Life in prison goes hand in hand with far-reaching restrictions in the personal autonomy of offenders. Lack of personal autonomy and the coercion to perform certain actions disrupt the ‘normal’ intrinsic experiences of voluntary action (i.e. sense of agency). Disturbances in the neurocognitive basis of voluntary action have a number of clear effects on human functioning, including self-reliance. This paper provides a first analysis of the relationship between personal autonomy and the intrinsic experience of voluntary action, and how this may be the key to understanding how freedom restrictions in detention can reduce self-reliance.

Scientific studies have shown the effect of social crises on the nature and magnitude of domestic violence. Since the beginning of 2020 we are facing a worldwide corona pandemic. There is a widespread fear that the measures as a consequence of this pandemic have led to a significant increase in domestic violence. In this study news reports on the assumptions about the effect of the pandemic on domestic violence were inventoried. Subsequently, an overview was made of current empirical research projects on the assumed effect on domestic violence. The methodological aspects and the preliminary results of these studies are discussed.

For this anniversary issue of the centenary of the journal PROCES, we focused on the field of forensic psychiatry. What does one hundred years of PROCES tell us about the developments in this domain? Our starting point was an article from 1930. At that time, forensic psychiatry was not yet an integrated part of the criminal process. The anonymous author makes a plea for this to be the case. He substantiates this on the basis of four cases from his own practice. Now, one hundred years later, we conclude that this integration of forensic psychiatry into the criminal justice practice has been accomplished: there is ample attention to the mental health of suspects and detainees. The cases also show us how drastically the perspective on delinquents with a mental condition has changed, as a suspect suffering from a mental disorder was seen, by definition, as not criminally responsible. Reviewing the developments of the past hundred years has made us realize how temporary and transient our current perspective is. We are, however, convinced that the interest in individual motives of delinquents will always remain.

Hartendorp emphasizes in his contribution that a judge is a decision-maker bound by the law. He agrees with Klijn that this position makes it difficult to act as a problem solver. However, this does not alter the fact that, in order to act effectively, a judge must have a dual orientation on the conflict and the dispute between the parties. The Judiciary can only increase its social effectiveness if it manages to bring about a synthesis between its classic decisive task and an orientation aimed at effectiveness.

Forensic psychiatric treatment plays a mayor role in keeping society safe. However, the expectations about what can be achieved with forensic treatment do not seem to be realistic. This complicates the chances of a successful re-socialization. It is foreseen that the number of patients will increase significantly in the upcoming years.
More effective treatment programs and instruments for risk assessment are needed. For this, the causal relationship between psychopathology and delinquency must be better understood. This requires more criminological research.

Social engineering is the usage of social manipulation and psychological tricks to make the targets assist offenders in their attack. This paper aimed to discuss the success of social engineering attacks and interventions in an organisational setting. Three kinds of social engineering experiments were discussed, each using a different modality (i.e. face-to-face (f2f), email and telephone). In each experiment, the targets (i.e. participants) were persuaded to perform actions that contribute to their victimisation.
A portion of the participants in both the f2f and telephone experiment received an intervention to reduce victimisation. The conclusion is that awareness raising about dangers, characteristics and countermeasures related to social engineering proved to have a significant positive effect on protecting the target. The results of these experiments allow practitioners to focus awareness campaigns to maximise their effectiveness.

Executive functions (EF) are higher order brain functions that are crucial for self-regulation, which may be negatively influenced by an impoverished environment. Since prison can be characterized as an impoverished environment, we studied whether EF and self-regulation decline during imprisonment. While EF are already often impaired in antisocial and criminal populations, we found a decline in attention and self-regulation after three months of imprisonment. We discuss the implications of our findings regarding recidivism and propose to aim for an improvement in executive functions during imprisonment, by enriching the prison environment.

Amsterdam is a popular destination for tourists. The number of tourists visiting Amsterdam increases every year and is expected to hit 23 million by 2025. This article describes which implications increasing tourism has on security and crime in Amsterdam. It appears that increasing tourism has a negative effect on social cohesion and can be a serious threat to safety. Tourism also attracts crime. Tourists are far more likely to suffer from crimes than inhabitants of Amsterdam. In particular they become victims of crimes like pickpocketing, mugging and scams. Tourists are also often associated with drug- and alcohol-related incidents. Apart from being a victim, a tourist can also be a perpetrator of crime. Inhabitants of Amsterdam regularly complain about nuisance caused by tourists. Especially subletted apartments via Airbnb is a serious concern for residents of Amsterdam and local policymakers.

In the Netherlands, the judge has the possibility to impose an entirely or partly suspended sentence. In this article, the perspective of judges and public prosecutors on the deterrent effect of the suspended sentence is investigated. For that purpose, 1000 court decisions were examined, and 15 judges and 15 public prosecutors were interviewed. The results show that the suspended sentence provides opportunities to intervene in the offender’s life regarding issues that are supposed to be related to recidivism. Judges and public prosecutors regard the suspended sentence as an important device to reduce the recidivism risk.