Young people in secure
accommodation should no longer be subjected to the "trauma" of solitary
confinement, Health Minister Hugo de Jonge has said. He wants to ban
solitary confinement from 2021 as part of his plans to improve the youth
care system. Experts estimate that solitary confinement is used several thousand
times a year by institutions, either as a punishment measure, to protect
the child or others around them, or because of a shortage of support
staff. In 2017, 2,254 young people were
treated in this way for behavioral problems that pose a danger to
themselves or others.