In pictures: The Dutch prison asylum seekers call home

With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to utilise its prisons, and some, such as the former prison of De Koepel, in Haarlem, are being used as centres for asylum seekers.

The prison was built in 1880 and has a distinctive domed roof above the circular galleries of cells and central courtyard.

Staff are on hand to help the 400 migrants adapt to Dutch life as they wait for the asylum process to start.

They are free to leave the buildings and grounds during the day and even spend some nights away.

Here, a Dutch volunteer teaches an Afghan refugee how to ride a bicycle.

"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.''

Imad Abdulrahman, 30, gives a haircut to a fellow Syrian refugee.

Hamed Karmi and his wife, Farishta Morahami, fled a village near the Afghan capital, Kabul, amid rising Taliban attacks. They paid smugglers $8,000 (£5,500) to get to Europe.

Those who spoke to the Associated Press news agency during recent visits to the prison had few complaints beyond gripes about the food, which they are seen queuing for.

The prisons offer good facilities, from gyms to basketball courts.

Yassir was a barber back home in Iraq and wants to learn Dutch so he can pick up his trade again. Here, he is shaping his wife Gerbia's eyebrows in the cell they share on the third floor of the Haarlem prison.