Since 30 years the Netherlands’ government practises an integration policy towards ethnic minorities. From the beginning, this comprehensive approach is challenged by demands of immigrated religious communities, e.g. the erection of buildings of worship. For the government, religion is an influential circumstance, not an object of the policy-making process. Therefore religious matters deserve political attention.The mid-nineties of the twentieth century brought the Islam into the focus of national policy. The first issue concerned the appointments on a temporary basis of Turkish imams by the Turkish authorities. That evoked the need for a Dutch training-school in order to be prevented from further admissions from abroad. In the meantime, compulsory introductory courses for religious leaders with a non-EU- or EEA-nationality were introduced. Since nine-eleven, the threats of Islamic ultra-orthodox tendencies dominate the political discourse.

This contribution examines the European Directive 2008/52/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2008 on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters and deals with the question whether the Belgian law on mediation, namely Articles 1724 to 1737 of the Belgian Judicial Code, as introduced into the Belgian law in 2005, need to be amended in the light of the Directive. It concludes that in some aspects the Belgian law ought to be improved so to implement some provisions of the Directive not yet dealt with in the law of 2005. It recommends to include in the Belgian law a definition on mediation, and also to stipulate which Belgian institution in particular shall provide the requested information on mediation and communicate with the European authorities. The contribution also suggests to consider introducing into the Belgian law a mechanism to promote mediation through incentives and/or sanctions, for which the measures recently adopted in the English legal system might possibly serve as an example.

This article focuses on the Madoff case which came to light at the end of 2008. Remarkable for this case is that Madoff could go on with his scam for a very long time. Failing supervision was not the only reason for this. Madoff’s qualities – disguising the illegal activities and his social stature – cannot explain the whole puzzle. The social network, a ‘secret society’ and the fact that people involved went on with it, even when knowing that ‘it was too good to be true’ are explained in this article.

Just over thirty years ago now, on 12^th January 1977 to be precise, Sir Anthony Bottoms presented his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Criminology at the University of Sheffield, UK. The full text of this almost prophetic Lecture was subsequently published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice and reached a much wider audience. One of its central themes was the emerging tendency within British criminal justice policy to treat really serious offenders in a significantly different manner from their less serious counterparts with whom a more lenient approach might be justified. This tendency he described as penal bifurcation.There were two reasons why such an apparently logical approach might be found exceptionable: the first relates to the general principal of treating like cases similarly, and the second that the practice was proposed on the basis of the relative extent of social risk that might be claimed to differentiate serious from less serious offending. Bifurcation in both of these forms is evident in the use within some jurisdictions of extended and indeterminate sentences for public protection, and in many respects also within parole release considerations.The central proposition in relation to bifurcation within this article is, however, of a somewhat different nature. Restorative justice places considerable reliance upon offenders accepting responsibility for their offences, showing remorse for the harm done to victims in the form of genuine apology, and then making reparation either to the victim(s) directly, or to victims of crime more generally. These principles apply equally to serious and less serious offenders, though the extent of reparation should logically be greater as the crime increases in gravity.In an era of widely increasing penal populations it is apparent that these escalations result from increased severity of sentencing on the one hand, and from wider use of custody and lower thresholds for imposing it on the other. Both forms of resort to custody in sentencing are increasingly justified on the basis of public protection, and to act otherwise is perceived (and often promoted in the media) as being ‘soft on crime’. Politicians anxious to retain electoral credibility do not wish to be labelled as soft on crime, and actively seek to avoid such accusations by supporting increasingly punitive measures against offenders.One of the reasons why restorative justice has attracted only limited acceptance in the world of adult criminal justice is that it is perceived as a less punitive response to offending than the more traditional retributive punishment mode or its ‘justice model’ desert-based counterpart. In the span of this article I shall attempt to describe how, with a respectable measure of bifurcation, a model of reparative and restorative justice can be presented as a viable and optimistic alternative to the penal politics of retributive punishment and social protection. That it might bring with it the potential for reduced use of custody will be left to the reader to decide.

Binnen afzienbare tijd zal de bestuurlijke strafbeschikking in het hele land worden ingevoerd. Met de komst van de bestuurlijke strafbeschikking krijgen gemeenten een nieuw instrument in handen ter handhaving van de openbare orde en veiligheid. De strafbeschikking als zelfstandige sanctiebevoegdheid op grond van het Wetboek van Strafvordering neemt een groot deel van de nadelen van de huidige buitengerechtelijke afdoening in strafzaken weg en heeft de voordelen van een bestuurlijke sanctie als de bestuurlijke boete. Met de invoering van de bestuurlijke strafbeschikking is dan ook mogelijk een adequaat handhavingsinstrument gecreëerd dat gemeenten een volwaardige en effectieve strafrechtelijke sanctiemogelijkheid kan bieden in vergelijking met de huidige transactie en de bestuurlijke boete.

In het kader van de voorgenomen inzet van de bijzondere voorwaarde voor justitiabelen met triple-problematiek is een quick scan uitgevoerd naar de zorgbehoefte van deze groep. Uit de analyse bleek dat er behoefte is aan een breed scala van aangepaste modules en programma’s in een context van intensieve, motiverende en deskundige begeleiding, met tijdige, herhaalde en op de problematiek van licht verstandelijk gehandicapte (LVG) aangepaste diagnostiek, vanuit een perspectief van continue zorg. Hoewel er zorgprogramma’s in ontwikkeling zijn, is de kennis versnipperd en is het beschikbare aanbod veelal niet voor de LVG-doelgroep onderzocht. Toch lijkt de bijzondere voorwaarde mogelijkheden te bieden voor deze groep.

Op 1 juli 2008 traden de nieuwe artikelen 15 tot en met 15l Sr in werking, waarmee de vervroegde invrijheidstelling van een tot een gevangenisstraf veroordeelde voortaan is gebonden aan bepaalde voorwaarden. Met deze regeling heeft de wetgever een extra factor doen ontstaan waarmee de rechter rekening moet of kan houden bij het bepalen van de lengte van een gevangenisstraf. Doordat de regeling van de voorwaardelijke invrijheidstelling niet geldt voor (deels) voorwaardelijke straffen, heeft de regeling ook invloed bij het antwoord op de vraag naar de strafmodaliteit. In dit artikel wordt onderzocht op welke manier de regeling van de voorwaardelijke invrijheidstelling de rechter kan beïnvloeden bij de keuze van de uiteindelijke straf.