With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons.
The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and now, amid the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centres.
Most of the 12 former prisons and jails housing asylum seekers have been so transformed that they are barely recognisable as former places of involuntary detention, though in some cases the thick cell doors and bars on windows are stark reminders of the past.
Prisons in the cities of Haarlem and Arnhem, with their distinctive domed roofs and circular galleries of cells around a central covered courtyard, are considered national monuments and cannot be renovated.
Even so, with just under 60,000 migrants arriving in the Netherlands last year, they have been temporarily pressed into service to house hundreds of asylum seekers.
"We had to think twice about using prisons with (cell) doors," said Janet Helder, a board member with the Dutch government agency responsible for housing asylum seekers.
"Some people in the neighbourhood asked, 'How can you put people from Syria who may have been imprisoned there in a cell here?' So we decided that if people really have a problem with it we will find somewhere else for them."
But the prisons often are well suited to their new use, Helder added. Her organisation currently is housing about 41,000 people at 120 locations throughout the Netherlands.
Asylum seekers who spoke to The Associated Press during recent visits to the prisons had few complaints beyond gripes about the food. While they live in prisons, they are free to leave the buildings and grounds during the day and even spend some nights away.
Abdul Moeen Alhaji, a 16-year-old Syrian, is happy to call a prison cell in Arnhem home after initially staying in a tent in a temporary camp outside the city of Nijmegen.
"I don't feel that it is a prison," he said. "What matters is that we are safe here."
