In this contribution we investigated:

1. What changes in the handling of immigration law suits has the corona pandemic led to?

2. What influence have these changes had on the role of first-line migra­tion judges?

   1. Has their working method been adjusted as a result of the corona measures? If so, does this still fit in their view and that of the parties to the proceedings within the requirements of a fair trial and the professional standards that apply to judges?

   2. Do the changes in working ­methods require different skills from migration judges?

   3. Are the changes in the handling of cases and the way of working, temporary or permanent?

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’.

Prisoner’s agency is often marginalized in the Dutch history of the prison. This article concretizes how inmates could influence their own lives and the prison system in the first half of the nineteenth century. By focusing on interaction as an indicator of agency, it is possible to go beyond the traditional analysis of agency as a form of resistance. A multidimensional perspective, in which attention is paid to resistance, negotiation and cooperation enlightens the diversity in which prisoners’ agency is expressed. In this way, this article aims to disprove the persistent stereotype of the powerless prisoner in the historiography of the Dutch prison.

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.

This article deals with restorative justice practices in Surinam. It is based mainly on anthropological literature and preliminary research findings of four indigenous villages in Surinam, and is part of a broader study of Indigenous and Marron communities. In these villages the age-old customary law approach to conflict remains a lively practice, especially in the rainforests where central authority has little influence. The author highlights a number of restorative aspects of indigenous (criminal) justice practices, such as the group conferencing model of the Krutu and the role of the community (rehabilitation). Other aspects are not at all restorative, such as cases of double punishment (ne bis in idem), corporal punishment and the lack of the possibility of appeal. Because the trend of opening the hinterland seems to be unstoppable, it is recommended to coordinate national law and customary law and improve cooperation between indigenous and central authority. The article gives some suggestions for reforming the Surinamese Penal Code.

Over the past decade, the concept of crimmigration has dominated legal and criminological understanding of contemporary immigration control. Drawing on the Netherlands as case study, this article provides a critical reflection on ‘crimmigration’ as both a policy trend and a scholarly trend. We argue that much of the existing scholarship has presented a one-dimensional understanding of crimmigration as a unilateral process singularly trending towards increasing punitiveness, securitization and exclusion. We examine a number of concrete examples illustrating the need for a more complex understanding that incorporates an analysis of the full range of actors and (counter)processes within the field of crimmigration.

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.

This article provides a case description of the development of an integrated safety monitor for the governance on policy goals. The governance on these safety goals took place in cooperation between eight municipalities and Police, Justice, Fireworks, Health Care providers for addiction or domestic violence and partners in incident and crisis management. Two problems were adressed. The first problem is that the evidence on process and results of monitoring from data to interpretation and policy choices in cooperation with different safety partners, is scarce. The second problem is that monitoring of a wide range of indicators on integrated safety is also scarce. In our case, the gathering of data and the interpretation of these data together with all the partners formed a cyclical process. This corresponds with the theory of governance developed by Ansell and Gash in a meta-analysis in 2008. The starting conditions were made clear. The design of the monitoring process was translated into themes of working sessions with a group of policy advisors, giving them a structure for the governance on the policy goals. This group developed a layered set of indicators. These set of indicators was broken down in the four policy goals as well as in different steps in the safety chain. Indicators from different registrations of the safety partners were combined with indicators about the perception of safety measured by a representative sample of the residents. The layered set of indicators was supportive in the discussion about a well balanced monitoring on prevention, signals, interventions and effect. The data were interpreted together with the safety partners. This was helpful in creating a joint perspective on safety problems and in the discussion about meaningful policy actions. The challenge now is to persevere in the cyclical process from data to interpretation and shared understanding about policy goals.

In deze bijdrage worden twee van de drie wetsvoorstellen voor een ‘eerlijke economie’ aan een kritische evaluatie onderworpen. Uit de historische en actuele schets die volgt, blijkt dat de wens om tot versterking van de positie van werknemers te komen bijzonder toepasselijk is in het huidige tijdsgewricht, waarin de factor arbeid op verschillende niveaus aan betekenis heeft ingeboet.

In 1981, PROCES published its first article on the criminal justice system in a pluriform or multicultural society. That article turned out to be the first of many articles on so-called cultural offences, like honour related violence and female genital mutilation, and the ways in which the criminal justice system could and should respond to these offences. This article reviews the various articles written on these topics for the past forty years and tries to finds an answer why it was that authors choose PROCES to publish their articles.

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 the Netherlands, immigration detention is classified under administrative law. More precisely: it is a form of administrative coercion. But immigration detention is also deprivation of liberty, or a habeas corpus measure. This makes it the most far-reaching form of administrative coercion you can think of. The regime and house rules of immigration detention differ just a little from those of criminal deprivation of liberty. The draft bill on the Return and Detention Act provides some improvements. For asylum seekers that cause nuisance, there is the Enforcement and Supervision Location, where the foreign national is given an area restriction and must remain within the municipal boundaries. Due to the liberty restrictions, immigration detention should always be the last resort.

Het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens (EHRM of Hof) heeft in de periode van september 2019 tot en met augustus 2020 weer diverse uitspraken gedaan over gezondheidsrechtelijke onderwerpen. Veel uitspraken borduren voort op of geven een nadere uitleg aan zaken waarover het Hof zich eerder heeft gebogen. Tegelijkertijd komt uit de uitspraken van afgelopen jaar het beeld naar voren dat het Hof in toenemende mate belang hecht aan de beschermingsplicht van de overheid, in het bijzonder bij gedetineerden, psychiatrische en verstandelijk beperkte patiënten en personen die anderszins kwetsbaar zijn.