Push for tougher crime punishment
28 October 2002
AMSTERDAM ― Anyone who commits three violent crimes should be locked up for "a very long time or even forever," according to new proposals put forward by the LPF party.
The LPF also calls for the establishment of penal work camps where inmates would carry out physical labour "from six in the morning until six in the evening," various media sources have reported.
LPF justice spokesperson Joost Eerdmans presented the plan to his party colleague, caretaker integration and migration minister Hilbrand Nawijn on Monday. Nawijn's portfolio comes under the justice department. The LPF hopes to gain all-party support for its anti-crime measures.
Eerdmans said the plan had been prepared in consultation with two organisations that represent victims of crime. He said the law should pay more attention to the rights of victims rather than giving light sentences to offenders "because of their bad childhood."
Denouncing prisons as "universities of crime," Eerdmans said that physical labour would "drag offenders out of their criminality".
"The old idea of work camps ― suggested previously by former Christian Democrat Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers ― has been unjustly swept under the carpet," Eerdmans added.
Since maverick politician Pim Fortuyn founded the LPF at the start of the year, the party has frequently called for a tougher approach to criminality and a return to traditional norms and values. Fortuyn was himself assassinated by a lone gunman on 6 May.
The LPF plan comes within days of the shock generated by the death of student René Steegmans. He died after being attacked by two 18-year-old youths outside a supermarket in the south-eastern city of Venlo. Steegmans had reprimanded the youths for driving their motor scooter too near an elderly person.
It has been alleged one struck Steegmans, while the second shouted encouragement. A family member of one of the suspects exacerbated the outrage in Venlo by saying, "the death was God's will." The family later apologised for the statement.
[Copyright Expatica 2002] |