This article reflects on the brilliant 1990-book of criminologist Herman Franke on long-term developments in the Dutch prison system from 1800 onward. A pertinent question is whether it is possible and adequate to use the discourse of ‘emancipation’ to catch the historical processes in total institutions. A comparison is made with parallel transformations in the institutional sector of mental health, a social field in which there has been a radical movement claiming better legal protection and more humane living conditions. Surely an improvement has occurred in the actual situation of prisoners and mental patients, but one has to be reluctant (or even sceptical) to frame this in terms of ‘emancipation’.

It has been proposed that when people perceive their treatment by criminal justice actors as more procedurally just, they will be more likely to comply with the law. Existing research mainly focused on the police or the judge. This longitudinal study examined how prisoners experienced their treatment by five different criminal justice actors using data from the Prison Project. The prisoners were most positive about the procedurally fair treatment by their lawyer and least positive about the treatment by the police. Additionally, the perceived treatment by the police was associated with the treatment by other actors at subsequent moments.

Prisoners often encounter multiple barriers when returning to society, resulting in higher risks of recidivism. To overcome these barriers, prison-based and community-based professionals assist with preparation for release. Prison-based professionals, such as the case manager and mentor, screen and monitor the problems regarding work and income, housing, healthcare, financial debts and valid identification. Community-based professionals, such as municipal officials, parole officers, healthcare professionals and volunteers, can provide additional and specialized help. First, this research discusses the current policy of the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency (DJI) and the role of different types of professionals. Second, it presents a nationwide picture of the extent to which prisoners report contact with prison-based and community-based professionals, and to what degree prisoners appreciate this contact. The results are specified for various types of regimes and time served and are based on 4308 prisoner surveys of the Dutch Prison Visitation Study (DPVS), part of the Life in Custody Study (LIC-study). It turns out that most prisoners seem to be in close contact with prison-based professionals and that prisoners positively value this contact. However, contact with community-based professionals is limited and prisoners are somewhat dissatisfied about their contact with parole officers and municipal officials. Furthermore, the amount of contact differs across various types of regimes and time served. In particular, individuals who recently entered prison report less contact. To conclude, policy implications will be 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.

Teruggeblikt wordt op de ontwikkelingen in het omgevingsrecht, zijnde natuur, milieu en ruimtelijke ontwikkeling, gedurende de laatste twintig jaar van de Caribische delen van het Koninkrijk.

In deze bijdrage wordt in een vroeg stadium of het doel van de Wet forensische zorg (Wfz) om doorstroom vanuit het strafrecht naar de GGZ te bevorderen bereikt wordt. Daarbij wordt zowel gekeken naar de stelselwijziging van inkoop van forensische zorg door de minister van Justitie en Veiligheid vanaf 2008, zoals grotendeels gecodificeerd in de Wfz, als de directe overgangsmogelijkheid via de zorgmachtiging door de strafrechter (art. 2.3). Hierbij wordt beeldspraak uit het watermanagement gebruikt, met stromen, waterscheidingen en koudwatervrees.

It is unclear to what extent criminal record screening policies can explain low employment rates after release. This descriptive study provides more insight into this matter by examining whether ex-prisoners applied for a certificate of conduct, found employment and whether this job was found without such a certificate. To answer these questions interview data on ex-prisoners (N=931) are combined with data on criminal record screenings. Only 6 percent applied for a certificate, half of which were granted. Many ex-prisoners did not report any employment, but almost all working ex-prisoners found this job without a certificate. These findings bring nuance to discussions on the role of criminal record screening after release.

Prison visitation is important for protecting against social isolation during imprisonment. It is also essential for maintaining contacts that are important for life in prison and after release. It is therefore not surprising that both nationally and internationally important policy measures and scientific research have been undertaken on the topic. Nationally, however, limited scientific research is available regarding how many, how often and from whom prisoners receive visits, how visits are experienced and the possible effects of visitation, thus leaving many questions unanswered. Meanwhile, in the past ten years great changes have been made to visitation in Dutch prison policy and practice. Given these recent developments, both scientists and practitioners could benefit from an overview of the current state of affairs of visitation. This article aims to bridge the gap between research, policy and practice by summarizing findings from the Life in Custody study. This study includes a description of how visitation is organized legally, at the policy level and in practice, a thorough review of prior research on visitation and an analysis of the most recent national data on the prevalence and frequency of visitation, while considering important differences between prisoners and prisons.

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.

The increasing volume of waste generated globally is one of the most prominent environmental issues we face today. Companies responsible for the treatment or disposal of waste are therefore among the key actors in fostering a sustainable future. Yet the waste industry has often been characterised as a criminogenic one, causing environmental harm which disproportionately impacts the world’s most vulnerable regions and populations. In this article, we illustrate how companies operating in global supply chains exploit legal and enforcement asymmetries and market complexities to trade waste with countries where facilities for environmentally sound treatment and disposal of waste are lacking. We draw on two contemporary cases of corporate misconduct in the Global South by companies with operating headquarters in the Global North: Seatrade and Probo Koala. We compare these cases building on theories about corporate and environmental crime and its enforcement. This explorative comparative analysis aims to identify the key drivers and dynamics of illegal waste dumping, while also exploring innovative ways to make the waste sector more environmentally responsible and prevent the future externalisation of environmental harm.

Wanneer een jeugdige te maken krijgt met jeugdreclassering, richt Jeugdbescherming Regio Amsterdam, verder te noemen Jeugdbescherming, zich bij de begeleiding van de jeugdige niet alleen op de jeugdige zelf, maar op het hele gezin. Conform de door Jeugdbescherming ontwikkelde methodiek, Intensief Systeemgericht Casemanagement, wordt het hele gezin betrokken. Deze methodiek wordt toegepast ongeacht het kader (het civielrechtelijke, strafrechtelijke of preventieve kader) waarbinnen Jeugdbescherming werkt. In tegenstelling tot in het civiele recht, lijkt de focus in de wet in het geval van het strafrecht echter vooral te zijn gericht op de individuele jeugdige verdachte of veroordeelde. In dit artikel wordt daarom onderzocht welke mogelijkheden de wet biedt om te werken volgens het Intensief Systeemgericht Casemanagement in het strafrechtelijke kader, tijdens de uitvoering van jeugdreclassering. Ook worden er aanknopingspunten in de doelstellingen van jeugdreclassering gezocht voor deze werkwijze.

A well-established body of epidemiological research suggests that the prevalence of mental health problems (mental disorders, psychological distress, and substance use) in prisoner populations far exceeds that of non-incarcerated people in the surrounding community. Poor mental health in prisoners is associated with multiple adverse outcomes, including suicidal behaviour. In the past decade, novel data in Belgium and the Netherlands have been published on this topic, which have not been synthesized to date. The aim of the current systematic literature review was to provide an up-to-date overview of the mental health of prisoners in Belgium and the Netherlands. Based on 24 empirical studies conducted in 1997-2018, the authors conclude that people with mental health problems are overrepresented in Belgian and Dutch prisons, providing both a challenge and a public health opportunity to address the mental health care needs of a vulnerable and hard-to-engage population. Investing in the prevention and treatment of mental health problems not only benefits the prisoners concerned, but equally, society at large.

In deze bijdrage wordt ingegaan op de (on)mogelijkheid om een enquêtebevoegdheid in de tijd en qua reikwijdte in de tijd te kunnen beperken. Onderzoek wijst uit dat verjaring niet, maar verval van enquêtebevoegdheid mogelijk moet worden geacht. De conclusie is dat slechts een toegekende enquêtebevoegdheid aan beperkingen in de tijd kan worden onderworpen.

In the current criminological literature surprisingly little is known about the development of partnerships of detainees during and after detention. In particular, it is unknown to what extent existing differences in the relationship quality at the start of the detention period continue. Therefore, this study examined how the partnerships of detainees developed by using data from the Prison Project. This is a longitudinal study in which 747 detainees with a partner were interviewed at various moments during detention and six months after detention. The results show that bad partnerships at the beginning of detention remain in general bad or end during and/or after detention, while the average to good relationships remain the same.

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.

Indigenous claims have challenged a number of orthodoxies within state legal systems, one of them being the kinds of proof that can be admissible. In Canada, the focus has been on the admissibility and weight of oral traditions and histories. However, these novel forms are usually taken as alternative means of proving a set of facts that are not in themselves “cultural”, for example, the occupation by a group of people of an area of land that constitutes Aboriginal title. On this view, maps are a neutral technology for representing culturally different interests within those areas. Through Indigenous land use studies, claimants have been able to deploy the powerful symbolic capital of cartography to challenge dominant assumptions about “empty” land and the kinds of uses to which it can be put. There is a risk, though, that Indigenous understandings of land are captured or misrepresented by this technology, and that what appears neutral is in fact deeply implicated in the colonial project and occidental ideas of property. This paper will explore the possibilities for an alternative cartography suggested by digital technologies, by Indigenous artists, and by maps beyond the visual order.