Tbs system blocked: ‘Every utility room converted’

• Jisk van Haga

  online editor

The TBS system in the Netherlands is blocked and the clinics are completely jammed. The number of people waiting for a place at a TBS clinic has more than doubled in two years, despite an urgent warning from the Justice and Safety Inspectorate in 2020 that the system was threatening get stuck. This can be seen from the data requested by the NOS from the Ministry of Justice and Security.

Compared to 2017, the waiting list has become even four times longer. At the time there were an average of 26 people in prison waiting for TBS treatment, in 2020 it had risen to 45 and the counter now stands at an average of 106 people waiting because the TBS clinics are full.

The Ministry of Justice and Security does not expect the situation to change any time soon. “In the coming period, there will be significant pressure to place all TBS inmates. During this period, a large number of TBS passersby are expected to remain in the prison system,” says a spokesperson on the matter.

Director Harry Beinthema of the Van Mesdag clinic in Groningen sees the problem every day in his work. “In recent years, we have turned every storage room into a club. The buildings are overcrowded and we are out of staff.”

Another factor is that sitting patients almost never leave the hospital – there is simply no place in society where people can go after treatment. And that’s why there is no room for new TBS inmates. “There are people in prisons who need treatment, which is bad and bad,” Beintema says.

The Groningen clinic is by no means the only one that is filled to the brim, says the driver. He expects there to be ten to twenty people in each clinic waiting for a place in society. “It’s very frustrating. We want to be able to allow people back into society, into homes and sheltered housing facilities. But there aren’t any.”

Not only are the clinics and employees frustrated, but also the clients themselves, says lawyer Abdel Ytsma of the Bureau TBS Advocaten, which advises around 15% of the TBS population in the Netherlands. “They are shocked and desperate and frustrated. It’s not good for those vulnerable people to be without treatment for so long. That uncertainty, you can imagine what it does. It doesn’t necessarily make prison safer.”

The shortage of housing for detainees who have run out of treatment is a major problem. In an ideal world, after treatment in the clinic, TBS move to, for example, an independent home or assisted living. But for years, TBS had to deal, for example, with migrants who received a residence permit. Furthermore, residents of many municipalities do not expect TBS in their neighborhood.

“Many people protest against the arrival of, for example, assisted living facilities. They think it’s good that they are there or are coming, but they say not near me,” Beintema says of the outflow.

And that also has to do with the negative image, says Michiel van der Wolf, professor of forensic psychiatry at Leiden University. “It certainly plays a role that society is less open to TBS.”

According to Beinthema, it is very difficult to influence that negative image; the driver has been working at TBS for more than twenty years and, in his own words, continues to give explanations. “Every time something happens, people think: See, dangerous!”

“The thing is, if you look at the reoffending data, our TBS system works,” says Van der Wolf. “But the image that exists of TBS is distorted. For example, there are fewer and fewer incidents with TBS inmates on leave, but more news is being written about it. People can only think that things are getting worse and worse.”

In recent years, judges have more often mandated TBS with compulsory treatment. In 2016, this was enforced 106 times, in 2020 that number rose to 167. Lawyer Ytsma argues for more restraint by judges in this stricter measure. “Within the limits of the law, other solutions can also be hypothesized”.

In the short term, the solution to the harrowing situation of the clinics, according to Ytsma, lies in expanding the clinics with so-called long-care places (where a lower level of security applies), so as to create space in the TBS clinics.

“Don’t build a building somewhere in a small village and put TBS in it, but build places near existing clinics where people can rehabilitate peacefully without the pressure of treatment. Then build and attract staff,” says Ytsma.

Even the House of Representatives sees that the situation is becoming increasingly dire: they want to hold a debate there in the spring on the future of TBS.