What’s cooking? The (inter)national implementation of self-catering in Dutch prisons Recent developments in Dutch correctional facilities have expanded opportunities for self-catering by enabling more options for incarcerated persons to prepare their own meals, which raises questions about the applicable legal and normative frameworks. This article therefore examines relevant laws, jurisprudence, policy, and monitoring frameworks of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the Netherlands regarding food and cooking in detention. It indicates that self-catering is embedded within broad obligations, yet characterised by interpretative discretion that can permit variation in its implementation across and within correctional institutions, thereby offering guidance for policymakers seeking to promote more equitable treatment in detention.

Prison food studies found that communal cooking improves peer support, agency, well-being, and construction of new identities or social status. However, the decision to cook with others, rather than alone, remains an underexplored dimension of prison life. This study fills that gap by examining the extent to which both personal characteristics and prison conditions associate with communal cooking and eating practices, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of the importation and deprivation models. Using data from the Life-in-Custody Study IV and the Food-in-Custody Study IV, with 1,519 participants across all 28 Dutch prison locations, this study provides a first quantitative insight into the communal cooking and eating practices of a large and diverse group of incarcerated individuals. The findings show that several importation and deprivation factors are significantly associated with participation in communal food practices: having a younger age, a national (Dutch) background, more available cooking time, sharing a cell, and satisfaction with one’s own cooked meals. These findings identified which individual characteristics and deprivations associate with (non-)participation of communal cooking, providing policymakers a foundation to develop more opportunities for communal food practices, ensuring everyone has access to its benefits.

Quantitative social network research in prison contexts has largely overlooked cooperative practices, such as communal cooking. Remarkable, since qualitative prison food studies identify communal cooking as an important activity through which social bonds are formed and resources are pooled. However, little is known about how cooking partnerships are structured and which factors shape them. This study addresses this gap by analysing cooking networks among 119 incarcerated men across three prison units in The Netherlands. Using social network analysis, the study examines whether financial resources, cooking skills, status and socio-demographic characteristics are associated with the likelihood of cooking together. Findings show that communal cooking is structured by trust, friendship, social similarity and status, rather than by resources or cooking skills as was shown in prior research. Based on our results, we argue that prison food provisions should consider the impact of their institutional arrangements on social organisation and how to actively promote collaboration and constructive social interaction.

In popular media, carceral food places are often depicted as large communal mess halls, but this does not reflect the diversity of such spaces worldwide. Carceral geography, while exploring prison spaces, seldom examines foodplaces in detail. Using empirical data from 21 Dutch penal institutions, we describe how incarcerated persons experience these spaces. Some elements of carceral foodplaces are normalized, but others, such as the gap between the frequency of self-catering and the need for bricolage, are not. We recommend more collaborative construction to better understand facility repurposing and its underlying motivations.

While racializing political language about Muslims has been prevalent in Western Europe throughout modern history, the events of 9/11 and the bombings in Madrid further elevated political suspicion towards Islam, ultimately making Muslims a suspect community. Western European political discourses have framed acts of terrorism and radicalization as inherent to the Islamic tradition, resulting in problematic notions such as ‘Islamic terrorism. This article examines the evolving narratives on Islam and the intricate interplay between religion, language and political discourses in Belgium. The research is based on a Critical Discourse Analysis of debates held in the Belgian First Chamber of Representatives over a 21-year span. It focusses on how political language is used to talk about Muslims in Belgium and how radicalization and terrorism are intertwined with Islam. This research concludes that over time, Belgian political narratives have intertwined ‘radicalization’ and ‘terrorism’ to the religion of Islam, contributing to the racialization of these concepts. While 9/11 is viewed as a pivotal moment in the racialization discourse towards Muslims, this research identifies the Madrid bombings as a more significant catalyst for racializing political discourses. Both in terms of language and policies, the conflation of Islam with terrorism and radicalization became deeply embedded in political discourses and responses shaped by events such as the departure of Belgian nationals to Syria, the attacks in Paris and Brussels. A shift in narrative appears in 2017 with political discourses incorporating other ideologies, predominantly the extreme-right, into discussions on radicalization. The association of extreme right with the concept of terrorism however is less reoccurring and continues to revolve around the religion of Islam.

The impact of the insular nature of prison environments is usually studied from the perspective of incarcerated persons. This article presents key findings from an ethnographic study in a Belgian telephone pole‐style prison, exploring the experiences of prison officers working in single‐staffed units and the impact on the occupational culture. Drawing on the emic term ‘islands’ used by prison officers in this study to metaphorically depict both the material and psychological work environment, this article discusses the impact of specific work conditions within this prison setting, such as the detrimental effect of prison officer isolation on staff cohesion, solidarity and functional staff–prisoner relationships. Moreover, the results show that certain factors, such as local prison policy, digital communication and prison layout, may contribute to or reinforce insularity.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) poses integration challenges within criminological sciences, often leading to discussions about incarcerated individuals without their direct involvement. Our research in two newly established Belgian prisons demonstrates that engaging incarcerated individuals, service providers, and prison staff in PAR can reduce practices of Othering and dehumanization. Through research aimed at identifying the needs of different actors, we explored the complexities of applying PAR in a correctional environment. This article discusses both the benefits of including vulnerable groups in prison research and the structural barriers limiting PAR’s adoption.

Since 2019, Denmark has faced problems of prison overcrowding exacerbated by shortages of prison staff.To overcome this, Denmark reached an agreement to rent 300 prison cells from Kosovo in order to house convicted prisoners from non-EU countries scheduled for deportation from Denmark after their sentences have expired.Based on the Belgian (2010-2016) and Norwegian (2015-2018) experiences of renting prison cells abroad, this article will explore the Danish policy of easing prison overcrowding by renting prison places abroad.The findings show that the principle of renting prison cells abroad can solve immediate problems of overcrowding for the sending state and fill empty prison places in the receiving state, but not without serious concerns.In particular, the commodification of foreign national prisoners can undermine the protection of prisoners' rights such as legal certainty and protection against torture or cruel and unusual treatment.Moreover, renting prison cells is a short-term solution for prison overcrowding underlying the fundamental issue of expansionist prison policies in European countries.