In Dutch criminal law, there are certain options to impose financial measures on convicted persons having financial problems. In these cases, the probation service supervises (the approach to) their financial problems. However, concrete financial measures are often not included in the judgment. In this article, we discuss how information about financial problems is collected and demonstrate several obstacles and considerations for advising and imposing financial measures. The results indicate that there is generally little consideration for financial problems in the sentencing phase, which makes it difficult to obtain sufficient information on financial problems before the imposition of a sentence. In order to adequately support the financial problems of (ex-)offenders, more attention and knowledge for financial problems in all levels of the criminal justice system, effective supervision and clear intervention programs are vital.

Binnen het veelzijdige en complexe systeem van fiscale rechtshandhaving, dient op grond van het in Nederland geldende principe van una via op een zeker moment gekozen te worden voor bestuursrechtelijke of strafrechtelijke rechtshandhaving. Die keuze, ook wel ‘forumkeuze’, staat in deze bijdrage centraal. De vraag die beantwoord zal worden, is of de manier waarop de fiscale forumkeuze thans wordt gemaakt voorzienbaarheid van bestraffing garandeert.

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.

Wanneer een vader een vrijheidsstraf krijgt heeft dit veelal grote impact op betrokken vaderschap. De Raad van Europa vroeg in 2018 aandacht voor het thema omdat bewustwording van vaderschap in de strafrechtsketen leed en risico kan voorkomen in gezinnen van gedetineerden. Wij onderzochten in hoeverre er in Nederland gezinsgericht gewerkt wordt in de straftoemeting met betrekking tot verdachte mannen. We concluderen dat in zittingen meer aandacht besteed moet worden aan de rol van de verdachte man binnen zijn gezin.

Although reward systems are utilized in prisons worldwide, evaluations regarding their intended use are lacking. This contribution reconstructs the policy theory of such a system: Promotion and Demotion, as implemented in Dutch prisons in 2014. With a policy scientific approach the intended target group, means, goals and causal mechanisms of the system were delineated. The policy theory assumes three means, ten goals and 24 causal mechanisms. The policy theory is insufficiently empirically substantiated on a number of points and takes limited account of (cognitively) impaired prisoners. This accurate reconstruction offers a unique insight into the assumed functioning of a part of Dutch detention policy and provides starting points for international considerations of behavioral change in detention.

Suspects with a Mild Intellectual Disability (hereafter: MID) are over-represented in the criminal justice system. Is the right to a fair trial of these vulnerable suspects sufficiently guaranteed in the modernized Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure? To this end, it is first of all important that the MID is recognized by legal professionals in the criminal justice system. In this way, the suspect with an MID can be treated and interrogated in the right way, which can, for example, prevent making a false statement. Secondly, it is important that the compensatory and remedial measures that professionals may take according to the modernization are clarified. The professionals should know in which phase of the criminal proceeding they should apply certain measures. Finally, the question arises whether the addition of a lawyer is the most important measure to compensate the suspect with an MID for his disability.

Starting point in this article is the classical work of Herman Franke on the history of the Dutch prison system. Franke showed how policymakers and other people who influence prison policy and practice tried to reduce criminal behavior in the past two centuries. These attempts had various backgrounds, among which religious, sociological and biological, and varied greatly in scientifical substantiation. Every new prison policy elicited high hopes, but in practice criminal behavior was rarely pushed in the desired direction. The means of the prison system, among which staff, buildings and regime regulations, showed to be much later realized than the formulated goals established by law. Another problem that came up more than once in history was that the urge and compulsion mechanism of a new prison policy lacked support base and (agogical) skills among prison staff. Recommendations are formulated for the (near) future in favor of more successfull prison policy implementations.

This study investigates daytime activities in clients at the Dutch Probation Service for addicted offenders (SVG). The article describes daytime activities, including work, based on official registrations of 9717 clients and an additional selection of client file study for 50 clients. The majority of the population does not have structural daytime activities, and within this group, substance use problems are slightly more prevalent. This study identifies four subgroups of clients without daytime activities: job seekers, work-incapacitated clients, motivated unemployed clients, and unmotivated unemployed clients. There is some heterogeneity between subgroups in terms of different background problems.

This article analyzes the opinion of twenty-four Surinamese ex-convicted young men on restorative justice. The results were obtained through four focus group sessions and a concise survey form. The factors (a) type of offense, (b) seriousness of offense and (c) prevention of recurrence were discussed. The opinions are divided, but the majority is of the opinion that restorative justice can mainly work for serious and violent crimes. Fear of revenge appears to be a barrier to participation. Employment has been indicated as the key to real recovery of the offender and prevention of recidivism (and thus satisfaction for the victim). The results provide insight into the susceptibility to restorative justice among this specific group in Suriname.

In het artikel wordt inzicht geboden in nieuwe instrumenten die een risicotaxatie mogelijk maken met behulp van artificiële intelligentie. In het bijzonder wordt ook ingegaan op de talrijke fundamentele vragen die met het gebruik ervan gepaard gaan. Tevens gaan de auteurs na in welke mate AI-risicotaxatie accurater is – of kan zijn – dan de bestaande methoden van risicotaxatie.

This qualitative study examines how criminal careers in cybercrime start and can be explained. Based on offender and expert interviews, the authors conclude that traditional factors linked with the initiation, such as a maturity gap (for juvenile offenders) and opportunism (for adult offenders), in combination with different types of (online) disinhibition – social, technical, situational and psychological – can explain the start of a criminal career. Features of the digital context appear to play a major role in the development of a criminal career and this requires more online supervision and education about – among other things – legal alternatives and the risks and boundaries of the online environment.

De afgelopen jaren heeft in het gevangeniswezen een aantal ingrijpende veranderingen plaatsgevonden. De detentiefasering is naar de achtergrond verdwenen en detentieregimes zijn versoberd. Dit biedt aanmerkelijk minder aanknopingspunten voor resocialisatie. Beveiliging van de samenleving staat voorop in de omgang met gedetineerden. De veranderingen worden op korte termijn versterkt als de Wet straffen en beschermen in werking treedt. Maar schieten we als samenleving juist niet veel meer op met meer mogelijkheden voor resocialisatie tijdens de detentie? Deze bijdrage schetst een aantal aansprekende ideeën daarover.

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.

In this study we examined the developmental trajectories of hackers, based on their self-reported web defacements. During a web defacement, the content of a website is altered without permission. In total, 50,330 defacements of websites with a Dutch extension (.nl websites) were analyzed, which were executed by 3,640 defacers between January 2010 and march 2017. Using trajectory analysis, six different groups of defacers could be distinguished: two chronic groups of attackers and four groups who only defaced websites during a limited time period. These groups also differed in their motivations and modus operandi. The high frequent chronic attackers consist of less than 2% of the hackers, but were responsible for more than half of all defacements. It would therefore be most efficient when future interventions focus on this small group of chronic offenders. For future studies it would be an interesting topic to examine the content of the web defacements.

This paper, answering to a recent critique by Ben Laws to the concept of Self developed by narrative criminology, and recognizing its importance, shows that narrative criminology has formulated a complex dynamic definition of it, in addressing both the limit-experiences and the unconscious dimension. Such enlargement can be attained by adding to narrative criminology the contributions of psychosocial criminology, that considers also the emotional dimension of crime narratives and the enjoyment connected to crime: the offender Self, in this perspective, is a multiplex, not completely definable, sometimes alien entity, which can be exposed analysing in depth criminal narratives.