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Abstract
The goals of resocialization and reintegration that keep appearing in policy statements on the prison system in The Netherlands are critically reviewed in this contribution by means of a comparison with daily prison practice. A picture of the modern Dutch prison is sketched with the use of interviews and excerpts from letters. It would appear that in practice a lack of effort exists towards reintegration and resocialization. This difference between the practice of prison and the theory of policy and politics can be captured in a Durkheimian perspective. Lack of genuine resocialization shows an exclusion of the criminal, and this exclusion is brought forth by means of the discourse on resocialization, which, in its very formulation, excludes the criminal from 'society' a priori. This exclusion is strengthened by means of two mechanisms of social control: (1) the systematic discursive separation of an 'inside' and an 'outside' of society, as becomes apparent in political and popular discourse; and (2) an association of the criminal with the perverse and radically different.