Ingrid Coenradie

Coenradie joined the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) in her teens. She left the party after Mark Rutte was chosen over Rita Verdonk to lead the party in 2006, believing the VVD had moved too far to the political left.^[2] She later became a member of Livable Rotterdam, and she started serving on the Rotterdam Municipal Council in 2022, with a focus on safety.^[4] She stressed the importance of the police, citing her two sexual assaults, and she was in favor of permitting preventive frisking at night in response to a series of incidents involving explosives.^[4][2] Coenradie became her party's parliamentary leader in July 2023.^[4] She proposed to offer courses to young street criminals and to help them start businesses, in order to give them a second chance. She explained that her break with the party's usual tough-on-crime stances was due to her strong belief in prevention.^[3]

After the PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB formed the Schoof cabinet, Coenradie was sworn in as State Secretary for Justice and Security on 2 July 2024. She was nominated by the PVV.^[4][6] Her portfolio includes civic integration, prisons, probation service, fire brigade, regional disaster relief and crisis management, sexual offenses, and reforms of emergency powers legislation.^[7] In response to a personnel shortage in prisons, Coenradie examined the possibility of re-opening a closed prison in Almere and incarcerating convicts in Estonian prisons, despite significant opposition to the latter in parliament. She also shortened sentences for most detainees by three days. When she was considering lengthening this period to two weeks, PVV party leader Geert Wilders flatly rejected the suggestion.^[8][9]

On 20 June 2025, Coenradie announced she was leaving PVV to become a member of JA21, partially in response to her public clashes with Wilders.^[10]

Coenradie battled and survived cervical cancer twice.^[3]