House of Representatives wants to permanently exclude serious criminals from the mail system in jail | Inland

Until recently, eMates allowed prisoners to email the outside world. Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection) temporarily shut down the system in March, after signals that detainees were abusing it.

A motion by MP Ulysse Ellian (VVD) about eMates received support from a large part of the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon. The PVV, CDA, PvdA, GL, CU, JA21 and FvD, among others, support the VVD motion. Ellian hopes by partially stopping eMates to prevent serious criminals and terror suspects from prison from continuing with criminal behavior.

Unhindered communication

De Telegraaf revealed in March that a group of serious criminals, including leaders of the Mocro mafia, communicated with the outside world almost unimpeded via eMates for years from the extra secure facility in Vught.

Some EBI inmates sent and received dozens of messages a day. There were so many emails that the content was hardly looked at, sources at the Public Prosecution Service confirmed to De Telegraaf.

The problem surrounding eMates has been going on since 2020 and 2021, according to research by this newspaper. Initially, the number of e-mail messages via eMates from the EBI was limited to ten messages per week. This is because checking the mail traffic took a lot of capacity. Detainees complained about this to the Council for the Application of Criminal Justice (RSJ) and were proved right. On June 21, 2021, the Council determined that a number of messages became unlimited.

reject mail

According to the RSJ, the eMates e-mails should be regarded as normal letters and the judiciary may only refuse mail from and to detainees in connection with public order and safety. A capacity problem related to checking the mails is not a ground for refusal, the RSJ stated.

From that moment on, EBI detainees, including members of the Mocro mafia and other criminal leaders – who are imprisoned in the EBI precisely because of the great threat and flight risk – were therefore allowed to email the outside world without restrictions. There was hardly any control over the content. Weerwind expects the results of its own investigation after the summer and will then decide whether eMates may be used again by lighter categories of prisoners.

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