Prison

One may well wonder why St. Maarten’s Pointe Blanche prison has become the home of a convict who shot somebody in Aruba last year. With a sentence of 18 years to his name, the inmate will spend at least the next twelve years here.

It seems rather odd that Pointe Blanche would accommodate Aruba, while it has been fighting a shortage of cells for years, if not decades.

There are other options within the Kingdom and the first country that comes to mind is the Netherlands, were prison facilities are so under-occupied that several of them have been or will be closed down.

St. Maarten has already sent several convicts overseas – more for security reasons than anything else – but it shows that this option is real.

Offering cell space to a killer from another island does not seem to make a lot of sense.