Het uitvoeren van effectmetingen door toezichthouders draagt bij aan evidence based toezicht. In de praktijk lopen toezichthouders tegen o.a. ethische, methodologische en praktische uitdagingen aan en is het vaak niet mogelijk om causaliteit aan te tonen. Met een praktijkvoorbeeld toont de NVWA aan dat het streven naar beredeneerde plausibiliteit een werkbaar en pragmatisch alternatief is. De NVWA kiest voor mixed methods in haar onderzoek naar de effectiviteit van een interventiemix op de naleving. Een belangrijke les is dat het combineren van kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve onderzoeksmethoden leidt tot complementaire inzichten en goed kan aansluiten op de onvoorspelbare praktijk van een toezichthouder.

In the Netherlands, the behavior-influencing and freedom-restricting measure (GVM) came into effect on 1 January 2018. The purpose of this measure is to enable long-term, if necessary, lifelong monitoring of perpetrators of sexual and serious violent crimes with a high risk of recidivism. The probation service advises on imposition and implementation of the measure. This article describes results of a small scale study on arguments that are used in practice to advise the GVM. The central question is whether the legislator provides probation officers with sufficient tools for substantiated advice to the court.

Theater performance must make hard sides of police work open to discussion

In this article we discuss what mediation in criminal cases encompasses, what the position is of mediation in criminal cases amidst other forms of recovery mediation and the question is posed whether mediation in criminal cases demands specific things from the mediator.

Seeing that the role of opinio juris in the identification of customary international law is essentially contested, this contribution seeks to explain how this concept plays a fruitful role in legal doctrine despite of, or perhaps even due to, this essential contestedness. To that effect the paper adopts a constructivist perspective, primarily drawing from Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Berger & Luckmann’s ideas about institutionalization. In this perspective, contested concepts such as opinio juris are conceived of as multifaceted tools of knowledge production in the hands of members of epistemic communities.

The mediator in criminal cases operates in special setting which requires specific competences: knowledge of the field of criminal law, knowledge of psychiatric/psychological problems and – if necessary – be able to consult a network of experts in that field, being prepared to operate in complex offender-victim relations and also to deal with high-escalated conflicts. These requirements raise a number of questions regarding the rules of the Dutch mediation federation, which are not designed to be used in the context of criminal law. Mediators in criminal cases are in need of other rules and pre-conditions to fulfil their work adequately.

In deze bijdrage staat de regulering van crowdfunding centraal. Al geruime tijd worstelen wetgever, toezichthouder en marktpartijen met niet voor crowdfunding geschreven wet- en regelgeving. Besproken worden knelpunten in de huidige systematiek en een alternatieve wijze van regulering van de crowdfundingpraktijk.

When the Promotion of Continued Parenting and Proper Divorce Act came into force on March 2009 both married and cohabiting Dutch parents of minor children were obliged to draw up a parenting plan when they separate. Parenting plans are not enforceable for cohabiters, however. Using data from the New Families in the Netherlands survey, we examine how many former cohabiters create a parenting plan and how this compares to the number of verbal or no arrangements. We expect that child, parents and relationship characteristics are important for the likelihood that a parenting plan is constructed. Results show that more than half of former cohabiters create a parenting plan. Furthermore, former cohabiters are more likely to draw up a parenting plan if they consult a legal practitioner during their separation process. In addition, the younger the youngest child is, the more likely that former cohabiters will create a parenting plan or make verbal arrangements rather than no arrangements. That is also true for higher educated households and if they opt for residential co-parenting after divorce. Former cohabiters in a high-conflict situation are less likely to develop a parenting plan than make no arrangements.

In recent years in The Netherlands around 120 mayors were trained as mediator. Focus of this multi method research was to collect the view of those mayors on – the future of - mediation as a tool in local public administration. More specific in conflicts with citizens, industry and other shareholders. Response rates on online survey was below standards but yield some descriptive aspects of this mayor group. Focus groups were informative. Mediation in local public administration is an accepted and successful phenomenon fact and will be further incorporated. Those mayors were pioneers and innovators but want to pass this method to organizational levels. One plead for incorporating principles and practice of mediation in all administrative processes and protocols.

Not only detainees, but also their spouses can experience negative consequences of imprisonment. Even though these negative consequences can be far-reaching, research in this area is scarce. This paper researches if detention causes female partners of male detainees in the Netherlands to experience negative reactions from family, friends and neighbours and if this causes changes in their social contacts. This study used longitudinal data from the Prison Project on 119 partners of detainees. Results show that many partners of detainees receive negative reactions from their network members. When partners of detainees experience negative reactions from their family in law, friends or neighbours, their contacts with those groups decrease. When partners of detainees experience negative reactions from their friends, their contact with their family increases.

This article analyzes the relation between law and citizenship on the basis of five modalities. This analysis is premised on the observation that citizenship plays a central role in the contemporary debate about the development of political communities. Furthermore it is obvious that citizenship is inextricably linked to law, but it is not easy to get a clear and complete picture of this link. This is due to, on the one hand, the versatility of the concept of citizenship, and the versatility of the phenomenon law on the other. In short, the relation between law and citizenship is multifaceted, which the typology of modalities is meant to reveal.

Uit het arrest van de Hoge Raad van 28 oktober 2011 in de zaak Gemeente De Ronde Venen/Stedin c.s. blijkt dat de mogelijkheden voor opzegging ruimer zijn dan voorheen werd aangenomen.

This contribution seeks to explain our commitment to the ambition to establish constitutional government, given the fact that this ambition appears to be unsuccessful. As for the latter, it is argued that the constitutional ambition is unsuccessful in that it is based on the idea of legal closure, whereas the practice of constitutional decision-making shows a continuous failure to establish such closure. To explain why political communities are nevertheless drawn to the constitutional ambition, this contribution defends that the idea of the constution as a governing normative framework functions as a useful fiction. This fiction, so the argument goes, facilitates a certain kind of public debate that enables political communities to express their collective identity.

In recent years it has become popular in political discourse and academic literature to talk about the blurring boundaries between transnational terrorism and organized crime. In addition, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 have instigated a debate on the link between transnational terrorism and state failure. This article scrutinizes this so-called ‘black hole’ thesis and its relationship to the crime-terror nexus by addressing the political significance of such conceptual blurring within an international context that is increasingly characterized by uncertainty and uncontrollable risks.