Samenvatting

A comparison between life prisoners and long-term forensic psychiatric inpatients shows, besides differences in legal position, important similarities. Therefore the results of an experiment with regime changes in the long-term ward of Dutch forensic psychiatric institutions might also be relevant for the regime of life prisoners. The experiments are partly based on the ideas of Andrews, Ward and Bonta. The fundamental idea is to give inpatients a sense of control over their life environment by granting them as much responsibility as possible for practicalities, by communicating with their representatives regularly and taking a positive attitude towards inpatients’ preferences and requests. First experiences show that the new approach seems to have a positive impact on inpatients. They suffer less from depression as well as aggressive moods, which contributes to a better atmosphere in the institution. Stressing the tentative nature of this observation the author indicates that the hypothesis on the beneficial effects of active influence on the life environment might be verified by research currently in progress.