Louk Hulsman

According to Hulsman, his childhood and adolescence were marked by the time he spent in a religious boarding school that left him traumatized.

After graduating from school Hulsman was involved in a resistance movement during World War II.

Hulsman later recalled how some members of his resistance movement had stolen weapons and clothing even from other Allied troops during the war.

In 1963 he became a professor for criminal law and criminology at the Netherlands School of Economics, the later Erasmus University Rotterdam (emeritus 1986).

Together with Nils Christie and Thomas Mathiesen he is a prominent representative of the prison abolition movement.