In Het Papieren Paleis laten wij zien dat het strafrecht volgens de spelregels van de wetboeken vaak niet doet wat nodig is. De zoektocht naar betere manieren om de strafdoelen te bereiken is volop aan de gang. Hier een voorproefje van waar het volgens het boek heen gaat.

This article outlines the need in the Netherlands for socially effective justice that better resolves citizens’ problems. The author argues that new forms of dispute resolution should be integrated in the justice system. The author first describes various types of innovations. Then he outlines the obstacles to innovations. A major obstacle is that many stakeholders in the existing legal system are simultaneously the gatekeepers for the admission of innovations. It is necessary to create an infrastructure that welcomes, reinforces, tests, finances and imports new treatments for legal problems.

This article focuses on the growing need internationally for accountability of the administration of justice. The CEPEJ report European judicial systems compares the judiciary in the member states of the Council of Europe showing how this justification takes place. Accounting for the administration of justice still involves a lot of attention for the input and the procedures, while accountability for the results is most important. New methods for measuring the experiences of users of the administration of justice are developing. This fits a trend in which hierarchic and internal accountability, for instance through appeal procedures, are becoming less important in favour of horizontal accountability towards stakeholders, colleagues and users of state services.

The contribution informs about some of the activities and the philosophy of Gevangenenzorg Nederland, a non-governmental organisation for the care for prisoners, member of the Prison Fellowship International. Holding a person responsible for his or her criminal conduct does not only mean punishment, but also individualizing the person as a person, with his or her own life, history and future. The stay in prison should help the person to return into society as a citizen with an equal status, rehabilitated by his punishment. But social reality is far removed from this ideal. The volunteers of Gevangenenzorg Nederland try to bring closer a form or charitable justice, focussing not so much on the risks that a person may be perceived to pose, but much more on the healthy and socially positive talents of the detainee, against the background of the ‘good lives model’ of Ward and Maruna (2007). The article describes the workshop offered to detainees ‘Speaking of guilt, remorse, victims and society’, wherein participants can investigate and discover in a systematic way their own degree and type of guilt and responsibilities and the avenues that might be available to express remorse and to make amends with victims and society. Family members or other significant others are called in in the stage of concluding the course with presenting ‘restorative gestures’ of any personal kind. Care after leaving the prison is offered and planned, hoping to facilitate a fully rehabilitated reintegration into society.