This article examines which obligations the right to participation entails and to what extent the working method of Halt with regard to the Halt intervention – which aims to divert a child from the juvenile justice system when accused of a crime – complies with these obligations, and what the opinion is from young people who have experienced the Halt intervention about this working method. To this end, the following is discussed in succession: the international and European legal framework, the laws and regulations regarding the Halt intervention, the working method of Halt before, during and after the Halt intervention and the results from the surveys conducted among 515 young people who have completed a Halt intervention in 2020 or 2021. The research group is a selective and non-representative sample. According to the young people in the research group, the provision of information at the end of the Halt intervention needs improvement, as does the child-friendliness of the rooms in which the conversations are held. According to the respondents, the equality in the conversations with the Halt employee and the voluntary nature of the Halt intervention can also be improved. The presence of the parent(s) of the juvenile to improve the participation of juveniles is debatable on the basis of the research findings.

Juvenile defendants have the right to be heard and to participate during proceedings before the juvenile court. For participation to be effective, five steps elaborated by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child need to be taken into account: the preparation for the hearing, the hearing itself, the assessment of the capacity of the minor, the feedback to the minor, and the possibility to lodge a complaint or an appeal. Based on qualitative interviews with professionals and minors, this article examines the five steps in Flemish practice. The results show a variety of experiences and practices concerning participation due to a lack of regulation. As a result, effective participation now strongly depends on the will and competence of individual professionals.

Participation of young suspects in the youth justice process is receiving increased attention. This article discusses two perspectives on participation. First, participation is interpreted in light of the right to a fair trial, as enshrined in international child and human rights standards. Second, participation is interpreted from the concept of procedural justice. The central research question is to what extent do young people imprisoned in a juvenile correctional facility experience procedural justice during the youth justice process? The results show that respondents experience a low level of procedural justice and that improvements in the youth justice process are possible in the areas of information provision and interaction between the different actors in the courtroom.

Statements provided by suspects during police questioning often still play a central role in criminal proceedings. Partly in light of the inevitable pressures associated with police questioning, the procedural rights of suspects in the context of police questioning have been strengthened in recent years at both European and national levels. However, such strengthened procedural safeguards are useful in practice only if suspects actually (can) exercise their rights. The findings of (mainly Anglo-Saxon) criminological-psychological research demonstrate that the effective exercise of procedural rights is by no means self-evident. In fact, the exercise of procedural rights can be hampered in practice by numerous psychological mechanisms and the dynamics inherent to the interaction between a suspect and the police and judicial authorities. Therefore, purely legal measures are insufficient to improve the effective exercise of procedural rights in practice. Thus, in addition to purely legal initiatives, other measures – such as awareness-raising and science-based training – are needed to facilitate the effective exercise of procedural rights by suspects in practice.

Based on earlier empirical research, this contribution investigates how the Counsel in Police Interrogation Act, which was implemented in 2017, works out in practice. The authors analyse the data in two steps. First, based on existing documents and interviews, the underlying policy theory is reconstructed. Second, based on questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, observations, registries and investigation files, an overview is provided about the way in which investigating officers and lawyers actually act. The policy theory shows that specific acts of investigating officers and lawyers are required to reach legislation’s proposed goals. In practice, investigating officers and lawyers generally act as expected according to the legislation. Yet, under certain conditions, adequate legal aid provision is dependent on the individual way investigating officers and lawyers act and the opportunity structure in which they operate. The empirical results raise the question whether the Counsel in Police Interrogation Act sufficiently contributes to safeguarding the fundamental right to a fair trial.

The focus of evaluation studies sanctions or sanction policy is mainly on the effectiveness of outcome, such as reducing recidivism. Public policy evaluations (PPEs) often use a more broad evaluation framework, including contribution analysis and multiple evaluation criteria. These evaluations are not limited to effectiveness, but focus also on relevance, goal attainment, efficiency, or coordination of the policy. Moreover, PPE recommends incorporating policy specific criteria, such as evaluating human rights in practice. This framework was adopted in a post hoc evaluation of the Adolescent Criminal Law (ACL).
This case study focused on the sanctioning of young adult offenders aged 18 up to and including 22 years old with a juvenile sanction in the Netherlands. In order to evaluate multiple criteria, a range of methods and sources was used, including a literature review, reconstruction of the policy theory, empirical analysis of registration data, a quasi-experiment, interviews with practitioners, and analysis of court decisions. Results showed that ACL has theoretical relevance to stimulate desistance from a criminal career, and that the forensic advice and sanctioning with a juvenile sanction increased as expected over time. However, juvenile sanctioning of young adult offenders showed a negative or null-effect on recidivism. Bottlenecks in practice can explain these mixed effects, such as a non-specified target group, variation across the Netherlands in forensic advice and opposed sanctions, and limited access to juvenile forensic services. Indications of bottlenecks in the ability to comply with human rights were also found, such as a lack of transparency and equality in the application of adolescent criminal law. The relevance of complying with human rights in practice is discussed in the light of contemporary resocialization theories.

How children’s rights and more specifically the right to complain functions in youth institutions remains fairly unexplored territory. Nevertheless, insight into the role of the right to complain in practice is of the utmost importance. Children and young people do have certain rights, following international treaties and also often national regulations, but whether and how those rights ultimately improve the participation and legal/power position of children remains underexposed. Therefore, in this contribution the authors argue for an ‘empirical children’s rights perspective’, in which children’s rights are not mere legal-theoretical touchstones, but tools that actors (both professionals and minors) mobilize (or not) in a given context. From such an empirical children’s rights perspective, understanding the practice and context in which children’s rights (should) be applied is very important. Indeed, an empirical children’s rights perspective starts from the premise that it is the context that determines how professionals and minors mobilize (or not) children’s rights. The Flemish complaint law in juvenile institutions is, from an empirical children’s rights perspective, a unique case, because it has only had a formal basis since 2017. Thanks to the empirical research that the authors have conducted (observations and interviews), this contribution offers, on the one hand and foremost, important insights into the functioning of the right to complain in a Flemish youth institution. On the other hand, this contribution also sheds light on the changes and problems the authors observe in the transition from an informal to a formal right to complain in Flemish youth institutions. Furthermore, the unexpected impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the introduction of formal complaint law is also discussed in this contribution. In their conclusion, the authors emphasize the importance and implications of an ‘empirical children’s rights perspective’ both in terms of research and the idea and theory of children’s rights themselves.

Municipal authorities play an important role in preventing and disrupting (organized) crime. With the administrative approach to outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCG), this is reflected, among other things, in the initiation of stop conversations, and in the way in which local catering regulations and the general local ordinance are adjusted to make it more difficult for OMCG-members to visibly participate in society. On the basis of a criminological-legal analysis, the authors show how this approach can interfere with human rights enshrined in the Dutch constitution, in particular the right to freedom of association (art. 8), the right to freedom of assembly (art. 9) and the right to freedom of expression (art. 7, par. 3).

This article provides insights into differences and similarities in characteristics, treatment and punishment of girls compared to boys in the youth justice system. Empirical evidence on this issue is limited, certainly in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of differences in treatment and punishment between girls and boys. This article reflects on the question to what extent differentiation between girls and boys in the youth justice system is justified from a criminological perspective and how this relates to the principle of equality and non-discrimination, laid down in Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Recent court cases illustrate how harmful activities by Western multinational corporations can inflict vast harms on people and planet, mostly in non-Western communities. This article first proposes a model for potentially successful regulation of corporations that compromise human rights and the environment. This model is then applied to the cases of Shell in Nigeria, Soco International in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Veolia and HeidelbergCement in Occupied Palestinian Territories. The analyses show that the net of regulation can be closed in multiple ways. The case studies illustrate how civil society plays crucial roles in closing existing holes.