> There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate p

> There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate population. This is really off the mark. Having prisons and jails owned by the government does not mean that there's no incentive to increase the inmate population - in fact, the US is proof positive of that, because, for all the press that private prisons get, the number of them is quite small, and most of the worst abuses occur in state-run prisons. This isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but I should point out that, in general, people tend to underestimate the extent of the prison-industrial complex in Western/Central Europe, and particularly its effect on ethnic and religious minorities. It doesn't help that a lot of the countries that have problems with this also make it either difficult or illegal to access that data officially, so it's not discussed nearly enough.