Abstract
Introduction
Franca van der Laan (2012) was ahead of her time. More than a decade ago, she challenged the reassuring assumption of incarceration as incapacitation, asserting that “prison doesn’t stop them.” Her analysis, based on case information and interviews, demonstrated how organised crime leaders continued orchestrating crimes from behind bars in Dutch prisons. Over a decade later, policymakers, politicians and researchers in the Netherlands and elsewhere continue to wrestle with the same fundamental problem: what precisely constitutes prison-based organised crime, and how might its dynamics reshape our understanding of criminal justice?
Prison-based organised crime refers to the committing or preparation of criminal activities from prisons, often involving the continuation of outside criminal enterprises. It is also sometimes described as “ongoing criminality in prison” (Treadwell et al., 2019: 5) or, in Dutch,
The Netherlands are introducing far-reaching measures and new legislation to tackle prison-based organised crime. There are a growing number of highly restrictive-custody units to incarcerate people who are identified as high-risk on the grounds of their estimated escape risk, unacceptable danger to society upon potential escape, continued criminal activity, or threat posed by their role and position in a criminal network. Furthermore, the penitentiary law has recently been changed to limit contact with the outside world of prisoners in restrictive custody. 1 There are local intelligence offices in each prison, as well as a national office, to monitor communication from prisoners, including phone calls, letters and money transfers. The Prison Service collaborates closely with the Prosecution Service and the Police, facilitating the exchange of intelligence to support criminal investigations and inform decisions on security measures. Increasingly, then, prisons are playing a role in law enforcement, which, in turn, raises many new challenges. This societal development outpaces academic attention to the issue.
This article investigates how prison-based organised crime is discursively constructed in the Netherlands and how this framing legitimates exceptional security measures. The literature review shows that there is growing attention to the phenomenon in the Netherlands and the UK, which bears different characteristics compared to the more extensively researched prison gangs and mafia groups elsewhere. Drawing on interviews with senior managers in the Dutch Prison Service, this article makes the argument that the threat of prison-based organised crime is invoked to authorise interventions that may infringe on prisoners’ human rights, compromise civil liberties, and sideline other penological aims such as rehabilitation. The interviewees portray prison-based organised crime as a direct threat to the safety of both staff and prisoners, yet simultaneously concede that the preventive and investigative measures adopted to counter it generate their own practical and ethical dilemmas.
Conceptualising prison-based organised crime
The concept of prison-based organised crime sits at the intersection of two domains often considered separately in criminological literature: the governance of prisons and the dynamics of organised crime networks. While prisons are conventionally understood as institutions designed to incapacitate offenders and disrupt criminal activity, a growing body of research suggests that for certain actors – particularly those operating at the upper echelons of organised crime – imprisonment may serve as a site of continuity rather than interruption (Gooch and Treadwell, 2020, 2025; Van der Laan, 2012; Verwest et al., 2018).
Official statistics are unable to give a good indication of the size of prison-based organised crime, although estimations suggest that around 10% of people incarcerated in the Netherlands and in England and Wales can be linked to organised crime (HM Government, 2023; Roks et al., 2024). Research indicates that the reach and impact of prison-based organised crime are substantial (Gooch and Treadwell, 2020; Roks et al., 2024; Van der Laan, 2012; Verwest et al., 2018). Kate Gooch and James Treadwell have extensively described and analysed how contraband trading takes place in UK prisons and what this means for experienced safety (Gooch and Treadwell, 2020, 2023, 2025; Treadwell et al., 2019). Their research, based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in multiple prisons, has revealed a pervasive and professionalised illicit economy, which can be linked to violence, coercion, and exploitation. What is more, the leaders in charge (“businessmen”, as they are called by Gooch and Treadwell) often remain inconspicuous and can carry out their activities unpunished. Similar mechanisms are revealed in studies conducted in Dutch prisons (Roks et al., 2024; Van der Laan, 2012; Van Ginneken, 2024; Verwest et al., 2018): prisoners are recruited to carry out illegal activities that carry the greatest risk of getting caught (or injured), while the ‘leaders’ keep their hands clean and are ostensibly well-behaved. This, in turn, is rewarded with freedom and privileges that facilitate their activities, such as maintaining contacts across wings.
Compared to the literature on UK prisons, the literature on Dutch prisons draws more attention to crimes committed
Comparative perspective: prison gangs and mafia
Other criminological literature on carceral criminal organisations has thus far largely focused on prison gangs, which have distinct organisational logics and relationships to the prison system. Studies of prison gangs – especially in the United States – tend to emphasise identity-based affiliation, control over internal economies, and violence as a mode of governance (Pyrooz, 2022; Skarbek, 2014). Gangs typically have identifiable group names and symbols. As Skarbek (2014) argues, prison gangs formed (in the US) to provide protection and order in a quickly expanding prison environment where officials failed to maintain security and enforce norms. Clear member identification is therefore important for a gang to be able to fulfil its protective function towards members. While some gangs maintain links to external criminal markets, their orientation is often more inward facing: establishing dominance over illicit trade, protection, and territory within the prison. In contrast, in South American contexts, notably El Salvador and Brazil, the blurred boundary between prison and street-based criminal governance has reached a level of near-total integration, with prison leaders coordinating extortion, drug markets, and political negotiations from within (Cruz, 2019; Lessing and Willis, 2019). The
Prison-based organised crime as it manifests in the Netherlands differs in several important ways from the gang structures commonly described in the international literature. Most notably, it lacks the primary protective function typically associated with prison gangs. This distinction may be attributed to the relatively small scale of the Dutch prison system – housing a daily population of around 10,000 individuals – a lower baseline level of prison violence, and relatively strong formal oversight, with staff-prisoner ratios of at least 1:12. In smaller carceral settings, informal social control among prisoners is often sufficiently effective because social consequences for norm violations cannot be easily avoided (Skarbek, 2014). A further point of divergence lies in the composition and internal structure of Dutch organised crime groups. Unlike many gang formations, these groups are typically characterised as networked rather than hierarchical, with loose affiliations among actors. Furthermore, they are not (exclusively) organised along racial or ethnic lines, although ethnicity plays a role in the framing and policing of Dutch organised crime (Eski and Sergi, 2024). Rather than functioning as unified entities, multiple crime groups or networks may coexist, cooperate, or compete. Organised crime in this context tends to operate through pragmatic alliances rather than identity-based hierarchies.
Italy is another relevant case for comparison, given its history of addressing crimes committed by mafia organisations and incarceration of individuals linked to those organisations. Mafia organisations are typically characterised by strong, large, long-standing and hierarchical organisational structures; they are also multi-functional and compete (or collaborate) with local governments in the provision of governance services (Paoli, 2020). The Italian response to mafia activity has been multi-pronged. In the 1980s, the Italian Criminal Code was amended to criminalise association with a mafia-type organisation, thereby allowing prosecution without proof of specific criminal acts. Italy also developed mechanisms to incentivise collaboration with the prosecution, offering reduced sentences and witness protection to those willing to testify against their organisations, as well as extensive powers for financial investigation and confiscation of criminal assets. Alongside the intensified investigation and prosecution of mafia-based crimes, Italy also developed a custodial strategy to disrupt prisoners’ ability to commit offences from prison through their continued association with mafia organisations. In 1992 a special prison regime (known as 41-bis) was introduced to this effect (Caterini and Gallo, 2025). Although originally a temporary emergency measure, the regime was made permanent in 2002. The core function of the 41-bis regime is to limit communication between incarcerated people and members of mafia organisations outside prison.
The 41-bis regime is characterised by highly restrictive custody in designated prisons or units, where prisoners are held in very small groups, provided with only limited opportunities for purposeful activity, and subject to tightly regulated and monitored family contact. “Reserved areas” (
Across these cases, a common thread is the interplay between prison regimes and criminal governance. Prisons are active sites where organised crime is enabled, reshaped or curtailed. The specific dynamics differ greatly between contexts and criminal organisations. Prison gangs appear to be a distinctive (North and South) American phenomenon in response to a lack of stable institutional control. In contrast, the Italian prison system was reconfigured in tandem with broader law enforcement strategies to limit the capacity of mafia groups to operate from within. In England and Wales, as Gooch and Treadwell (2025) have noted, prison-based organised crime is neither gang-like nor mafia-like, but instead marked by its “informal, diffuse and dynamic nature” (p. 258). In the Netherlands, the principal concern of prison-based crime is not internal prison order, but rather the use of the prison environment to direct criminal activities outward and undermine the rule of law.
The Dutch context: organised crime and its carceral extension
Organised crime in the Netherlands has traditionally been described as entrepreneurial, pragmatic, and network-based rather than embedded in rigid hierarchies (Fijnaut et al., 1998; Kleemans, 2004; Staring et al., 2023). Much of it revolves around the facilitation and distribution of drugs, enabled by the country's infrastructure and port access (notably Rotterdam). While family ties, ethnic networks, and loyalty structures may play a role, Dutch criminal organisations typically lack the codified rituals and territorial claims that characterise gangs or mafia-style groups. The criminal networks are characterised by loose affiliations among actors involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, and contract killings (Europol, 2024; Van Gestel, 2023). This fluidity allows for flexible collaborations across different criminal sectors and national borders, which also makes investigations difficult.
In recent years, the Dutch government and media have increasingly characterised this criminal landscape as a systemic threat to society, coining terms like
Despite the growing attention, systematic academic engagement with prison-based organised crime in the Netherlands remains limited. There is a notable lack of empirical research into how this phenomenon is framed, experienced, and managed. This article addresses that gap by analysing how senior prison managers understand and navigate the tensions inherent in the current approach to prison-based organised crime. Their perspectives provide insight into how official framings are translated into everyday practice, and how the carceral response to organised crime may itself produce unintended effects on institutional legitimacy.
Data and analysis
The analysis is supported by data from a research project on the social ecology of violence in prisons. 2 This project is intended to study the circumstances surrounding violent incidents in prison. This article draws from interviews with directors and deputy directors (N = 46) from all Dutch prisons (N = 24), which were conducted in the first half of 2023. All respondents were members of their prison's management team and were qualified to sanction rule violations. Interviews lasted an average of 70 min (range from 43 to 123 min). The age of respondents ranged from 38 to 68 years old, with a mean of 54 years old. Seventeen respondents were women (37%) and twenty-nine were men (63%). The majority of respondents had over fifteen years of experience working in prisons.
Interviews were semi-structured and guided by a topic list including questions on the respondent's background, perceived safety problems in the prison, perceived causes of violence, specific case descriptions, and signals about safety problems from staff and prisoners. Prison-based organised crime emerged as one of the most important safety problems for prison managers and was discussed in every interview. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Quotes included in this article are translated from Dutch.
The analysis was conducted through a repeated reading of the interview transcripts and thematic coding using Atlas.ti 23. Initial reading and coding identified prison-based organised crime as primary (overarching) theme. Following this, two management advisors at the Dutch Prison Service were interviewed specifically on the topic of prison-based organised crime. The interview segments from the prison managers and management advisors were further analysed in relation to the perceived nature of the phenomenon, the perceived impact on safety, and security measures and their impact. While the primary approach was thematic coding, attention was directed not only to the substantive issues raised by respondents, but also to the ways in which these issues were articulated. The analysis may therefore be most accurately labelled as a discourse-oriented thematic analysis, grounded in the understanding that language is not merely descriptive but constitutive of social realities. The aim was to explore how particular representations of prison-based organised crime and security come to be produced and reinforced within narratives. The intention, however, was not to conduct a systematic discourse analysis, but to capture both the content of respondents’ concerns and the ways in which these were expressed. The narratives of interviewees were not treated as isolated statements, but as embedded in broader institutional logics and penal rationalities. In addition to interview data, the analysis therefore drew on documentation of security measures and policy developments, which helped situate respondents’ accounts within broader shifts in penal governance in the Netherlands.
The discourse of ruthlessness and elusiveness
Prison-based organised crime appears as a large concern of most (deputy) directors of men's prisons. Their narratives about the topic share a few important characteristics. Notably, experienced directors often compare (organised) crime today with that of a few decades ago: “I see more ruthlessness. I notice that they fight with each other more often, that they take revenge, but also that they more easily attack staff. They resist and fight more often, those things. Much more than previously.” (prison manager #7) “The respect has gone. It has become more aggressive. The prisoners have become more difficult. It has become more callous. It has become less fun. The respect is gone. It is the same as outside. I also encounter many young people who have done terrible things, although that may be because I am getting older myself. I am talking of people aged 25, 26, 28, with sentences of 30 years or life. They used to be exceptions, but now it's one after the other. (…) If you see the young guys, you think: how did it come this far? More callousness. Also less respect, more threats, verbal abuse. It really has changed.” (prison manager #37) “Look, 25 years ago there were the old criminals, who still exist, the
Without exception, respondents link prison-based organised crime to contraband trading, primarily drugs and mobile phones. According to them, many violent incidents among prisoners are related to conflicts about drugs and money: for example, because people have failed to settle their debts or make promised deliveries. Similar to findings presented by Gooch and Treadwell (2020), prison directors suspect that ‘weaker’ individuals are often exploited and are more likely to be caught, while more ‘powerful’ actors in the illicit economy can carry out their activities unpunished. “What I see, in any case, is that prisoners continue with criminal activities. And they put pressure on other prisoners, which can affect the atmosphere and threaten safety. Prisoners will do things against their will. It also means that they will accept punishments that should really be given to the big guys.” (prison manager #22) “The point is, the real big guys never get reports [for bad behaviour]. They don’t give verbal abuse. They behave themselves well. They quickly become cleaner or library assistant. They have a sentence of twenty years or more, but are exceptionally well behaved. (…) But some prisoners send an implicit message, they sometimes also explicitly wield their power. So they may say: ‘if I have to, I can arrange to have someone killed, easily.’” (prison manager #36)
Concerns extend beyond staff to the perceived manipulation of legal professionals. Although discussion of undue influence in this regard remains largely speculative, several prison managers point to what they see as a blurring of boundaries between legitimate legal advocacy and strategic disruption. An example of such a concern is that certain prisoners, especially those with substantial financial capital, are able to weaponize legal procedures: “So you see that the well-intended structures of society are very cunningly abused. (…) Just look at the number of grievance cases from the past ten years, it will shock you. Look at the lawyers involved. I used to do these grievance cases myself, and you had ten cases with one lawyer present. Now, you have ten cases with at least ten lawyers. Some prisoners show up with two, three lawyers. How do you defend yourself against this?” (prison manager #43)
Violent capital as the currency of prison-based organised crime
In the prison managers’ discourse, prison-based organised crime is framed not only as a source of violence but as a repository of violent capital: a form of symbolic and reputational power grounded in the perceived capacity to command, threaten, or enact violence (see also Eriksson et al., 2022; Mattsson, 2018). This capacity is often constructed as projected beyond the individual body, attached to networks. As such, violent capital contributes to a portrayal of prison-based actors as simultaneously ruthless (i.e., unemotional, strategic, and brutal) and elusive (i.e., hard to identify, confront, and dismantle). In this framing, violence becomes less an event and more a horizon of possibility: it permanently shapes relations and feelings of safety both inside and outside prison walls. Violent capital gives weight to threats and intimidation, which makes it a latent form of violence; something actors
Violent capital plays a central role in both conventional and non-conventional fields. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice, a field can be understood as a structured social space with its own rules, logics, and stakes, in which actors struggle over valued forms of capital – economic, social, cultural, and symbolic (Bourdieu, 1977). Organised crime operates within what Shammas and Sandberg (2016) call the “street field”: a metaphorical domain of social action shaped by informal economies, illegality, and reputational power. Within this field, violent capital – the capacity to inflict, threaten, or command violence – functions as a key resource that enhances one's position and influence. Access to networks of individuals willing or able to deploy violence constitutes a form of social capital, while financial resources facilitate violence logistically, through corruption, weapons, or contract killings.
In contrast, the prison system – and the broader criminal justice apparatus – belongs to the “bureaucratic field” (Bourdieu, 1999): a space in which state actors try to disrupt illegal activities, including organised crime. The field is shaped by legal rules and professional authority, and is driven by the state's claim to control violence through law. The bureaucratic field does not simply respond to the street field; it helps constitute it by defining what counts as criminal, violent, or dangerous. The street field and the bureaucratic field are thus mutually entangled, with violent capital as a key site of tension between them. These dynamics are particularly evident within prisons, where actors from both fields encounter each other. Violent capital has meaning in interactions between prisoners, and in interactions between staff and prisoners: “We see that people are put under pressure. What you notice is that the outside world, which we don’t have information on and can’t control, is involved. It is like, ‘you either cooperate or you don’t, but we know where you live, we know where your wife and children live.’ Then, a prisoner does the math and thinks, ‘I’ll just cooperate.’” (prison manager #7) “Those guys are everywhere, and this instils fear in staff. Like, can I give a certain [negative] message to a prisoner who is a member of [a criminal network]. (…) The case manager also says, ‘this could make me the bearer of bad news, what if they threaten me or my family, I have children.’” (prison manager #22)
The high-security fix: isolation and surveillance
Violent capital forms a key link between the phenomenon of prison-based organised crime and its consequences. The fear it inspires facilitates criminal activities as a tool for exploitation and intimidation, while also justifying preventive and investigative measures due to the fear of high-impact crimes. There are, broadly, two types of security measures: increased restrictions to prevent criminal activities, and increased investigative powers to trace and prosecute criminal activities (and to justify restrictions).
Regarding restrictions to prevent criminal activities, we can distinguish between restrictive custody (i.e., specific regimes/units), and specific (additional) security measures imposed on individuals considered high risk of prison-based organised crime. The landscape of restrictive custody in the Netherlands is changing due to the developments outlined in this article. The changes are aimed at increasing capacity to house and monitor individuals with specific risk profiles. The great majority of prisoners do not have a specific risk profile. Those who do, can be assigned one of three profiles (“heightened”, “high”, and “extreme”), based on the following criteria: risk of (A) escape, (B) continued criminal activity, (C) being killed, (D) radicalisation, (E) subversion of authority, and (F) unauthorised contact with victims, criminal justice actors, or media (Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen, 2021). Individuals with a “heightened risk” profile can be housed in a regular-security unit in any prison, while those with a “high risk” profile can only be housed in prisons with high security (there are currently ten of these). People with an “extreme risk” profile are housed in the extra-secure prison in Vught. 3 There are also so-called terrorist units in three prisons, intended for individuals suspected or convicted of terrorist offences.
A relatively new development is the intensive supervision units (
A new Act with new legal provisions around security measures against prison-based organised crime has been introduced in July 2025. 4 These provisions allow (1) visual recording of meetings between the prisoner and their lawyer; (2) limitation of legal representation to a maximum of two lawyers; and (3) restrictions on contact with people outside prison. The proposed legislation applies to individuals who are incarcerated in intensive supervision units and the extra-secure prison. Furthermore, the legislation allows the Minister to impose additional restrictive measures, including a (temporary) ban on any contact with the outside world, when there is “indicative evidence that the prisoner uses his [sic] contacts for serious intimidating or life-threatening activities in the outside world” or considering the offence or “personality of the prisoner, a danger to public order or safety should be assumed.” 5 As can be seen from the quotes above, this legislation is explicitly targeted at people with (supposed) violent capital. It aims to prevent the use of this violent capital primarily by restricting access to social capital; both in terms of contact with other prisoners, and people in the outside world.
Noteworthy are the attention and restrictions to legal representation. This is based on the assumption that lawyers are a (vulnerable and unmonitored) gateway to the outside world, through which people can continue to communicate with their criminal network and thus also continue with criminal activities. 6 In 2023, a lawyer was convicted of membership of a criminal organisation, because he passed on messages to and from a prisoner in the extra-secure prison. 7 At the moment of writing, two more lawyers are suspected of the same offence.
In addition to the above outlined measures targeted at prisoners with a high-risk profile, there are also developments that affect the general population of prisoners. In the Netherlands, every prison has a security and intelligence office (
The reproduction of risk through security measures
Problems that are presented as security problems tend to escape critical political debate (Zedner, 2009). Nevertheless (and perhaps especially so), it is important to consider the implications, problems and potential costs associated with the measures intended to enhance security and address the (perceived) threats. Rather than neutralising prison-based organised crime and associated violent capital, security measures may contribute to its rearticulation. Individuals subjected to intensive control may accrue violent capital precisely because of their isolation. Their perceived capacity to mobilise violence is not diminished but intensified, through institutional attention and peer recognition. In this way, the prison's own security apparatus becomes a mechanism for valorising violent capital, even as it attempts to contain it. Such dynamics reveal how control strategies can have recursive effects, generating the very forms of reputational power they aim to suppress.
The first issue is the observer effect: this means that the nature of the phenomenon changes through observation. Related to this, there is also a risk of (naïve) interventionism (Taleb, 2012): interventions may have (unintended) negative effects that sometimes cause worse problems. For example, the monitoring of prison phones can lead to more illegal cell phones; as people become aware that their conversations through prison phones are not private, they are motivated to gain access to unmonitored cell phones. This stimulates the illicit economy (of contraband trading) and associated problems. Prison managers also note that the label of “high-risk prisoner” can itself increase status: “When you have that label [high-risk prisoner] on a wing, you are somebody. Apparently, it makes you a big man. Either you are in the trade, or you are at risk of getting killed, or you are simply one of the big men. It gives you status.” (prison manager #2)
In short, more successful prosecution and punishment can have the paradoxical effect of increasing safety problems. This is typical of the pursuit of security: security is impermanent and unattainable, because there will always be unknown threats and vulnerabilities, revealed only when exploited (Zedner, 2003). Prison managers are aware of this problem and refer to this as the “cat-and-mouse game”: “The only thing you can do is to keep watching them, to intercept, to pre-empt. But when it's done, it's done. You will never tackle it entirely; it will always be a cat-and-mouse game.” (prison manager #12) “When safety is threatened, you act on it. But it's not the default. If you want to keep everything secure, you simply lock them up all day. Then, nothing happens. But then, you get very agitated people behind the door and you’ll have to be careful opening the door.” (prison manager #23)
The third issue is that security measures against prison-based organised crime change the function of imprisonment to include law enforcement, through intelligence gathering, surveillance and investigation. Traditionally, the prison has been the final link in the chain of the criminal justice process (barring post-release supervision). With this development, however, the prison takes up roles that were previously squarely in the remit of police (in terms of investigation), prosecution (in terms of evidence gathering), and intelligence services (in terms of threat surveillance). Two accompanying problems are worth examining in more detail: the implications for the work of frontline prison officers, and the endangerment of the rehabilitative function of imprisonment.
The focus on surveillance brings tension to the role of the prison officer and creates role conflict. Following the logic of relational security, prison officers can do their best work when they achieve a professional relationship with prisoners based on trust and mutual respect (Liebling, 2004). Tasks such as signalling risks and reporting any suspicious behaviour, however, engender uncertainty and distrust. In a study of staff-prisoner relationships in a high-security prison in England, Liebling et al. (2011) identified low levels of trust, accompanied by high levels of suspicion and risk-thinking related to religious radicalisation and terrorism. This undermined relational security through a reduced flow of information, and also affected feelings of safety among staff and prisoners. Other studies also found that reporting and monitoring tasks can hamper good relationships between staff and prisoners (Crewe, 2011; Schrauwen and Molleman, 2023).
Prison managers may also experience role conflict if they become involved in criminal investigations, as illustrated in the quote below: “You [as prison manager] are here for the safety and order in the prison, but also for the re-integration of prisoners. And how does the duty of care that you have here, relate to having to testify in court? That creates a bit of tension. Because normally, someone is convicted and a judge says ‘go to prison’, and that's where we come into play. And now we’re also somewhere in the middle of the [criminal justice] process. I understand, we feel a responsibility to society to do this, but it does make your role more diffuse.” (prison manager #32)
Related to this is the issue that the focus on security diverts attention and resources away from rehabilitation, and limits access to re-integration activities. Furthermore, restrictive custody is itself at odds with re-integration preparation, which benefits from contact with the outside world and autonomy. “You have security and re-integration, those are clashing aims [of imprisonment]. With re-integration you make the connection with the outside, let prisoners gradually get used to the outside world, let organisations come into prison, clinical interventions, local authorities, health care, etcetera. That doesn’t sit well with stricter security measures, that chafes.” (prison manager #31) “Ninety percent of our security measures are intended for five percent of our prisoners. So you overprotect a lot of people and that somewhat hinders re-integration.” (prison manager #44)
Discussion
Taken together, these findings illuminate how prison-based organised crime is perceived and responded to within the Dutch penal system. It is commonly framed as a ruthless, elusive, and omnipresent threat; one that is not only highly violent but also difficult to detect or contain. This framing sustains a high-security logic, in which exceptional control measures are seen as necessary and justified. Such measures often extend beyond those directly implicated in organised crime and can result in significant infringements on the rights and liberties of prisoners. In this way, the spectre of prison-based organised crime becomes a powerful rationale for intensified surveillance, isolation, and restriction; responses that may erode the rehabilitative aims of imprisonment and deepen carceral harm.
The accounts of prison directors reveal a process of discursive othering, in which certain prisoners are constructed as fundamentally different from previous generations. Although not explicitly stated, the opposition between
The relationship between prison-based organised crime, violence, and fear is complex. Similar to organised crime in the community (Campana et al., 2025), the presence of organised crime groups in prison does not necessarily lead to more violence inside. Violence fulfils multiple functions: it can serve to settle conflicts inside and outside the group, protect territorial or economic interests, and safeguard members. The threat of violence is often sufficient to enforce compliance. As with violent capital, the credible threat of violence, anchored in reputation, can stabilise relations both inside and outside prison without recourse to actual force. However, law enforcement interventions can disrupt this balance and unintentionally fuel violence (Kotzé et al., 2022). This may explain why the presence of organised crime groups can have both a violence-enhancing and violence-suppressing effect (Campana et al., 2025). This dynamic seems pertinent to the Dutch context, where the trial and imprisonment of a criminal network leader have been linked to a series of killings outside of prison. This also illustrates the close connection between prisons and society: rather than treating organised crime (in prison or outside) as a discrete phenomenon, it is important to consider how it unsettles the notion of the prison as a closed and total institution.
There is a clear parallel between the approaches to preventing prison-based organised crime and terrorism. The prevention of terrorism relied on similar pre-emptive strategies (e.g., restrictions based on risk assessments and intelligence), often eroding freedoms without due process (McCulloch and Pickering, 2009; Zedner, 2007). Security measures against prison-based organised crime raise many of the same concerns. Human rights concerns deserve attention in this respect, but the potential impact on the functioning of prisons should not be ignored either. First, disproportionate attention to risk and dangerousness can contribute to a climate of hostility and distrust (Liebling et al., 2011). Prison officers may withdraw and avoid close interactions, while prisoners may fear the consequences of staff reporting on their behaviour. Second, the changing task of prison services to include law enforcement and crime investigation can have consequences in terms of shifting and conflicting priorities. While there is not necessarily an opposition between security and rehabilitation (“security serves rehabilitation”, Sturt and Gooch, 2021: 12), there is a risk that security measures limit re-integration opportunities, especially if the net of these measures is cast widely.
An effective approach to tackling (prison-based) organised crime lies, at least in part, in altering the underlying conditions that generate demand for criminal organisations (see also Gooch and Treadwell, 2025; Skarbek, 2014). For example, daily programming with much time out-of-cell, meaningful activities, good release prospects, and family contact can reduce reliance on illicit avenues – such as drug use – as a means of coping with pain and monotony. Moreover, a constructive approach to drug use and supply in prison should focus on harm reduction (potentially including regulated access to cannabis) and treatment rather than repression and punishment. Such measures not only diminish demand for an illicit economy but also lower the likelihood that especially harmful (psychoactive) substances such as spice are traded in prisons.
The Dutch government has looked to the Italian 41-bis regime as an example for preventing prison-based organised crime by limiting communication between incarcerated people and members of mafia organisation outside prison. Many of its elements have already been adopted or are currently under consideration. This strategy, however, is also at the cost of non-criminal forms of communication, such as family contact and contact with other incarcerated individuals. The regime effectively becomes highly isolating and greatly limits opportunities for rehabilitation. Indeed, a primary concern is the lack of a clear exit-strategy for individuals incarcerated under these strict conditions: there is no gradual preparation for re-integration for prisoners with a determinate sentence, and little prospect of transfer to a lighter regime for prisoners with a life sentence (Struijk et al., 2023).This threatens the long-term sustainability and legitimacy of such a regime. A strategy for preventing prison-based organised crime should take these concerns into consideration, by outlining procedures that guarantee due process and prospects for progressing to lower security regimes. Policymakers should also heed recommendations made by the CPT regarding the Italian 41-bis regime: to limit its duration, improve out-of-cell activities, and expand communication rights. Furthermore, it is important to recognise that violent capital extends beyond means of communication that connect people inside and outside of prison. The rationale behind highly restrictive regimes rests on a narrow understanding of how violent capital operates; violent capital can have meaning even in isolation and may drive criminal acts without the direct involvement of the incarcerated person. The attempt to curb violent capital by restricting communication therefore risks misrecognising the social dynamics that sustain it, while producing extreme forms of isolation that may undermine any prospect of rehabilitation. This approach also risks a path-dependent reliance on carceral control – one that reproduces its own necessity and forecloses more constructive alternatives.
A strategy for preventing prison-based organised crime requires robust mechanisms for oversight, data gathering, and evaluation. Current information practices focus primarily on intelligence gathering for operational purposes, but systematic data collection is also needed to assess policy effectiveness. This includes comparative research into dispersal versus concentration strategies, monitoring the long-term outcomes for individuals subjected to restrictive measures, and evaluating broader institutional effects such as staff-prisoner relationships and prison climate. By embedding evaluation into policy design, the Dutch government could create an adaptive and evidence-informed framework that not only responds to security concerns but also safeguards the long-term legitimacy of its prison system.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
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