Samenvatting

Harmonious relationships among people are necessary to restore harmony with our natural environment and make sustainable life on the planet possible. The lion’s share of attention when criminal laws are violated goes to punishing the perpetrator. Cultivating victimhood, on the other hand, also leads to more and longer punishments which just makes recovery more difficult. To put it mildly, the concept of the classic prison appears to have little compatibility with dialogue and equality. A multitude of small-scale, community-based forms of detention houses that replace the old prisons can allow for differentiation and can better involve the social environment in what happens during punishment. But not only does public law need to care more about the private interests of involved parties, private law also needs to learn to rethink community building. Hopefully, small-scale detention houses will challenge their environment in this sense.