De raadsheer-commissaris houdt toezicht op de procesmatige kant van het onderzoek door middel van het geven van aanwijzingen aan de onderzoeker respectievelijk het geven van bevelen aan de rechtspersoon of belanghebbenden. Sinds de introductie in 2013 is de raadsheer-commissaris minstens twintig keer in actie gekomen in vijftien verschillende enquêtes.

In deze bijdrage doen wij onderzoek naar de vraag hoe preventief politieoptreden op basis van datakoppeling zou moeten worden genormeerd. Onze analyse is gebaseerd op het Sensingproject Outlet Roermond. Wij stellen dat bestaande wetgeving onvoldoende in staat is de privacy van burgers te beschermen als die burgers ten behoeve van preventief politieoptreden in een algoritmische risicogroep worden geplaatst. Om die reden moet nieuwe regelgeving mede worden gebaseerd op een nieuw concept: group privacy. Ook stellen wij dat een nieuwe wettelijke grondslag recht zal moeten doen aan strafvorderlijke basisbeginselen nu preventief optreden op grond van datakoppeling moet worden gezien als opsporing.

This is a letter written by Brigitte Chin-A-Fat to the late Peter Hoefnagels, who was one of the Dutch pioneers in the field of divorce mediation and a professor of criminology and family law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 1997, TMD published an article from his hand in which he wrote how he had become inspired by the potential of divorce mediation and about his (first) experiences with this ‘new’ mode of dispute resolution in family disputes. The original article by Peter Hoefnagels, dating from 1997, is reproduced in 2021 in TMD in view of its relevance today and precedes the letter by Brigitte Chin-A-Fat.
Hoefnagels invented the so-called ‘divorce announcement’ and introduced psychology to the legal world of divorce and family mediation. Anno 2021, there are many (legal) developments which are bound to have an impact on the reform of Dutch divorce procedure.
The Dutch government has set up pilot projects experimenting with inter alia a ‘joint access’ to the family court. Many of these developments are in line with Hoefnagels’ suggestions to avoid harm being inflicted on the ex-spouses and notably their children to the largest extent possible. The author discusses some of the current pilot projects and connects the rationale underlying these experiments to Hoefnagels’ ideas as presented 25 years ago. She also looks into the future, notably which changes are likely to occur in the next 25 years in the field of divorce mediation.

This year, 2021, TMD has reached a milestone: its 25th volume. To celebrate this event, the issues to be published this year will highlight what has been achieved over the past 25 years, in mediation practice, and in respect of scientific knowledge on the various modes of dispute resolution. The question which targets to set for the future, will equally be addressed.
Geographically, the focus of this first issue is on the Netherlands, whereas the third issue will be addressing developments in Belgium. The fourth issue this year will highlight international developments, ranging from the USA to China. The second issue will be a special surprise for our subscribers.
The present issue, dealing with the Netherlands, starts with a tribute to the pioneer of family mediation in this country, the late professor Peter Hoefnagels. His original article, published in the very first volume of TMD (1997) and reproduced here in its entirety, describes his own experience when pioneering divorce mediation from 1974 onwards. In 1997, the year of original publication, mediation was not yet widely acknowledged nor embraced. Brigitte Chin-A-Fat responds to Peter Hoefnagels through a personal letter following his article, reassuring the great pioneer that 25 years further on, mediation has become well established in the family domain.
The issue continues with three interviews, organized by editors Roger Ritzen and/or Rob Jagtenberg, with individuals who have (sometimes inadvertently) become leading authorities in the field.
Steve Whittaker, an English solicitor who moved to the Netherlands in 1988 to work in the construction industry and became inspired by the use of ADR in Hongkong, became the founder of the Netherlands Mediation Institute (NMI), in the mid 1990s. For 20 years, NMI was the umbrella structure for (almost) all mediators in the Netherlands and the interface between the mediation community and government. Compared with those early years, today, interests seem to diverge increasingly, at the risk of fragmentation.
The second interview is with former President of the Court of Appeal in Arnhem, Ms. Machteld Pel. For many years, she spearheaded the Dutch national research program on court-referred mediation, thereby acting as the trait-d’union between the judiciary and the mediation community. Judges who were sceptics at first, often became interested after having taken the special training courses co-designed by Machteld Pel. Her book ‘Referral to Mediation’, which is packed with checklists and practical tips for formulating questions, has become a genuine classic.
The interview with Fred Schonewille takes the reader to the past decade in particular. Fred Schonewille has been the driving force behind various proposals for mediation legislation, aiming to secure a more prominent place for mediation, while improving professional quality standards. The Netherlands and Belgium constitute contrasting cases, where in the Netherlands legislation proposals were hitherto torpedoed, whereas Belgium has comprehensive legislation in place for some time now.
Fred Schonewille has also pioneered premarital mediation and new varieties of mediation in the domain of family-owned companies. Some fascinating insights gained in these areas are also shared in this third interview.
This first issue in the special year 2021 is concluded by two smaller contributions; in the first of these, Médiation à la française, Paris-based Dutch lawyer-mediators Marinka Schillings and Thom Verkuilen provide an overview of recent developments in France. Legislative action as well as some recent research outcomes are addressed. The second of the smaller contributions highlights a conference organized by a professorial team from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, addressing the position of the judge vis-a-vis various modes of dispute resolution. The proceedings of the conference will be published as a book later this year.

This article examines why literary fiction (based on extensive research and cooperation with inmates) allows us to understand the reality of being incarcerated sometimes better than non-fictional work or scientific research. Based on her long-term experiences as a creative writing coach in a Dutch prison the author explains why literature is such a great tool for empowerment and developing the talent of inmates, because it creates a ‘free space in prison’, where inmates are (aspired) writers instead of prisoners. She describes in detail how equivalent working relations between her as an ‘outsider’ and inmates have allowed her to create the novel Een van ons (One of us), an intimate story told from the perspective of a prisoner sentenced to life and a writing coach, and how she avoided the clichés of the questions of guilt and stigmatization. Otten explores the ‘unique power’ of fiction as a tool for opening up the closed world of incarceration.

In his famous dissertation Twee eeuwen gevangen (Two centuries of imprisonment), Franke explains the history of imprisonment in the Netherlands as a development from external to internal coercion, based on the civilization theory of Norbert Elias. Central question of this contribution is in how far the pursuit of responsibilization of prisoners as described by modern penologists can be conceived as a continuation of this process and what the consequences of this pursuit are. It is concluded that the forces behind these two processes differ, but that both rehabilitation strategies are modelled on a new citizenship ideal. In so far the introduction of the responsibilization strategy illustrates Franke’s main thesis, namely that developments within the penitentiaries can only be understood in their social and historical context. It is argued that responsibilization can lead to the erosion of the legal position of prisoners, while emancipation was precisely described by Franke as an achievement of the Dutch prison system.

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’.

Het vaststellen van de hoogte van de billijke vergoeding is door de wetgever aan de rechter overgelaten. De Hoge Raad heeft inmiddels een kader geschetst. Op basis hiervan wordt uitgegaan van de gevalsvergelijking als startpunt voor de begroting van de billijke vergoeding.
In dit artikel staat deze vergelijking centraal, en meer in het bijzonder de vraag welke gevallen met elkaar moeten worden vergeleken.

Is het mogelijkheid de strafprocedure in hoger beroep op innovatieve wijze te verkorten? Hier wordt een voorstel gedaan om op basis van consensualiteit te komen tot afspraken over versnelde afdoening in oude zaken. Het proces moet fair zijn en in lijn met uitgangspunten van het Wetboek van Strafvordering. Afspraken gemaakt tussen openbaar ministerie en verdediging worden voorgelegd aan de rechter. Een ingelaste schriftelijke ronde waarin standpunten worden uitgewisseld, goede planning van openbare (avond)zittingen en strakke handhaving van termijnen moeten daadwerkelijke versnelling mogelijk maken.

The books by the French writer Alexis Tocqueville attracted great interest, also in the Netherlands, including Groen van Prinsterer and his friends. Groen frequently quotes from it, often with approval – for example about the vulnerability of democracy –, sometimes with critical commentary – about democracy as the fruit of revolutionary concepts, for example. This article contains the result of an investigation into intercourse of Groen with the works of Tocqueville. This research was carried out as part of the Tocqueville project of Prof. Sophie van Bijsterveld, professor of Law, Religion and Society at Radboud University in Nijmegen (https://www.ru.nl/tocqueville/).

What is a good governance approach to uncertainty or reflexivity? Reducing uncertainty is an important task of policy and governance, but it can also derail. That is why good governance includes holding space for uncertainty. A Christian worldview provides insights for a more relaxed handling of uncertainty. The notions of certitudo, improvisation and humility are then central. Together, they form building blocks for a post-secular perspective on governance in times of crisis.

Spiritual caregivers in the Netherlands are available in the military and in penitentiary institutions, in health care institutions and, recently, in the police. Within the military and the justice system, the spiritual care is traditionally characterised by a clear division of responsibilities between church and state. Due to domain specific developments in health care institutions and within the police, positions and responsibilities are less clear-cut. Developments such as the increased number of denominations that provide spiritual care tends to regard spiritual caregivers as ‘ordinary employees’. This article analyses the position of spiritual caregivers in the various domains and discusses current developments. It asserts that the church-state arrangement in the classic spiritual care areas requires respect and that the gist thereof should be taken into account in legal arrangements in the other domains.

This article builds on two previous publications in this journal on the topic of the role of the parents of misbehaving children. We previously concluded that the family plays an important role in ending crime among young people. More recently, we sharpened that conclusion on the basis of long-term monitoring of a large group of young repeat offenders: they don’t stop because their parents say so. The role of the parents turned out to be much more fragile. This article aims to offer an extra insight into the complexity of the relationship between education and crime based on three recent cases.

De Dienstenrichtlijn verplicht de dienstverrichter tot het verstrekken van uitgebreide informatie aan de klant, waaronder algemene voorwaarden. De Dienstenrichtlijn bevat geen sancties op het verzaken van de informatieplicht. De Nederlandse wetgever heeft de informatieplicht gekoppeld aan artikel 6:234 BW. Auteurs onderzoeken of dat juist is en of het verzaken van de informatieplicht een totstandkomingsgebrek is.

In de periode tussen 12 maart en 1 december 2020 hadden de 25 veiligheidsregio’s een sleutelrol bij de bestrijding van het coronavirus. Zij volgden de bindende aanwijzingen van de Minister van VWS op en hadden daarnaast de bevoegdheid om eigen maatregelen voor hun regio te nemen. Dankzij het afstemmingsoverleg tussen de veiligheidsregio’s in het Veiligheidsberaad is in de corona-aanpak niettemin steeds een grote mate van uniformiteit zichtbaar geweest. In deze bijdrage komt aan de orde hoe beperkt de ruimte voor een gedifferentieerde corona-aanpak in de afgelopen maanden is geweest en waarom de betrokkenheid van de veiligheidsregio’s bij de coronabestrijding achteraf gezien als een gelukkige greep kan worden beschouwd.