The article describes some highlights of the advice and concludes that the document mainly describes the current situation of the probationservice. The advice may possibly contribute to the upcoming discussion regarding the organization of the probation service.

Studies have shown that the effects of scientific research on law and policy making are often fairly limited. Different reasons can be given for this: scientists are better at falsifying hypothesis than at predicting the future, the outcomes of academic research and empirical evidence can be inconclusive or even contradictory, the timing of the legislative cycle and the production of research show mismatches, there can be clashes between the political rationality and the economic or scientific rationality in the law making process et cetera. There is one ‘wicked’ methodological problem, though, that affects all regulatory policy making, namely: the ‘jump’ from empirical facts (e.g. there are too few organ donors in the Netherlands and the voluntary registration system is not working) to normative recommendations of what the law should regulate (e.g. we need to change the default rule so that everybody in principle becomes an organ donor unless one opts out). We are interested in how this translation process takes place and whether it could make a difference if the empirical research on which legislative drafts are build is more quantitative type of research or more qualitative. That is why we have selected two cases in which either type of research played a role during the drafting phase. We use the lens of the proportionality principle in order to see how empirical data and scientific evidence are used by legislative drafters to justify normative choices in the design of new laws.

The UK government has embarked on an ambitious programme to reform the English and Welsh probation sector. Key to these reforms has been ‘marketisation’ involving Payment by Results. More recently the devolution of justice has become a key theme. This paper describes key reforms that have taken place since 2010 and sets out evidence for their effectiveness. Currently, the available evidence is limited, but more evidence is available from other sectors where similar models have also been used. This evidence base is discussed with particular reference to the potential for the reforms to promote innovation.

More than forty organizations in security, healthcare and social services work together in the ‘Top600 Project’, aimed at those committing ‘high-impact crimes’. The goal is to improve safety in and around Amsterdam by achieving a permanent change in the behavior of these perpetrators. This includes both a reduction in recidivism of high-impact crimes and an increase in their self-reliance in order to decrease their reliance on crime. To achieve this, special case managers strive to get a clear perspective on the (often complex) lives of these Top600 persons. These managers (‘regisseurs’) can connect to all the organizations concerned and ensure that their efforts are coordinated, aligned and mutually strengthening. The project includes preventing the Top600 persons’ (younger) brothers and sisters from following their siblings on a path of crime. It works through a collective focus and a tailor-made approach for each person, by exercising control on three levels (administrative, civil, and case level), by central monitoring of the results and - from there - by resolving structural flaws in the system.

One of the most widely implemented behavioral programs for adult offenders in the Netherlands is a cognitive skills training called CoVa. The training is an adapted version of the Enhanced Thinking Skills program (ETS). This paper reports on the findings of several impact studies on the effectiveness of CoVa and ETS. Special attention is paid to a recent study on the measured change in cognitive skills before and after the training and a recent comparative recidivism study. The majority of studies on CoVa and ETS show positive indications of the effectiveness of the training programs. In the Netherlands the effect sizes are small, but some English studies on ETS reveal large effects. The paper discusses possible explanations for this outcome and examines the relevance of the research findings for the present version of the CoVa-training.

This article presents an overview of the legal regime provided in the Spanish system of criminal sanctions regarding the control of dangerous sex offenders in the community. It focuses on the introduction, in 2010, of a post-prison safety measure named supervised release. We describe the context of its introduction in the Spanish Criminal Code, considering the influence of societal upheaval concerning dangerous sex offenders in its development, and also the historical and theoretical features of the Spanish system of criminal sanctions. We also analyse the legal framework of supervised release, the existing case law about it and how the legal doctrine has until now assessed this measure. After this analysis, the main aim of this article consists in evaluating the effectiveness and the proportionality of the measure, according to the principle of minimal constraints and the rehabilitative function of the criminal sanctions in Spanish law, stated in Article 25.2 of the Spanish Constitution.

After release from prison or a custodial preventive institution, offenders may come under supervision in Germany, which means that their conduct is controlled for a period of up to five years or even for life by a judicial supervising authority. Supervision is terminated if it can be expected that even in the absence of further supervision the released person will not commit any further offences. From the theoretical point of view, supervision is not considered a form of punishment in Germany, but a preventive measure that is guided by the principle of proportionality. After a presentation of the German twin track system of criminal sanctions and a glimpse at sentencing theory, the capacity of the principle of proportionality to guide and control judicial decisions in the field of preventive sanctions is discussed. The human rights perspective plays only a minor role in the context of supervision in Germany.

Studies indicated that detainees are not always allocated to treatment programs based on official guidelines. Street-level bureaucracy theory suggests that this is because government employees do not always perform policies as prescribed. This study aimed to assess whether this also applies to the allocation of offenders to treatment in Dutch penitentiary institutions. This was studied among a group of 541 male prisoners who participated in the Recidivism Reduction program. The results showed that official policy guidelines were, in most cases, not leading when referring detainees to behavioral interventions. Instead, treatment referrals were influenced by a broad range of risk factors, as well as the length of an offender’s sentence.

This article examines the main assumptions and theoretical underpinnings of case study method in legal studies. It considers the importance of research design, including the crucial roles of the academic literature review, the research question and the use of rival theories to develop hypotheses and the practice of identifying the observable implications of those hypotheses. It considers the selection of data sources and modes of analysis to allow for valid analytical inferences to be drawn in respect of them. In doing so it considers, in brief, the importance of case study selection and variations such as single or multi case approaches. Finally it provides thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses associated with undertaking socio-legal and comparative legal research via a case study method, addressing frequent stumbling blocks encountered by legal researchers, as well as ways to militate them. It is written with those new to the method in mind.

Becker’s theory on crime and punishment provides guidelines for designing an optimal law enforcement policy. In designing such a policy the costs of law enforcement should be traded-off against the benefits that originate in deterring criminal acts. We investigate whether law enforcement policy in the Netherlands is consistent with this guidelines. Since policy makers are not very precise on the goals of law enforcement policy and hardly anything is known about the effectiveness and efficiency of instruments, it turns out to be impossible to say whether law enforcement policy actually contributes to social welfare. This is not necessarily problematic if, in line with the efficient law hypothesis, law enforcement automatically converges to an efficient outcome. Furthermore, Becker’s theory appears to miss a crucial element by not taking account of existing preferences for retribution. If utility is derived from seeing that justice is done, this should be included in the welfare criterion. Assuming policy makers prefer welfare enhancing law enforcement, they would be well-advised to start systematically collecting information on the effectiveness and efficiency of instruments of law enforcement policy.

Based on a literature research and program evaluation of the practice of Victim in Focus (Slachtoffer in Beeld) in 2013, two issues are addressed: What are the possible effects of victim offender mediation? Which active mechanisms will cause or contribute to these effects? The authors describe the current context and developments in The Netherlands concerning restorative justice and then describe the effects and possible active mechanisms such as satisfaction, diminishing fear, anger and shame, information and consent, procedural justice, reduction of recidivism, compliance. In a synthesis of active mechanisms they present four domains or mediating factors: from incomprehension to comprehension (cognitive restoration); from unease to ease (emotional restoration); from injustice to justice (moral restoration); from powerless to powerful feelings (restoration of control). The victim offender mediation as a ritual has an impact or is supposed to have an impact on these four domains for both victims and offenders. Within the four domains four activities or interactions within victim offender mediation are presented: creating understanding through inter-subjectivity; expression of fear, trauma and shame; doing justice by excuses/apologies and restorative actions; regaining self control. Further research is needed to validate the model and to get more insight in essential or primary and secondary aspects in the explanation of the impacts of victim offender mediation.

While most restorative justice research would suggest that victims and offenders are often satisfied with their experiences, the number of referrals to these type of programs remain low. This lack of accessibility was the topic of the European Forum for Restorative Justice project, ‘Accessibility and Initiation of Restorative Justice’. This article reports on the project’s findings with regard to several factors which limit greater accessibility, as supported by the attitudes of referral bodies and restorative justice practitioners examined in the frame of this project. The results of previous research and the current empirical research illustrate how accessibility is hindered by (1) lacking or insufficient restorative justice legislation, (2) exclusion criteria regarding which cases may be suitable to restorative justice procedures, (3) a lack of knowledge among legal actors, restorative justice practitioners and the general public about restorative justice and its benefits, (4) the persistence of a retributive legal culture within criminal justice and (5) a need for greater cooperation among those who are involved whether as referral bodies or mediators or facilitators. Qualitative data is presented to provide a better understanding of these elements, in addition to potential solutions that were reported by the respondents. Furthermore, the authors take a closer look at the current situation in the Netherlands, including an overview of the trainings that were developed within the Accessibility project. The results of these trainings reinforce the factors that were identified by previous research and the current empirical research, and aimed to look for solutions to the main barriers to greater accessibility.

The right to counsel of juveniles at the stage of police interrogations has gained significant attention since the Salduz ruling of the European Court on Human Rights in 2008. The legislative and policy developments that have taken place since then and that are still ongoing – both on a regional (European) and domestic (Dutch) level – reveal a shared belief that juvenile suspects must be awarded special protection in this phase of the criminal justice proceedings. This calls for a youth-specific approach as fundamentally different from the common approach for adults. At the same time, there seems to be ambivalence concerning the justification and concrete implications of such a youth-specific approach. This article aims to clarify the underlying rationale and significance of a youth specific approach to the right to counsel at the stage of police interrogations on the basis of an interdisciplinary analysis of European Court on Human Rights case law, international children’s rights standards and relevant developmental psychological insights. In addition, this article aims to position this right of juveniles in conflict with the law in the particular context of the Dutch juvenile justice system and provide concrete recommendations to the Dutch legislator.

This article examines the importance of the social evidence base in relation to the development of the law. It argues that there is a need for those lawyers who play a part in law reform (legislators and those involved in the law reform process) and for those who play a part in formulating policy-based common law rules (judges and practitioners) to know more about how facts are established in the social sciences. It argues that lawyers need sufficient knowledge and skills in order to be able to critically assess the facts and evidence base when examining new legislation and also when preparing, arguing and determining the outcomes of legal disputes. For this reason the article argues that lawyers need enhanced training in empirical methodologies in order to function effectively in modern legal contexts.

Starting in 2015, Dutch municipalities will have complete administrative responsibility for all types of youth care on the continuum of preventive child education programs to youth probation and re-entry aftercare. In the process of this so called ‘youth care transition’, the use of available and valid scientific knowledge about effective reduction of juvenile crime (distilled from What Works, desistance focused studies and forensic pedagogy) seems to be suppressed by the administrative and procedural concerns that municipalities are now facing. In this article, these concerns are discussed and some solutions are presented.

In the Netherlands penal interventions aimed at the reduction of recidivism are progressively executed according to the ‘what works’ approach, a research tradition that tries to articulate the conditions under which penal interventions can be effective in preventing offenders to relapse into crime. The ideas on ‘what works’ originate from international studies, but what about the Dutch research itself? Which interventions have proved to be successful in the Netherlands and which have had adverse results? The WODC has carried out a meta-analysis of all relevant studies that have been published in the Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium since the early seventies of the previous century. 141 evaluations were identified, 83 of which contained some sort of comparison with a control group. Results indicate that programmes aimed at adult offenders were more successful than interventions for youth and young adults. Programmes based on the idea of rehabilitation appeared to have been more successful than sanctions based on deterrence.

The authors summarize the empirical findings with regard to restorative justice and crime prevention as presented in the report of the European project on the matter at hand. With regard to the offender, they studied empirical research on the reduction of recidivism. Data refer to characteristics of the offender, the view of the offender with regard to the restorative process, characteristics of the communication processes and the type of offence as influencing factors. Results in general seem to be quite positive, although there are some cases when recidivism is worse in comparison to the traditional justice process. Crawford indicates how preventative effects for the victims can be taken into account – the researchers refer to the different effects depending on the type of crime and characteristics of the victim; satisfaction, re-victimisation and post-traumatic symptoms; and the prevention of revenge. With regard to the societal preventative effects, research on restorative justice seems to be restricted to the theoretical level: empirical research in this regard is lacking.

In this article, the authors summarize some important methodological problems that may be encountered when studying the crime preventative effects of restorative justice. Studies mostly focus on tertiary preventative effects, namely the reduction of recidivism. Empirical research is in that regard mainly dealing with the effects of victim-offender mediation and conferencing practices. Some problems include the definitional issue (what can be considered as a restorative justice intervention?), the (quasi-)experimental design, the small size of samples and issues of comparability between different studies due to differences in e.g. follow-period or criteria for measuring recidivism.

The master thesis Meditation inside the prison system describes the role of mindful meditation practises inside the prison environment. This article shortly summarizes the positive effects of (vipassana) meditation on the mental well-being of prisoners as set out in foreign studies and elaborates on the potential context for meditation programmes inside the Dutch prison system. This context can be found in the legal aim of individual rehabilitation including more intrinsic notions of internal growth and in certain insights of criminological nature. Interviews with several prison managers reveal an open attitude towards the practical integration of meditation programmes.

Many public prosecutors see a link between domestic violence and violence in the public sphere. In the beginning of this century the fight against domestic violence was integrated into the national security policy of The Netherlands. The growing attention for domestic violence combined with better registration has led to an enormous grow of criminal justice cases of domestic violence. The article analyses the public prosecution policy towards domestic violence. Nowadays even without a report suspects can be brought to trial if the charges can be proved. On the one hand the public prosecution aims to lay down a standard, on the other hand perpetrators are confronted with a set of conditions forcing them to accept professional help in order to bring about a change in their behaviour and prevent recidivism. In this way an effective use of criminal justice could contribute to a reduction of domestic violence and crime in general.