On Thursday January 25, 2018 the study day of PROCES took place with the title ‘Sex, ICT and criminal law’. Sex is as old as the road to Rome so there is nothing new there. But with the arrival of ICT in addition to the physical world there is a new world in which sex has also found his way. Where as sex in the past consisted of physical interactions between people in the same space, now sexual interaction also happens between people who are miles apart, connected by ICT. During the study day the central issue was how organizations involved in sex, ICT and criminal law deal with sex in the digital dimension and which problems they face.

In 2017 the Probation Service carried out a pilot with the virtual reality (VR)-simulation ‘Don’t you Forget about Me’. In total 13 offenders of domestic violence experienced as a 7-Year old boy a serious fight between parents. The simulation was part of the cognitive behavioral intervention BORG. Four groups underwent the simulation in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. It was assumed that this experience would lead to more empathy, awareness, and self-reflection.
As the results showed, the simulation seemed suitable in BORG. Most of the participants were very positive about it. The fighting parents had a huge effect on them. Self-reported questionnaires administered after he simulation showed a better self-reflection on the behavior of the participants, more sympathy with the feelings of their children and (ex)-partner, and more insight into the damaging effects of the violence. The simulation appeared to be a powerfull device: it made a deep emotional connection, which enabled to create more empathy.

The day to day work of social professionals working with ‘hard to reach’ people, is known to be highly complex. Especially the interdependent relationship with other agencies.
Often problems are not only related to social and welfare themes but also to safety and justice issues. Therefore a wider perspective is asked for. Questions answered in this article are: which elements are being perceived as complex in the relationship with other agencies and how do professionals relate to these elements. Data is used from former research performed within a team working with Roma families. Knowledge, expertise, information sharing and coordination are perceived as complex elements. Good contacts and communication between individual professionals are essential. Understanding each other’s perspective is crucial in achieving a joint effort. Professionals need intensive support in order to keep focused on the values of their work and avoid being led by emotions and issues of the day.

In the ‘participation society’ it is expected that citizens actively contribute to solving societal problems, including health care, immigration and security issues. A somewhat similar responsibilisation culture is visible in prisons, where prisoners are held responsible for their own rehabilitation. This article problematizes the way in which prisoners’ agency is promoted in Dutch prisons, considering prisoners’ constrained agency and the normative expectations that are tied to the approach. This critique is advanced through discussion of the promotion/demotion system that has been used in Dutch prisons since 2014. This system, comparable to the Incentives and Earned Privileges system in England and Wales, espouses both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ behavioural norms. The soft behavioural norms reflect a citizenship ideal that extends beyond compliance with the law. It is argued that these normative expectations tied to agency have a limiting effect on prisoners’ autonomy. This article argues in favour of a shift from the citizenship ideal to an autonomy ideal, which applies the principle of minimum restrictions. Furthermore, access to education, reintegration courses and contact with family should be treated as a right, rather than a privilege, in order to maximise autonomy and minimise the harmful effects of imprisonment.

Human traffickers are usually depicted in public discourse as evil villains: the crème de la crème of organized crime. Although this image has also been dominant among scholars for a long time, it has become increasingly controversial. On the one hand, this debate is fueled by discussions amongst criminologists on criminal networks, on the other hand by the expansion of the legal definition of the crime since 2005. Apart from exploitation in the prostitution sector, various other forms of human trafficking are distinguished now, including labor exploitation. This article explores the question of which organizational forms play a role in labor exploitation. Through a review of the empirical research literature on labor exploitation, the authors show that in the field of labor exploitation, there is probably less involvement in criminal syndicates or criminal networks that maintain contacts with other criminal networks. In many cases, labor exploitation is committed by individuals or family businesses, or smaller loosely organized networks that are not necessarily embedded in other criminal networks. For researchers and policy makers alike, it is therefore advisable not to approach labor exploitation exclusively from the perspective of transnational organized crime.

Public organizations seem to be in a permanent state of transition in an attempt to adapt to the outside world. A recent development is the emergence of hybrid professional roles in fields such as healthcare and primary education. These hybrids are a midway between managerial and professional roles and are expected to collaborate with stakeholders in tackling problems. This article focuses on the challenges of recently appointed hybrid professionals within a Police team in The Netherlands. We focus on their efforts to find a place and position in their team by analyzing some critical incidents in which they clashed with their fellow professionals. In doing so, they perform ‘identity work’ to find out who they are, both for themselves, as for colleagues. We conclude both identity and identity work don’t come natural in a hybrid professional reality and stress the need for facilitation of professional reflection at the organizational level.