Dutch advisor on prison
matters in St. Maarten
PHILIPSBURG--Jan de Vrijer will be the new advisor to Minister of Justice David Dick on prison matters in the Netherlands Antilles. He will be stationed in St. Maarten as of March 1 to help with the restructuring of the Pointe Blanche prison.
He resigned recently from the Penitentiary Institution Lelystad (PIL) where he had worked for the last five years. Dutch newspaper De Stentor was with De Vrijer on his last working day and wrote that he would leave with a good feeling to go to work in St. Maarten as the advisor of the Antillean Minister of Justice.
De Vrijer was quoted as saying: “A lot needs to be done on the islands and that makes the work interesting.” According to De Vrijer, the Antilles has been trying for years to upgrade Bon Futuro Prison in Curaçao and the Pointe Blanche prison in St. Maarten.
“The personnel need schooling, the circumstances have to better and additional capacity needs to be built,” he is quoted as saying. He said some detainees stayed too long in police cells and the prison system was less structured than in the Netherlands.
“I need to look especially at what’s possible, listen to the people and not have too high ambitions,” he was quoted as saying.
Finally he said he was looking forward to an entire year of warm weather. “I will be leaving a modern institution and start from scratch in the Antilles. You help others with your abilities and expertise. That’s beautiful.”
Dick Romkema, another Dutch technical assistant for the prison system, went back to the Netherlands last month.
