Joint reflection of practitioners and clients appears beneficiary for the effectiveness of their working alliance in, for instance, psychotherapy. This study aims to find out whether a similar beneficiary effect is experienced by practitioners and clients in probation supervision, a mandated setting. Over thirty dyads of Dutch probation officers and probationers participated into structured joint reflection, using the working alliance monitor, specifically designed for this purpose. The majority of probation officers reported the reflection as useful. Probationers reported a more mixed experience. Probationers with an intellectual disability more often needed help to understand the working alliance monitor.

This article analyzes the decentralization and transformation of Dutch youth care since 2015. The authors point out that many problems still exist and in some cases have become worse. To fundamentally reform youth care much more is needed than just money or a system change. It is necessary, also according to international research, to create a strong pedagogical basis or ‘pedagogical civil society’. Also prevention on various levels (universal, selective, indicated) should receive a lot of attention, while the same applies to improving primary care support, such as youth health care, GP practice support, youth work and school social work. It would also be wise to invest in intensive youth care with long-lasting effects. Generally there should be a strong focus on tackling local and (supra)regional social issues.

Piketmediation is een vorm van mediation naast rechtspraak maar dan in de vorm van een pressure-cooker. Typerend voor piketmediation is dat de mediation plaatsvindt in het gerechtsgebouw en dat in beginsel direct na het eerste gesprek een terugkoppeling plaatsvindt aan de rechter. Het doel van piketmediation is om een verdere escalatie van het conflict te beperken en partijen een dienst te bieden waardoor zij snel tot een oplossing kunnen komen. Piketmediation wordt veelal aangeboden in de voorlopige voorzieningenprocedure.
In opdracht van de Raad voor de rechtspraak is empirisch onderzoek uitgevoerd binnen het Amsterdams Centrum voor Familie & Recht (ACFL) van de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In dit onderzoek zijn verschillende aanbiedingsvormen van piketmediation geëvalueerd die worden aangeboden door zeven gerechten: in een aantal gerechten zijn piketmediation pilots uitgevoerd en in andere is piketmediation reeds een reguliere werkwijze is geworden. In totaal zijn er 120 dossiers gescoord, 39 interviews afgenomen en een expertmeeting gehouden met 14 professionals. De bevindingen uit het dossieronderzoek, de interviews en de expertmeeting tezamen hebben geleid tot een algemeen rapport over de best practices en knelpunten van piketmediation met enkele aanbevelingen betreffende vormen van piketmediation die goed blijken te werken in de praktijk.
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Picket mediation (in Dutch: piketmediation) is a form of mediation which runs alongside normal court procedures, and is held in a pressure-cooker-like environment. It typically takes place in the courthouse and in principle, the outcome of the mediation is reported back to the judge after the first session. Such mediation is intended to limit any further escalation of a conflict and also to offer parties a service with which they can quickly resolve a situation themselves. Picket mediation is often offered in the provisional provisions procedure.
At the request of The Council for the Judiciary, an empirical study of picket mediation was conducted by the Amsterdam Center for Family & Law (ACFL) of the VU University Amsterdam. Various forms of picket mediation as offered by seven courts were evaluated in this study. While some courts are conducting picket mediation pilots, others already have implemented picket mediation as a regular procedure. For this study a total of 120 files were scored, 39 interviews were conducted and an expert meeting was held with 14 professionals. The combined findings from these events have led to a general report on the best practices and challenges of picket mediation. A number of recommendations regarding forms of picket mediation that appear to work well in practice are additionally included.

Within the group of Dutch foundlings, 28% are migratory foundlings: children coming from abroad to the Netherlands (inbound foundlings), and children going abroad from the Netherlands (outbound foundlings). According to the rational choice theory, there is at some point a rational decision behind human action, based on consideration of costs and benefits – terminology reminiscent of the origins within economic science. When viewed from that perspective, cross-border abandonment may be regarded to be a conscious effort to hinder detection. After all, abandonment of foundlings has been a criminal offence in the Netherlands since at least the Middle Ages. There is therefore also a vested interest in not attracting attention. Anyone abandoning a child and wishing to protect their identity will be attracted to locations that lack effective supervision, defined as guardianship within the criminological routine activities theory. However, the less familiar a location, the trickier it is to avoid visibility. Does the rational consideration of costs and benefits result in migratory foundlings being abandoned just over the border (in order that the perpetrators attract the least possible attention) or actually further inland (in order to detract from the cross-border activity, for example)? Is there a comparable choice in terms of distance when people abandon native foundlings – children found in their country of birth? Relevant questions indeed, as greater insight into such variables can support the direction taken by detection activities. This study is an exploratory analysis of the distance between the domicile or birth location and the abandonment location of cross-border foundlings. The results will then be compared with the distances in the case of domestic foundlings.

In Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) a group of trained and supervised volunteers support a medium to high-risk sex offender in his process of re-entry after detention. Sex offenders participate on a voluntary basis. Circles have a double aim: the prevention of new sexual offences and the rehabilitation of the sex offender. Circles offer social inclusion and support for behavior change, and monitor risk. They are embedded in the professional network of sex offender after care. Through a professional circle coordinator relevant information is circulated between the circle and professional agencies, to enable adequate support and interventions. Effect studies show that COSA contributes to a reduced risk of reoffending. The model was developed in Canada almost 25 years ago and has been picked up by a growing number of countries in Europe, the America’s, Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Variations in the model become apparent and raise questions about the essentials of COSA.

Gender as a construct has been introduced into criminology half a century ago and has contributed to an understanding of the relation between gender and violence. Therefore, when improving resilience of professionals encountering violent behaviour, gender might be an important construct to take into account. We know from the literature that men and women do not experience victimization and perpetration in the same way but at the same time there are some blind spots with regard to male victimization and female perpetration. Increasing resilience against violence is only possible when we do not automatically use gender stereotyping in understanding and reducing violence.

The Family Justice Centers are an international model where victims of domestic violence and child abuse can find all help needed under one roof. The FJCs are a collaboration of police, justice, welfare, help centers and authorities. The main target is empowering survivors of violence.
The development of the FJC-model is situated in an evolution of the approach of these forms of violence, starting with the recognition of violence against women and child abuse towards a multidisciplinary and collaborative model starting from the needs of survivors of violence. The FJC-model is explained from a field worker point of view and further developments and expected evolutions are mentioned.

Since the 1970s social integration of the police has been considered as a key element of the Dutch police. This article focusses on the question of the relevance of social integration of the contemporary police. The article is based on interviews with present and former strategic leaders of the Dutch police. This study shows that social integration is still often considered to be a highly important value for the Dutch police, particularly with regard to the growing polarisation in society. However, some of the police chiefs also express their disapproval of the concept of social integration; in their view the concept reminds us of the past. Also, police chiefs are critical of the value of the concept because of its supposed geographical focus. The paper shows that this criticism can be understood as an interpretation of social integration in terms of ‘neighbourhood policing’ and as an operational police strategy.

In the Netherlands violence in dependent relationships is handled ‘gender neutral’: it is assumed that men and women can both be perpetrator and victim of this violence. A gender neutral approach does not hinder gender sensitivity. With gender sensitivity it is about the question whether sufficient account is taken with gender aspects. In this article the authors look into what is on offer for the men. Although regular welfare organisations, private organisations and local self-help organisations are involved, until now there is is no structural offering of methodologically well substantiated activities.

This article addresses disaster recovery preparedness characteristics prescribed by literature and guidelines. An exploratory study was conducted in 25 Dutch safety regions to describe the status of disaster recovery preparedness with an emphasis on psychosocial support aspects. The study pointed at substantial cross-regional variation. Particular areas of improvement were identified in relation to involving citizens and partner organizations in safety regions’ recovery planning efforts, and the extent to which preparedness activities are guided by regional risk profiles. Optimization of preparedness takes place in an everyday context where relatively little priority is assigned to disaster recovery. Also, as major crises are fairly scarce there is little room for learning or routinization. Deliberate investments to enhance disaster recovery preparedness are needed, they would however benefit from more research into the association between relevant conditions, the disaster recovery preparedness level and the quality of service delivery when an event actually takes place.

In this article we report on an ethnographic research project conducted in 2014-2015 at a school for ‘Assistant in Care and Wellbeing’, a school for secondary vocational training that is part of a large regional education center in the metropolitan area of the Randstad. The main incentive for our research was that some researchers assumed that in this ‘super-diverse’ environment, where students with an immigrant background were a vast majority, many tensions and conflicts were caused by ethnic and religious differences between students. However, after about 100 hours of observations in the classes of fourteen teachers, 36 interviews with teachers and other staff, and focus group discussions with teachers and students, we found that for most students diversity wasn’t a big issue at all. Rather than ethnic or religious differences many irritations and conflicts were triggered by the constantly changing organisational setting and institutional context of the school. In this article, we will corroborate this finding with a detailed analysis of some cases of classroom interaction, and draw conclusions about the usefulness and limits of superdiversity as a heuristic tool.

This article discusses the importance of reflection for prison staff. Their work is both physical and emotionally incriminating. That increases risk on turnover, burn-out, psychosomatic diseases and negative experiences with prisoners. To render all challenges in their work it’s important to build up resiliency. One of the means to stimulate resilience is organized reflection. It is described how guided by experts, reflecting on own experiences can contribute to resilience of prison employees and strengthen their learning capacity. That is done by literature study and a description of experiences with organized reflection in PI Vught.

Although group workers in juvenile correctional facilities (JCFs) are restricted in their actions by many rules and regulations, they still have the opportunity for tailor-made actions. Based on Lipsky’s (2010) theory of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ this article explains what this discretion means for group workers in JCFs and how they deal with it. Based on 24 interviews with group workers, this article outlines how they exercise discretion in a context where group dynamics and dealing with emotions affect their actions to an important degree. In addition, this article describes how group workers deal with dilemmas they encounter.

Jacqueline de Savornin Lohman is a ‘positive criminologist’ avant la lettre. In this interview, she tells about her belief in personal people’s willingness and ability to deal with problems (such as the reception of refugees), the discouraging role of government in this respect, her internment in a Japanese camp in the Netherlands’ Indies during WW II, the persons who have inspired her most (e.g. Louk Hulsman) and her initial disbelief in the idea of a ‘glass ceiling’ for women in a male-dominated academia. She would, however, be confronted with some stunning examples of everyday sexism – such as reactions that she did not need a tenured position at the university, because she does not have to maintain a family. Being active in the women’s movement, also led her to engage in critical victimological studies – mainly on sexual violence. The main part of the interview deals with the practical consequences she has drawn from her critical action-theory on criminal justice ‘Allowed evil?’ (Kwaad dat mag?) from 1975, such as her role in the establishment of the Dutch liberal democrat party D’66, her involvement in the Coornhert League for Penal Reform, her attempts to establish a platform for various practical, critical social work initiatives in the penal field and indeed the establishment of one of the first mediation projects in the Netherlands – which she saw boycotted by the Ministry of Justice, that, in the late 1980s, instrumentalised the victim’s voice for a stiffening of the penal system.

On September 21th 2012, a sweet sixteen party in Haren (a Dutch village), announced on Facebook as PROJECT X Haren, turned into a riot in which youngsters clashed with the police. The blame was put on the film Project X (2012) that would have inspired adolescents to become aggressive and violent. However, like other adolescent comedies, this movie offers an insight in the adolescent state of mind, the role of humor and their lack of risk assessments. Much violence is (harmless) slapstick-like, boundaries are exceeded (sex, alcohol, drugs) and transgression is often directed against parents, teachers and the police. What is tested in the adolescent imagination is the public order. Film functions as a symbolic rite of passage, with carnivalesque inversions. Reacting in Haren on this adolescent state of mind with an administrative prohibition (‘there is no party’) confirmed the juvenile joke. Acting as if it is not a party but a huge disaster (by enlarging police forces) contributed to make the riot a reality that the youngsters themselves never imagined. The commission of inquiry recommends taking serious film and other forms of public imagination, because they contribute to our understanding of reality, especially concerning the perceptions of societal actors.

Intercultural communication is often portrayed as communication between people with a different ethnic or national background. People may interpret differences and misunderstandings arising in communication as especially grand and problematic. Sometimes, people see the reason for a difference in opinion or the conflict to be situated within the other (often national or ethnic) culture. They see themselves and others as a member of a different group, with a different culture and thus claim the differences to be related to the culture and not the individual person (culturalising or culturistic approach). This approach entails certain risks when it is seen as a condition to be able to speak to others and when handled as the sole frame of reference to interpret people’s meaning-making. An alternative approach can be found in a systemic and communication-theory approach, linking it to intersectionality, pluralism, diversity competence and the TOPOI model, as this article explains.