Little is known about how ex-prisoners’ parole supervision experiences relate to desistance. The aim of this article therefore is to gain insight into the nature of release conditions and parole supervision of ex-prisoners and parolees’ perceptions of their supervision related to the desistance process. A total of 23 Dutch parolees were interviewed in depth at three waves starting in prison up to one year after their release, and the 69 interviews were combined with their parole files containing information about conditions, violations and sanctions. Parole files revealed the practice of highly engaged parole officers, who worked with parolees to strengthen factors known to foster desistance. However, the interviews showed that most parolees found their parole experience predominantly surveillance-oriented and not very helpful for desistance. Parole was experienced as most beneficial when parole officers used their discretionary power to adjust conditions creating ‘space’ for trial-and-error.

This article relates the geographical allocation of Courts to access to justice. Travel distances within the Dutch system are higher than in surrounding countries, but still not extremely high. The scale of the Dutch Court organizations however, is extreme. On average, a Court location that handles small claims has jurisdiction over a territory with over half a million inhabitants. This large number of inhabitants automatically translates to large numbers of cases, and large bureaucracies, employing 500 to 1,000 people (judges, court staff, support) each. Do travel distances to the Courts actually have an impact on the use of the Court system? Two recent studies find no support for a popular belief that defendants will be less determined to defend themselves when the travel distance to the court is longer. They do show however that the number of cases brought to Court by local plaintiffs drops when ‘their’ local court closes down.

The Life In Custody-study is a large scale, prospective panel study, aimed to examine the quality of prison life in The Netherlands. This paper describes the LIC-study by giving a detailed overview of the data collection procedure, and strategies to optimize response, and presents the first nationwide results on prison climate in The Netherlands. Results show that the data collection procedures utilized were successful in obtaining a high response rate (which was an exceptional 81%) and reaching a representative group of prisoners. Furthermore, results show that the perceptions of prison climate vary across prison regimes, and to a lesser extent across age groups and time spent in detention.

The Parenting examination (in Dutch: ouderschapsonderzoek) is a method that is used in high-conflict divorces in the Netherlands since 2008, whereby the court appoints a forensic expert who uses mediation and coaching techniques to support the parents to find a solution for their dispute. When parents fail to reach agreement, the forensic expert reports to the judge who can use this information to make a decision. This article discusses the results of two studies that have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the Parenting examination in practice.

For quite some years now, crimes of ‘the powerful’ have been studied by criminologists. While researching crimes of ‘the powerful’, researchers aim to maintain and safeguard their integrity and ethics. However, there seems to be a friction between, on the one hand, ethics of the researchers themselves and on the other hand, ethics (policies) of universities. Obviously, not only do they have to justify their actions and decisions to themselves and ‘science’ as a whole, they must justify their research to ethics committees (EC’s) of universities. It could result in complex and difficult situations when researchers suspect that EC’s themselves may be instruments and products of the powerful groups they are studying. In that case, EC’s might undermine ethics and research integrity themselves. What do certain EC- ‘conditions’ look like for research ethics and to which extent do they have to be adjusted or reconsidered when criminologists are researching ‘the powerful’? The key question that will be answered in this contribution is as follows: how can criminologist (re)act ethically responsibly when confronted with (un)ethical committees? To answer this and other relevant questions, after reviewing literature, we reflect on a biographical study of a legal arms trader. We then elaborate on the ‘ethics creep’ (Haggerty, 2004) that seems to haunt social sciences nowadays.

In het arrest van 20 maart 2018 inzake Europese Commissie tegen de Republiek Oostenrijk verduidelijkt het Hof van Justitie onder welke voorwaarden het lidstaten is toegestaan om af te zien van een Europese aanbesteding door zich te beroepen op de bescherming van wezenlijke nationale veiligheidsbelangen. Het Hof van Justitie overweegt dat lidstaten hierin weliswaar een beoordelingsmarge toekomt, maar dat de lidstaat die zich op deze uitzondering beroept moet kunnen aantonen dat die belangen niet anders beschermd hadden kunnen worden. Ook Nederland verkent de mogelijkheden voor verruiming van deze uitzonderingsgrond. Gelet op de groeiende publieke aandacht voor de bescherming van persoonsgegevens en nationale veiligheid, biedt deze zaak concrete aanknopingspunten om te toetsen wanneer een uitzondering op de aanbestedingsplicht wegens wezenlijke veiligheidsbelangen gerechtvaardigd is.
HvJ 20 maart 2018, zaak C-187/16, Europese Commissie/Republiek Oostenrijk (Oostenrijkse Staatsdrukkerij), ECLI:EU:C:2017:578.

In dit artikel beantwoordt de auteur de vraag welke nieuwe zorgplichten jegens betaaldienstgebruikers voor betaaldienstverleners voortvloeien uit de herziene Richtlijn betaaldiensten (PSD2).

Around 36.000 men enter Dutch prisons every year. Nearly half of them are father. Imprisonment is destructive to father involvement. Many prisoners involuntary fail to stay connected with their family and are unable to reconnect with family after release. However, father involvement protects fragile families, children and fathers themselves from collateral consequences of imprisonment and even reduces recidivism. One of the first Dutch initiatives for fathers in prison came from voluntary organization Exodus. Since 2014, they run an 8-week workshop on fatherhood in a number of Dutch penal institutions. Fathers work on the restoration or reconstruction of their relationship with their children and parenting partners. In this article, we review participating fathers’ perceptions of the workshop and the changes in their attitude towards fatherhood.

In the ‘participation society’ it is expected that citizens actively contribute to solving societal problems, including health care, immigration and security issues. A somewhat similar responsibilisation culture is visible in prisons, where prisoners are held responsible for their own rehabilitation. This article problematizes the way in which prisoners’ agency is promoted in Dutch prisons, considering prisoners’ constrained agency and the normative expectations that are tied to the approach. This critique is advanced through discussion of the promotion/demotion system that has been used in Dutch prisons since 2014. This system, comparable to the Incentives and Earned Privileges system in England and Wales, espouses both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ behavioural norms. The soft behavioural norms reflect a citizenship ideal that extends beyond compliance with the law. It is argued that these normative expectations tied to agency have a limiting effect on prisoners’ autonomy. This article argues in favour of a shift from the citizenship ideal to an autonomy ideal, which applies the principle of minimum restrictions. Furthermore, access to education, reintegration courses and contact with family should be treated as a right, rather than a privilege, in order to maximise autonomy and minimise the harmful effects of imprisonment.

The theory of retribution is a central tenet in Malawian sentencing jurisprudence. Courts have given expression to retribution in various ways, most conspicuously through the recognition of the principle of proportionality as the most important principle in sentencing. Retribution has permeated courts’ consideration of certain sentencing factors such as the seriousness of the offence, family obligations and public opinion. Overall, retribution rightly plays a pivotal role in Malawian sentencing jurisprudence by elevating the principle of proportionality to the most important principle in sentencing. Malawian courts have also noted that whether in pursuit of retribution or utilitarianism, the ultimate objective is to arrive at a sentence that is just and fair in relation to the crime and the offender. This also ensures that the sentence imposed does not offend the prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Dit artikel analyseert de betrokkenheid van internationale netwerken en agentschappen bij de implementatie van Europese regelgeving op nationaal niveau. Aan de hand van een synthese van eerder onderzoek concluderen wij dat dit soort internationale samenwerking alleen succesvol is als er sprake is van wederzijdse afhankelijkheid tussen landen, en er een informele samenwerkingscultuur heerst. Omdat oorzaken van implementatieproblematiek nooit hetzelfde zullen zijn in alle EU-lidstaten, doen Europese netwerken en agentschappen er verstandig aan niet te gedetailleerd te willen sturen, maar rekening te blijven houden met het belang van culturele verschillen tussen de verschillende lidstaten van de EU.

Met de per 1 juli 2016 geïntroduceerde wijzigingen van de Aanbestedingswet 2012 is het kader voor aanbestedingsrechtelijke uitsluitingsgronden gewijzigd. In dit artikel staan de uitsluitingsgronden centraal die voor beoefenaars van het mededingingsrecht relevant zijn. Met name wanneer ACM boetes oplegt wegens overtreding van (sectorspecifieke) regelgeving, gaan deze uitsluitingsgronden in latere aanbestedingen een rol spelen. Aspecten van een besluit die een impact hebben op de aanbestedingsrechtelijke kansen van ondernemingen zijn onder meer: de duur van de overtreding, de aard van de overtreding, de wijze van afdoening, de rechtspersonen waaraan de overtreding wordt toegerekend, de publicatiedatum en de mate van verwijtbaarheid.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how fair or unfair defendants in the cantonal court experience their treatment during the process and which factors influence that experience. Very little research is done in this area. In a survey defendants were asked to evaluate how they were treated during the process. The results show that defendants who were convicted have a more negative judgement about fairness than defendants who weren’t convicted. Significant predictors of judgement about fair treatment are: the impression that the judge was listening, the overall impression of the way the case was treated by the court and the impression that the judge was patient.

De Europese Unie dient op grond van artikel 3 lid 3 van het Verdrag betreffende de Europese Unie (VEU) sociale uitsluiting en discriminatie te bestrijden en sociale rechtvaardigheid en bescherming te bevorderen. Het Hof van Justitie oordeelde in de zaak Regiopost dat het stellen van een minimumlooneis ter bestrijding van ‘asociale ondernemers’ in aanbestedingsstukken mogelijk is, ongeacht of er een algemeen wettelijk minimumloon of een algemeen verbindende cao is. In dit artikel wordt mede aan de hand van dit arrest ingegaan op de beleidsruimte voor aanbestedende diensten bij het realiseren van sociale doelstellingen.
HvJ 17 november 2015, zaak C-115/14, RegioPost, ECLI:EU:C:2015:760