The last decades have shown a tendency in which tasks are transferred from the judge to other authorities, such as the police and public prosecutor, administrative bodies, administrative procedures, or private parties. The central question in this article is whether these authorities can really replace the court. A comparison is made between legal proceedings and procedures for other authorities on the following aspects: truth finding, openness and legal protection of the (vulnerable) citizen. The author also discusses a recent legislative proposal for an own budget for the Judiciary, which aims to strengthen the independence of the judge towards the two other state powers. It is argued that the courts should be also accessible in the case of relatively small offenses and for vulnerable citizens.

This empirical study examines how criminal investigative police officers (re)construct a criminal case and the vulnerabilities of their logic.The investigation process is analyzed through Goffman’s framing and interaction theories. While Goffman’s theories have been widely applied to other disciplines, such contributions remain rare in criminology. Here, they shed light on how detectives understand and give meaning to the situation surrounding the criminal case they encounter. The results indicate that this approach shows promise for improving our understanding of the investigative process, if complemented by other theoretical views.

Mobile identification techniques will, in the near future, make it possible to rapidly analyze DNA and fingerprint traces during a crime scene investigation, compare them with reference samples, and use the results in the investigation. In this experimental study the influence of these rapid analysis results on the formation of hypotheses, and of database matches in these results on the interpretation of traces by Crime Scene Investigators (CSIs) in the Netherlands was studied. A group of CSIs (N=65) conducted a simulated crime scene investigation. The analysis results as well as the moment these were provided were manipulated. The results show that the analysis results influence the formation of hypotheses by CSIs, and that this influence is time-dependent. Judgments by CSIs regarding the importance of traces were shown not to be influenced by database matches.

To improve the way honour cases are dealt with by the Dutch police, a national centre of expertise, the LEC EGG, was set up. When complex cases are at hand, the LEC EGG offers nationwide assistance to the regional police units. In this contribution the authors look into the use of the analysis by the LEC EGG in the courtroom. What role does analysis by the LEC EGG of honour-based violence have in the court’s decision making?

Dutch family liaison officers inform and support trauma victims or their relatives. Recent studies suggest that professionals working with trauma victims may develop work-related stress. However, other studies have shown that professionals can also develop personal growth from their experiences with traumatized persons. This study was the first to investigate to what extent Dutch family liaison officers experience work-related stress or personal growth. Results suggest that the majority of the respondents experience no or very low levels of work-related stress. Levels of personal growth appear to be rather low as well, but seem to be more broadly dispersed. These findings suggest that Dutch family liaison officers are able to cope with the potentially negative effects of their work and even experience positive outcomes from working with traumatized persons. In spite of this, many participants provided suggestions for further improvement of their work practices.

Tensions between the central national level and the local level become clearly visible in coffee shop policies, which have to fit within the international VN and EU treaties and strategies, national drug policy principles and local interests of public order. Three cases, all concerning long-term problems of drug tourism, nuisance and crime around coffee shops, illustrate these tensions. In the case of coffee shop Checkpoint near the Belgian border the Public Prosecutor aimed at solving the problem by prosecuting the coffee shop as a criminal network, while the mayor tried to minimize the negative effects by facilitating visitor flows. In the case of the private club and residence criterion in 2012 not all the mayors actually enforced these national criteria. This leads to a bigger emphasis on local tailoring. Thirdly, several mayors have opted for a regulation of cannabis production for coffee shops, while the stance of the national government is that international treaties banning this practice should be respected. The influence of local policies may be small, but in the end the local communities seem crucial when it comes to finding new ways of managing drug problems.

De auteurs gaan in op de vraag hoe het kan dat toezichthouders risico’s niet zien, risico’s onderschatten of te laat ingrijpen om risico’s te verminderen. Dit hoeft niet altijd voort te komen uit een gebrek aan deskundigheid, professionaliteit of kennis. Psychologische processen kunnen de effectiviteit van het toezicht ondermijnen, zonder dat de toezichthouder het merkt. De effecten van zogenoemde biases mogen niet worden onderschat.

Traditionally, the Dutch penal judge needs to determine whether the suspect has committed the crime for which he is being prosecuted. This is generally done by accumulating incriminating evidence. Recently, it has been argued that this accumulation fosters the risk of a miscarriage of justice. Alternatively, the judge may want to rely on a Bayesians analysis of the evidence. Particularly, diagnostic values for each piece of evidence must be established. Therefore, it must be investigated how well the evidence fits in the primary and in alternative scenarios. This approach is discussed in this contribution.

Dit artikel stelt de vraag centraal of aan het gebruik van bewuste roekeloosheid als criterium voor eigen schuld van de werknemer een ‘arbeidsrechtelijke’ benadering ten grondslag ligt. In de verschillende contexten waarin het begrip ‘bewuste roekeloosheid’ in het civiele arbeidsrecht wordt gebruikt, heeft de Hoge Raad aan bewuste roekeloosheid dezelfde beperkte uitleg gegeven. Voor deze uitleg heeft de Hoge Raad leentjebuur gespeeld bij het vervoerrecht en het verzekeringsrecht. Gezien de verschillende grondslagen van deze rechtsgebieden, is de vraag of dit terecht is gerechtvaardigd. Binnen het arbeidsrecht zelf kan worden betwijfeld of de verschillende ratio’s die aan de regelingen voor werkgevers- en werknemersaansprakelijkheid ten grondslag liggen een gelijke benadering van eigen schuld van de werknemer rechtvaardigen. Daarnaast leidt het bestaan van ‘directe’ en (middels een verzekeringsplicht) ‘indirecte’ aansprakelijkheid van de werkgever tot vragen over de juiste benadering van de eigen schuld van de werknemer.

Food fraud is as old as mankind but has advanced in the last decades. Fraud regarding the gross composition of food has progressed in the direction of the addition of unconventional adulterants. Furthermore, consumers are more and more interested in how and where their foods are produced and pay price premiums for organic foods, fair trade, animal welfare considering, and sustainable food products. Since these products are very similar to their conventional counterparts in terms of composition, they provide an additional challenge. The knowledge regarding occurrence, type of meat fraud, causes and damage caused to the sector is limited. There is a need for extensive identification of the vulnerabilities and criminogenic factors. These insights offer leads for detection and prevention. The article deals with a first step into the inventory of these vulnerabilities and factors affecting meat fraud, by assessing fraud risks related to products, companies and the meat supply chain.

Recently there have been several miscarriages of justice in the Netherlands, which were widely reported in the media. They show that much can go wrong with legal proof in criminal cases and that judges sometimes give limited justification for their decisions. Insights from the so-called story-based approach to legal proof can potentially assist to improve and to critically assess judicial decisions in criminal cases, thereby helping to reduce the chance of mistakes. The story-based approach involves constructing and critically analyzing at least two stories about what (might have) happened in a case that explain the evidential data. These stories have to be compared to each other in order to decide which story is the most plausible. The judge has to include the different scenarios in his judgment and he must explain why the scenario he had chosen is the most plausible. In my paper I first discuss why it is important that judges justify their decision in a verdict. Then I explicate the story based approach. After that I explain how applying the story based approach in the motivation can be useful and help to reduce the chance of a miscarriage of justice.

The degree to which individuals have confidence in the judiciary varies substantially. In this paper, we take the heterogeneity of the population as a starting-point. Our basic idea is that signals about the judiciary acquire significance through frames, schemes of interpretation. Using focus groups we portrayed contrasting frames of citizens. These frames enable us to test the consequences of measures to promote confidence. Measures that tend to increase confidence according to one frame may decrease confidence according to another. This yields dilemmas for those looking for possibilities to promote confidence. One possibility to deal with these dilemmas is to differentiate between different audiences.

Following the evaluation regarding the judicial error in the Schiedam park murder (‘Schiedammer parkmoord’), the Public Prosecutor, Police and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) have drawn up an enhancement program to prevent future errors. Part of this program is to fill 20% of the posts within the police investigation process with those who have completed a higher education study of ‘criminal investigation’ and have obtained the Master of Criminal Investigation (MCI) title. One of the MCI’s tasks is to act as counterparties within the investigation research, to reduce the tunnel vision that develops within these investigations. In this way, more attention can be paid to alternative scenarios, so that judicial errors are less likely to occur.

After some serious failures in criminal justice procedures, in 2006 ‘critical review’ was introduced in the Dutch police as a measure to prevent tunnel vision in criminal investigation. An analysis of 26 review cases and interviews with representatives of the Dutch police forces shows that in practice reviewers are confronted with a fundamental dilemma of distance vs. involvement in their relation with criminal investigation team. Critical review proves to have concrete effects on the criminal investigation process, although their scope usually appears to be limited. Although these effects are modest and review takes scarce police resources, the authors recommend a continuation of critical review.

This article deals with possibilities for the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Netherlands to learn from high reliability organizations (HROs). The authors draw a picture on the basis of information, gathered between 2008 and 2010. While dealing with mistakes or faults much emphasis is often laid upon a professional attitude, written handbooks and discipline as essential conditions. The experience with HROs shows that at the same time mental processes are needed for fast detection and containment of developing problems. These mental processes, heaped together as ‘collective mindfulness’, refer to the picking up of weak signals and the resilient reacting upon incidents. The authors show to what extent the Public Prosecutor’s Office makes use of these processes. The level of training and education and the ‘hands on’ mentality of the average Public Prosecutor build a firm foundation for reliability. Reflection and to what extent knowledge is shared seem liable for improvement. Adapting (elements of) the HRO philosophy may prove an effective way to foster the actual exchange and use of knowledge within the Public Prosecutor’s Office and thus raise its reliability.

Kan een zelfstandige arbeidskracht ook de bescherming inroepen van lid 4 van art. 7:658 BW? Op 23 maart 2012 heeft de Hoge Raad zich hierover moeten uitspreken. In deze bijdrage wordt in het licht van het oordeel van de Hoge Raad stilgestaan bij de toepassingsvoorwaarden van het artikellid. Ook wordt aandacht besteed aan de (vervolg)vraag naar de – op een zorgplichtschending gebaseerde – aansprakelijkheid van de inlener/opdrachtgever conform lid 1-3 van art. 7:658 BW.

Suspects with a mental retardation are a vulnerable group in the judicial investigation. This group of suspects is more susceptible to influence and there is an increased risk of getting an incomplete, inaccurate and inconsistent statement. That is the reason why on an extremely careful manner should be dealt with these suspects. It appears that this degree of care in an interrogatory often will not be respected. This article analyses the current safeguards surrounding the interrogation of mentally retarded suspects. It remains to be seen whether the current rules for the interrogation of mental retarded suspects will safeguard their position adequately.