While a life sentence means life in prison in the Netherlands, prisoners serving a life sentence (‘lifers’) in England and Wales are eligible for conditional release (upon discretion of the parole board) after serving a minimum term. Life after life imprisonment by Catherine Appleton (2010) provides a detailed insight into the post-release experiences of 138 lifers and the supervision of this group by the probation service. Appleton has collected data from files and by interviewing 113 probation officers and 37 lifers, including 9 who were back in prison. Qualitative analysis revealed that self-efficacy and normality (e.g. a stable job and family life) are important in the process of desistance and that the probation service plays a valued supportive role. Statistical analysis further showed that alcohol abuse, sex offending, a history of sexual abuse and a poor relationship with one’s probation officer are significant predictors of return to prison.

Immigration detention is formally not a punishment, but governments do seem to use it to deter irregular migrants from staying in the territory. This study explores whether and how practices of immigration detention in the Netherlands affect detainees’ decision-making processes regarding return and result in ‘specific deterrence’. 81 unauthorized irregular migrants were interviewed in immigration detention and their casefiles were examined. We find evidence for a limited deterrence effect: a minority of the respondents indeed wanted to return to their countries of origin in order to end their (repeated) stay in immigration detention. For some respondents the detention experience contributed to a desire to migrate from the Netherlands to a different European country. We go into the relevance of these findings for the continuing societal debate on the use of immigration detention.

Responsibility of the prisoner for his own rehabilitation is a central element of ‘Modernising Imprisonment’, the masterplan that aims to reform the execution of the prison sentence in the Netherlands. The Secretary of Justice strives for an individual approach based on the points of departure of the Life Course Approach in criminology. This method is designed in different ways. A central element is that rehabilitation will only be offered in the near future to prisoners that show responsibility for their rehabilitation. Based on this starting point, a far-reaching system of advancing and degrading is introduced. Prisoners can deserve freedoms by showing responsible behaviour, but loose them again in case of irresponsible or unmotivated conduct. Three objections against this aspect of Modernising Imprisonment are discussed. First, the rehabilitation principle itself does not allow for such a far-reaching exclusion of categories of prisoners. Second, the high demands put on prisoners are not realistic given the characteristics of the prison population. Third, the assumption that a strict system of advancing and degrading will increase the effectiveness of sentencing is not well founded and cannot be derived from research.

Can globalisation lead to more democracy? And if so, what concept of freedom lies at the basis of this development? The ideal of liberal freedom, supposedly exercised by the autonomous, rational individual is no longer tenable. Finding a new way of interpreting self-rule beyond self-interested choice has become a crucial aspect of regenerating democratic spirit. This paper formulates three comments on Winter’s paper. The first comment concerns the resemblance between the attitudes of consumers and voters. A second comment reflects on the positive heritage of the Enlightenment. A third comment focuses on the recent Tahrir Square protests and reflects on the republican civic tradition.

In the Netherlands, not much research has been done on the ways that Dutch women experience and try to survive a detention abroad. The research, on which this article is based, did focus on Dutch female prisoners abroad, using an ethnographic research method. This study looks at the ways Dutch mulas experience their prison term in Peru and focuses on their strategies of survival. The ways these women react upon their detention can be traced back to existing literature on the importation theory and deprivation theory. Also it became apparent that various coping strategies are used to survive their Peruvian imprisonment. These coping strategies proof to be related to the life experiences of the women (importation theory) and the experienced prison environment (deprivation theory).

In the Netherlands, a person sentenced to life imprisonment (lifer) cannot be pardoned or paroled. This has led to debate. I have investigated if this impossibility also exists in other countries (Canada, England, Germany, Belgium). This article shows that in all the other countries studied, lifers can be pardoned after a certain period of time. A law comparative interpretation of article 3 ECHR would therefore lead to the conclusion that the current Dutch policy is contradictory to this article. The results in this article could contribute to the debate that has arisen in the Netherlands.

The number of homicides in the Netherlands has been stable for some time but decreased over the last few years. The aim of this study is first, to describe the recent trends in homicide in the Netherlands. Second, we aim to explain the reasons for this recent drop in homicide by using data from the Dutch Homicide Monitor that includes all homicides in the period 1992-2009. Findings suggest that the drop in homicide could be explained by a combination of factors, including change in situational characteristics, change in social cohesion and change in the degree of economic deprivation.

This article answers the question of why and in what respects a ‘critical epistemology’, compared to a ‘scientific epistemology’, offers the better alternative for criminal law investigations into rape. By resuming the recent debate concerning the importance of scientific truth in criminal law investigations the author shows that this debate overlooks the cultural values that are necessarily involved in many criminal law cases. Such involvement of cultural values will be illustrated with a historical overview of law cases concerning rape in the context of a heterosexual relationship. Whereas value-free knowledge is the ideal strived for by a ‘scientific epistemology’, the basic idea of a critical epistemology is that knowledge is theory dependent and not free of values. Therefore this epistemology offers the best guarantees for acknowledging the values that are necessarily involved in many criminal law inquiries.

Transnationalism and migration are recognised contributors to legal pluralism. Scholars of legal pluralism state that in conflicts, social actors sustain their claims with arguments from coexisting legal systems. They manoeuvre between different legal systems, or contradicting norms within one system, to achieve the most satisfactory decision in a conflict. In doing so, they use norms as discursive tools. Indeed, according to data on domestic workers in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, this manoeuvring with norms as discursive tools is often recognisable in conflicts between workers and their employers. However, transnational contractual norms and the legal pluralism they create are not merely discursive tools in existing conflicts; they are also regularly the cause of conflicts. Domestic workers conclude agreements with agents in their countries of origin, while employers conclude agreements with different agents in the destination countries. Both parties believe the other party has signed the same contract, while in reality that is not the case. Because of the differences between the two sets of contractual norms, these norms cause conflicts; they are not merely discursive tools. This finding calls for a division between different types of conflicts, which is proposed here for the purpose of socio-legal analysis of conflicts in general and particularly in situations of transnationalism and legal pluralism.

This contribution explores how much state is necessary to make societal constitutionalism work. I first ask why the idea of a global societal constitutionalism ‘beyond the state-and-politics’ might be viewed as a significant and controversial, but nonetheless justified innovation. In the second part I discuss what Teubner calls ‘the inclusionary effects of fundamental rights’. I argue that Teubner underplays the mediating role of the state in guaranteeing inclusion or access, and in a way presupposes well-functioning states in the background. In areas of limited statehood there is a problem of enforcing fundamental rights law. It is an open question whether, and under which conditions, constitutional norms within particular global social spheres can provide enough counter-weight when state constitutional norms are lacking.

Signs that a more or less substantial group of people in Dutch prison experience problems as a result of an intellectual disability, suggest that it makes sense to track this group and subsequently offer them the support they need. The reason this does not happen in practice is a lack of knowledge on various fronts. As it is, it is not clear how large the group of people with an intellectual disability in Dutch prisons is, what problems they face, and what could aid them. This article highlights what we do know and what we do not know with regards to this group.

In this feature authors review recently published books on subjects of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

The article is intended to give a view (shared by many) on how arbitrators could or maybe even should react when faced with misdeeds in an ongoing arbitration proceeding. The misdeeds meant in this article concern forgery and false witness testimonies that may fraudulently influence judgements. Not covered are questions related to illicit contracts (i.e. contracts induced by bribery or corruption).
The author contrasts the different views of an arbitrator’s role as either as a private dispute settler or as a person deriving his or her function also from the state as a guarantor of arbitration as a means to settle disputes. She comes to the conclusion that in the end, public policy consideration should overrule party autonomy and that, contrary to the current practice, tribunals faced with misdeeds during an arbitration should not hesitate to address this issue in the award.

To reduce recidivism of former prisoners, the Ministry of Security and Justice aims at improving the reintegration of former prisoners into free society. The objective is to ensure that former prisoners have, among other things, an income and accommodation at the time they are released from prison. The article studies the changes in the extent that prisoners have an income and accommodation during imprisonment. Results show that before imprisonment 83% of the prisoners have some form of accommodation, 76,2% have a legal income and 70,2% have debts. During imprisonment 28,8% of the prisoners lose their income, and 5,5% of the prisoners lose their accommodation.

An overview of the UK Bribery Act 2010, which is expected to come into effect in April 2011, and its impact for Dutch companies and partnerships, including the new corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery and the importance of procedures for both prevention and defence of bribery charges.