Samenvatting

Under Dutch law, convicted criminals have the opportunity to request a pardon to cancel, reduce or alter their punishment. Pardoning is an important institute to guarantee fair and reasonable execution of sentences. However, little is known about the everyday practice of pardoning in the Netherlands. The current study sets out the legal framework of the institute of pardoning, as well as changes in pardoning law and policy. We demonstrate that over the period 1990-2011 both the amount of pardoning requests and decisions have decreased dramatically, and that the period 1995-2004 is characterized by an upsurge of conditional pardons at the expense of both unconditional pardons and pardon denials. We try to explain these developments in the light of changes in pardoning law and policy, prison overcrowding, increases in life sentences and of royal celebrations. We conclude that we cannot fully explain the developments in the pardoning practice and that better registration of the pardoning requests and grants are needed for a better understanding of the pardoning practice.