The Higher Labour Court of Berlin-Brandenburg (Landesarbeitsgericht (LAG)) has held that the pro rata reduction of annual leave depending on the period of parental leave is lawful. In general, statutory holiday entitlement also exists for the period of parental leave. However, the employer has the right to reduce leave pro rata for each full month of parental leave according to Section 17 paragraph 1 sentence 1 of the Federal Parental Allowances and Parental Leave Act (Bundeselterngeld- und Elternzeitgesetz (BEEG)). The proportional reduction is in line with European law.

In a recent research study entitled Encountering ‘The Other’: Victim Offender Dialogue in Serious Crime the impact and outcomes for victims/survivors of meeting with the prisoner participants who had caused them harm were examined. In the vast majority of those cases, organised within the context of the Victim Offender Mediation Program (VOMP), forgiveness was offered by victims and received by offenders. This research, utilizing a qualitative multiple case study method, examined twenty-five randomly selected cases referred for victim/offender mediation over a 10-year period, in which victims/survivors, following a period of preparation, had participated in at least one day-long dialogue with their offenders facilitated by trained personnel. This article addresses only one of the research questions posited in this study, namely, the ways in which apology and forgiveness played a part in those dialogues and in the experience of the participants following their mutual encounters. It is argued that granting forgiveness can have great power in its effects when experienced by the participants.

Antony Duff, Marc de Wilde, Louis Sicking, and Sofia Stok offer several criticisms of my “The Enemy of All Humanity,” but central to all of them is concern that labeling people hostis generis humani dehumanizes them, and invites murder or extrajudicial execution. In response I distinguish political, legal, and theoretical uses of the ancient label. I agree with the critics that the political use is toxic and the legal use is dispensable. However, the theoretical concept is crucial in international criminal law, which rests on the assumptions that the moral heinousness of core crimes makes them the business of all humanity. Furthermore, far from dehumanizing their perpetrators, calling them to account before the law recognizes that they are no different from the rest of humanity. This response also offers rejoinders to more specific objections raised by the critics.

Trationally, the term “enemy of all humanity” (hostis generis humani) referred to pirates. In contemporary international criminal law, it refers to perpetrators of crimes against humanity and other core. This essay traces the evolution of the concept, and then offers an analysis that ties it more closely to ancient tyrants than to pirates. Some object that the label is dehumanizing, and justifies arbitrary killing of the “enemy of humanity.” The essay admits the danger, but defends the concept if it is restricted to fair trials. Rather than dehumanizing its target, calling the hostis generis humani to account in a court of law is a way of recognizing that radical evil can be committed by humans no different from any of us.

In het conceptwetsvoorstel voor Boek 4 van het nieuwe Wetboek van Strafvordering (de berechting) wordt het voorstel gedaan om een alternatieve kwalificatie mogelijk te maken. In deze bijdrage wordt, na een uiteenzetting van het geldende recht en de wijziging die het voorstel daarin moet aanbrengen, onderzocht of in de praktijk behoefte bestaat aan de mogelijkheid tot alternatieve kwalificatie. Die behoefte lijkt beperkt te zijn, en zich vooral voor te doen in de context van het gedifferentieerde stelsel van vermogensdelicten en deelnemingsvormen. Deze bijdrage werpt daarom de vraag op of het probleem, en bijgevolg de oplossing daarvan, niet eerder gelegen zijn in het materiële recht dan het strafprocesrecht. Op basis daarvan, alsmede op basis van een korte bespreking van mogelijke bezwaren tegen de alternatieve kwalificatie, wordt de stelling betrokken dat het voorstel nadere doordenking en onderbouwing behoeft.

The Dutch Regional Fire Services collectively aim at preventing fire, casualties and damage. The main activity is informing citizens about fire risks and the appropriate measures they can take. From both a political and social perspective, it is valuable to know what the return of the Community Fire Safety program is. One way to chart the return of the program is a comparison of the cost of, and society’s willingness-to-pay for, the program. To estimate this willingness-to-pay, this article applies the contingent valuation method to a national representative sample of 806 Dutch citizens. The results show that willingness-to-pay of an average Dutch household is estimated to be between € 25.00 and € 35.67 per year provided the Community Fire Safety program improves the fire safety by 10%. At the national level, this amounts to 200 – 270 million euro annually. This value is seven to ten times more than the approximate costs of the current Community Fire Safety program.

In this article notions from literature on covert and illegal networks are applied to business cartels. Comparable to most criminal networks, cartel participants need to communicate in order to coordinate their activities, whilst under the risk of getting caught. Previous studies however show cartels can remain hidden from outsiders for long periods of time. Based on an analysis of fourteen Dutch cartel cases, this article addresses the question how cartels can remain hidden from outsiders for long periods of time. The analysis shows cartel participants communicate predominantly centralized and frequent. Moreover, the results show that not concealment but social embeddedness provides a strong explanation for the longevity of secrecy regarding cartels.

The Court of Appeal has confirmed that industrial action called with the object or purpose of infringing the cross-border freedom to establish and receive services would be unlawful. It rejected the argument that industrial action would be unlawful if it made it unattractive for foreign companies to operate in the UK or if cross-border services might potentially be disrupted. These wider tests would be inconsistent with European case law on the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’) and would be incompatible with proper protection of the right to strike.

The fight against outlaw motorcycle gangs is high on the Dutch criminal justice agenda. Yet, much is unclear about the extent to which Dutch outlaw motorcycle clubs are involved in (organized) crime, and the exact role club membership plays in the crimes committed by individual members. This study analyses all court decisions between 1999 and 2015 that were made publicly available through the Rechtspraak.nl database to yield insight in the frequency and nature of (members of) outlaw motorcycle clubs’ court appearances. Results show that members of outlaw biker clubs are convicted for violence and drug offending. In a third of all incidents, fellow club members are among the co-offenders. Membership of an outlaw motorcycle club is often used to put pressure on victims. Non-members also make use of the violent track record of outlaw bikers.

I focus on Hobbes’s claim that the law is ’the publique Conscience, by which [the individual] (…) hath already undertaken to be guided.’ This claim is not authoritarian once it is set in the context of his complex account, which involves three different relationships of reciprocity: the contractarian idea that individuals in the state of nature agree with one another to institute a sovereign whose prescriptions they shall regard as binding; the vertical, reciprocal relationship between ruler and ruled; and the horizontal relationship between individuals in the civil condition, made possible by the existence of the sovereign who through enacting laws dictates the terms of interaction between his subjects. The interaction of these three relationships has the result that subjects relate to each other on terms that reflect their status as free and equal individuals who find that the law enables them to pursue their own conceptions of the good.

This paper reviews the status quo of immigration law in the Netherlands in regard to the human rights of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Based on a thorough reading of the literature, Dutch detention law and policies aimed at immigrants are reviewed in relation to articles 3, 5 and 6 ECHR and 9 ICCPR to see whether they are compatible and whether a breach of human rights takes place in Dutch detention centres. Even though the ECHR has not yet ruled that Dutch immigration detention breaches drawn conclusions as to a potential breach of human rights, the writers of this paper argue that Dutch policy does potentially violate some of them.

Elbers et al. studied the impact of being involved in a compensation process on the health of the claimant/plaintiff. Although there is some evidence that being involved has a negative effect on health, there is contradictory evidence concerning the explanatory factors. The authors review various empirical studies, pinpoint the contradictory conclusions and analyse their methodological strengths and weaknesses. Studies concerning the influence of claim settlement processes on the wellbeing of claimants offer insights from which suggestions can be derived for improvement of the position of claimants.

In the Netherlands the discussion on the recent increase in residential domains with some sort of enclosure is fuelled by references to foreign examples (gated communities). However, large scale gated communities are absent in the Netherlands. Rather, we speak of enclosed residential domains. This article analyses the societal forces behind their popularity. Trends facilitating the further development of enclosed residential domains appear to be stronger than those impeding it. The growing need for shelter and a living environment that is predictable and familiar is especially important. Lack of safety, however, cannot directly be regarded as a prominent factor.

Sociale netwerksites kunnen zich verheugen in een grote populariteit, vooral onder jongeren. In dit artikel wordt onderzocht hoeveel persoonlijke informatie (zoals naam, adres, telefoonnummer) jongeren toevertrouwen aan profielen op sociale netwerksites en hoe deze online zichtbaarheid zich verhoudt tot hun kans om slachtoffer te worden van onterechte bankafschrijvingen, een vorm van identiteitsfraude. De resultaten tonen aan dat deze kans toeneemt naarmate er meer persoonlijke informatie op sociale netwerksites vermeld is. Vooral het achterlaten van naam en telefoonnummer is risicoverhogend, ook als gecontroleerd wordt voor andere relevante predictoren. Toekomstig onderzoek is nodig om het verband tussen online zichtbaarheid en identiteitsfraude verder te ontrafelen.

Naar aanleiding van een recente uitspraak van de Rechtbank Arnhem, bespreekt dit artikel de wijze waarop de bestuursrechter de staatssteunregels toepast in zogenoemde ‘Haaksbergen’-situaties. Wanneer vernietiging wordt gevorderd van een besluit in de sfeer van de ruimtelijke ordening, omdat de financiering ervan geschiedt met niet aangemelde staatssteun, laat de bestuursrechter dikwijls na te toetsen of aan alle voorwaarden van artikel 107, eerste lid VWEU is voldaan. Dit artikel onderzoekt in hoeverre de nationale rechter op grond van het communautaire recht gehouden is om in geval van een beroep op artikel 108, derde lid VWEU – al dan niet expliciet – aan alle voorwaarden van artikel 107, eerste lid VWEU te toetsen en geeft commentaar op de onvolledige toets van de bestuursrechter in Haaksbergen’-situaties.

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.

In criminology a lot of attention is paid to risk factors in the development of criminal behaviour. It is also not uncommon to speak of criminogenic factors. In the reported research project a monitor of relevant risk factors on an aggregated level (city, city councils and boroughs) was developed. In addition the data were combined into a so-called criminogenity index for the city of Amsterdam. The article discusses the development and results of the monitor and index. It elaborates on an article which was published earlier (TvV, 2007 (6) 2), but can be read as a stand alone article.