Distance and Proximity in Staff-Prisoner Relationships in Women’s Prisons

WICC2025 Presentation by Dr Esther van Ginneken, Francesca Salamone and Arend de Korte (WICC2025-PID045)

Authors

Esther van Ginneken

Associate Professor in Criminology, Leiden University, Netherlands

Esther van Ginneken is associate professor in criminology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She received her PhD in 2014 at the University of Cambridge for her thesis on ‘The pains and gains of imprisonment’. Since the start of her academic career, Esther van Ginneken has conducted research on imprisonment in England and the Netherlands. Her primary research interests are prison climate, prison violence, and the wellbeing of incarcerated individuals. She has conducted research as part of the Life in Custody Study in the Netherlands, which involves a periodic survey among all individuals incarcerated in the Netherlands. This has included studies on cell sharing, the relationship between prison conditions and recidivism, and the concept of prison climate. Her research has been published in international peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Criminal Justice, Justice Quarterly, and Criminal Justice and Behavior. She is also well known for her work on posttraumatic growth among incarcerated individuals. Currently, Esther van Ginneken is principal investigator of a research project on safety in women’s prisons (funded by the Dutch Prison Service), and another research project on violence in prisons (funded by the Dutch Research Council).

Francesca Salamone

Prison Director , Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency, Netherlands

Francesca Salamone is governor of the women prison ‘PI Nieuwersluis’ in the Netherlands. She graduated in Law from the University of Nijmegen. After her studies she worked four years at the courthouse, first as a court clerk and then as the manager of the administrative law sector. In 2005 she started a management development program in a men’s prison. After two years she became director of a male prison. She worked in four different men correctional institutions. Since 2019 she has been working in the women’s prison PI Nieuwersluis with the capacity to accommodate 262 women. Under her leadership Francesca developed a safe work and living environment with a focus on reintegration processes. In addition to her work as a prison director she contributes to national policy on reintegration for the prison system. For the past years she also has been leading a culture change in the prison that emphasizes social safety for both prison staff and inmates, aiming to prevent undesirable behavior, including sexual misconduct.

Arend de Korte

Prison Director, Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency, Netherlands

Arend de Korte (1968) is the director of the Penitentiary Institution Zuid Oost, which Ter Peel women's prison is part of. He graduated Law at the University of Utrecht. After his studies, he joined the Ministry of Justice in 1994 as a management trainee. After a period of two years, he was appointed deputy director of the Noordsingel prison in Rotterdam. This made him the youngest prison director in the Netherlands. Over the years, Arend has led organizations with various regimes, ranging from extremely secured to limited security, both men's and women's institutions and in all regions of the Netherlands. For a number of years, Arend has also been chairman of the Dutch Association of Prison Directors, where, in addition to lobbying, he is committed to the profession of prison director in general. Ter Peel Prison offers a capacity to accommodate 235 incarcerated women. Just as in Nieuwersluis Prison, they have worked hard over the past year to achieve a cultural change in which the subject of transgressive behavior is central.

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