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 "At the moment, the queue is at 1,300 custodial sentences, and
there is a great demand for detention space," it said in a
statement. "The Netherlands has already leased prison capacity to
Belgium for several years."
Norwegian prisons are known for their relatively humane treatment of
inmates, with non-violent offenders often held in open prisons with
some free personal movement, jobs, recreation facilities and focus
on rehabilitation.
A deal for several hundred prison places would allow Norway to avoid
overcrowding and maintain its standards while prison renovation work
costing up to 4.4 billion crowns ($700 million) is carried out.
The Nordic country's incarceration rate is around 72 for each
100,000 people, about a tenth of the level in the United States, and
its re-offending rate of around 20 percent is among the lowest in
the world.
"In Norway there is a capacity shortage, and right now we have a
surplus," Fred Teeven, the Dutch state secretary with responsibility
for prisons, said in a letter to the Dutch parliament.
The Netherlands already has a contract to house overflow prisoners
from Belgium - roughly half of whose population speaks Dutch - in a
prison near the Belgian border.
"The situation with Norway will be different," Teeven said, "because
Norway is not an immediate neighbor, is not a member of the European
Union and the language is different."
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A deal would provide for Norwegian sentences to be carried out from
2015 in accordance with Norwegian law on Dutch territory.
The Netherlands' prison population stood at 11,160 at the end of
2012, and has been falling continuously since 2008, according to the
Dutch prison service.
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt
in Amsterdam; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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