In 1922 Honing gave a speech for the Society for the Moral Improvement of Prisoners, in which he advocated renewal in the prison system: for the sake of rehabilitation the system of solitary confinement should be replaced by a prison system in which prisoners actually share facilities and live together. His proposal for reform is theory driven and accompanied by a plan to experiment with the joint confinement before implementing it. This is in sharp contrast with contemporary prison reforms, which impair the possibilities for rehabilitation of prisoners.

Victims who suffer severe damages due to the act of a violent crime can request state compensation from the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF). VOCF workers who decide on these requests use their discretionary powers to translate the VOCF’s rules and policy into concrete actions. This study investigated (1) to what extent these VOCF workers match Lipsky’s definition of street-level bureaucrats and (2) what routines and heuristics they use to deal with time and information constraints. On the basis of document analysis and interviews, we found that the decision makers of the VOCF can to a certain extent be seen as street-level bureaucrats. To make decisions timely, some of them use routines such as the ‘downstream orientation’. This means that they award requests for compensation if they think that the applicant would be able to successfully contest a rejecting decision. To deal with a lack of information, they sometimes include a review clause in the text of a rejection decision. The use of heuristics was not found among the lawyers who decide in first instance, but in case of appeal hearings heuristics such as the affect and representativeness heuristic seem to play a role in the decision-making process. Future research should investigate whether these routines and heuristics lead to disparities in outcomes.

Every year there are some 130 cases of victimization dating fraud in the Netherlands. On average the victims lose more than 19.000 euros in this scam. With dating fraud a person on the internet pretends to be someone else and begins a love affair with the victim with the aim to make as much money off the victim as possible. This is a form of Nigerian fraud. In this article is described how this dating fraud is being done. Dating fraud is highly organized with highly educated offenders. Victims come from all layers of society, but according tot he Fraud Helpdesk midddle-aged women who are lonely, have a christian background and work in care, loose the largest amounts. The impact on the victims is huge: the emotional damage is even bigger than the fiancial loss. To reduce dating fraud it is necessary to pay more attention tot his form of fraud.

Exodus is an organization aimed at assisting prisoners at their transition to society. In the Exodus halfway houses participants receive help in finding a house and a job, in improving relationships with family and friends and in giving meaning to life. This study uses a quasi-experimental design to investigate whether participating in the Exodus program reduces reoffending: the observed reoffending rate is compared to the reoffending rate that was predicted based on characteristics of the participants. The findings show that two years after leaving Exodus, 46.5% of the participants reoffended. This is 4.1 percent point less than the total population of former prisoners and 4.6 percent point less than the predicted reoffending rate.

On July 1st 2016 a law entered into force that gives the victim or survivors of serious crimes the right to speak unrestrictedly in court. Where the victim or survivors used to be only permitted to make a statement on the consequences of the crime for them, the recent amendment of the law permits them to speak about the evidence, the legal qualification of the crime, the culpability of the offender and the appropriate punishment as well. Discussions on the introduction or extension of the victim’s right to speak mainly focused on the consequences of victim statements on the procedural consequences and on the consequences for the victim. Little attention is paid to the consequences for the offender. This article reports the findings of a systematic literature review on the relation between a victim statement and the imposed punishment. The findings from the American studies show that a victim statement aggravates sentencing outcomes. How desirable is that? For answering that question, more research is needed, which the legislator has not wanted to wait for.