage-taking and a stabbing, both of which had a fatal outcome. Employees did not have enough insight into the risks of the young people involved, according to the Justice and Security Inspectorate, the Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate, the Dutch Labor Inspectorate and the Education Inspectorate.
Important reasons for this were a lack of experience among some of the employees and a high workload due to a staff shortage.
In January 2022, two prison employees were held at gunpoint in a car by an inmate and forced to drive to Belgium. Once there, they were released. During an attempt to arrest the young man, he was shot dead by the Belgian police. On the day of the hostage-taking, the young person was on leave and did not report to work. That was not allowed, but went unnoticed.
According to the inspectorates, the treatment and supervision was well organized in theory, but fell short in practice. Employees did not keep each other well informed about the prisoner. In addition, they had not kept good track of how the youngster felt and how he spent his money. Such information should be kept by the staff in order to assess whether detainees, employees and society are at risk. Not all employees had enough experience and training to do this properly. In addition, the workload was high. This was due to the use of less experienced temporary workers, a staff shortage and many people reporting sick due to corona.
Another factor was that the prisoner’s treatment was at a standstill because his therapist was absent for a longer period of time. According to the inspections, prison staff did not consider whether this increased the chance of a relapse into crime. “On the contrary,” they write. He was allowed much more on unaccompanied leave.
Three months later, things went wrong again in prison. A detainee stabbed a group member to death with a knife he had been given because he wanted to cook. He injured another youth and threatened two group leaders. The employees largely followed the procedures, according to the inspectorates. But those procedures were not adapted to this specific group of young people. Sufficient staff was present on the day in question. But also in this case there was a lack of experience and training.
“I am well aware that the staff have to work with the target group under difficult circumstances on a daily basis and there are risks, but at the same time I take the firm conclusions to heart and we must reduce the chance that this will happen more often in the future,” says the minister. Franc Weerwind (Legal protection). He says that the procedures at the juvenile detention center have now been tightened to prevent a recurrence.
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and don’t miss a thing of the stars.
#Inspection #Youth #prison #Breda #fell #short #fatal #incidents