Since 2014, several countries have introduced legislation to criminalize ‘street harassment.’ In France, this criminalization was framed within a feminist perspective, by conceiving of street harassment as the first level of a ‘continuum of violence against women.’ In the Netherlands, on the other hand, proposals to criminalize these behaviors came from right-wing political parties. They framed ordinances as protecting public order and focused on racialized loitering youth as the main problem group. Despite these differences, proponents of penalization in both countries encountered a similar criticism: according to left-wing politicians, feminists, and anti-racist activists, criminalizing street harassment could lead to disproportionate punishment of racialized men from disadvantaged backgrounds. This article argues for a pragmatic ‘sociology of critique’ within the sociology of law, which provides insight into how actors involved in the introduction of regulation develop reflexivity about the risks of legislation, as well as their blind spots.

Agri-environmental schemes serve to financially compensate farmers for promoting the quality of nature and landscapes on their land. In 2016, the Netherlands implemented a new scheme that is unique in an EU and even global context. Within this model, rule-setting, inspection and enforcement tasks are shared between public actors and private ‘environmental cooperatives’: groups of farmers legally organized as conservation organizations.
With a focus on the theme of inspection, this study adds new empirical insights to emerging scholarship on the interactions public policy and private authority. The study finds that present interactions between government inspectors and inspectors of the cooperatives can mainly be defined as ‘coexistence’, rather than complementary or competitive. A lack of coordination between the two types of actors was found to result in confusion among farmers and missed opportunities for mutual learning by inspectors. The study concludes with three policy recommendations to come to a more constructive relationship between public and private inspectors in the Dutch agri-environmental governance model.

De huidige juridische infrastructuur om parlementair wangedrag dat verder gaat dan onparlementair taalgebruik effectief aan te pakken ontbreekt. Dat heeft enerzijds te maken met het feit dat fracties op dit punt vaak rechter in eigen zaak spelen en dikwijls meer bezig lijken met imagobescherming dan met een zorgvuldige afhandeling van klachten, en anderzijds met het feit dat klagen over grensoverschrijdend gedrag door mensen in een afhankelijkheidspositie thans weinig juridische waarborgen kent. Dit terwijl het ook voor beklaagde parlementariërs in de praktijk vaak aantrekkelijker lijkt om de eer aan zichzelf te houden en extern onderzoek niet af te wachten.

The GGD report states that 99% of the Top 600 juvenile offenders have a lacunar conscience. But what is conscience from a clinical perspective, what type of information does the clinician or rapporteur gather and how is it described? The department of forensic ortho-pedagogy of the University of Amsterdam is developing an instrument with which behavioral scientists can make a descriptive diagnosis of the conscience in a structured manner. For the construction of the instrument the experiential knowledge of Dutch clinical experts in the field of conscience is collected. By means of qualitative research methods, a number of domains and methods were identified that are considered important for the diagnostics of conscience. Based on the current study and state-of-the-art scientific literature, a clinical structured judgment instrument is realized in which the clinician is describing the domains of empathy, self-aware emotions such as shame and guilt, and moral development a form a strength-weakness analysis of the conscience.

Juvenile delinquents appear to be delayed in their moral development, more specific the development of their moral judgment, empathy, guilt and shame. Moral development also appears to predict recidivism. It is therefore plausible that interventions that focus on the moral development of juvenile delinquents could have a beneficial effect on reducing recidivism. However, our systematic review (i.e., meta-analysis) shows that with these so-called moral behavioral interventions the level of moral judgment of juvenile offenders can be significantly increased, by 22%, but that such interventions have no effect on recidivism. It may be possible to increase the effectiveness of moral interventions for juvenile delinquents by simultaneously influencing several aspects of moral development instead of, for example, only moral judgment or empathy. In addition, problems of poor aggression regulation, often caused by a history of traumatic events, may need to be addressed first before moral-behavioral interventions can be effective.

In 2020, a coalition against ethnic profiling established a taskforce to handle complaints of people who have experienced ethnic profiling by the Dutch Royal Military Police and/or the Dutch Customs at airports. In this article, 31 complaints that have been received between February 2020 and March 2021 have been analyzed in a qualitative way. The results show that when people with an ethnic stigma are not informed (properly) about why they have been selected, stopped and searched, and treated as suspects instead of false positives, they feel racially profiled, yet take little or no further action in addition to the complaints.

Het belang van het voorkomen en bestrijden van fraude, milieucriminaliteit en witwassen is evident, maar de wijze waarop is niet eenvoudig. Het overgrote deel van deze strafzaken wordt gedaan door het Functioneel Parket (FP). Het FP beoogt te interveniëren met effect in deze zaken, om zo maatschappelijk effect te bereiken. Hiervoor is het van belang zicht te hebben op de verschillende interventiemogelijkheden en om kennis te ontwikkelen over de effectiviteit daarvan. In dit artikel wordt dit vraagstuk vanuit twee perspectieven verkend: de handhavingsdoelen die men nastreeft, specifiek het voorkomen van recidive, en vanuit de samenwerking met derden, specifiek met private partijen.

Legal arrangements rest on behavioural, cognitive, social, and other assumptions regarding their role and function in society and the legal system. The identification and subsequent evaluation of these assumptions is an important task for legal scholarship. In this article, we focus on the identification and categorisation of these assumptions, providing conceptual distinctions and methodological guidance. We distinguish between assumptions about the value(s), norm(s), or interest(s) underlying a legal arrangement, which can be legal or non-legal, and assumptions about the relationship between the legal arrangement and its underlying value(s), norm(s), or interest(s), which can be logical, causal, or contributory. Regarding the identification, we consider explicit references and inference to the best explanation and theory-driven evaluations as possible methods. Inference to the best explanation, we posit, functions as a manner of reconstructing the theory that the person(s) creating a legal arrangement had in mind regarding the place and function of that legal arrangement in society. Given this, we offer a step-by-step approach to reconstructing this theory in use, drawing from theory-driven evaluations and its sources in the social sciences. These distinctions and guidelines can contribute to understanding the context and untangling the complexities involved in identifying the assumptions that underlie legal arrangements.

Internationaal maatschappelijk ondernemen, in het bijzonder door corporate sustainability due diligence, staat hoog op de (internationale) agenda. In het voetspoor van enkele andere landen in Europa is in Nederland een voorstel gedaan voor een wettelijk raamwerk dat niet op specifieke hoogrisicosectoren van toepassing is, maar op een veel grotere groep ondernemingen. De auteurs plaatsen het Nederlandse wetsvoorstel in internationale context en bespreken de kritiek in de literatuur daarop.

In eleven experiments in Dutch prisons case managers, probation officers and municipality-counselors work together to realize sustainable, integral, continuous reintegration trajectories for detainees. Results show that physical presence of the probation officers in prison improved quick and regular consultation with case managers and other professionals in prison, availability of more and broader information about the detainee, and better preparation for life after prison. Facilitators who supported working and learning together contributed to the co-creation of a new way in organizing the reintegration process in prison. This kind of co-creation requires manpower and resources.

In this article, the author reflects on the impact of COVID-19 on policing, the relations among police officers and the interactions between police and citizens based on systematic social observations in small to semi-sized local police forces during the pandemic. The article discusses the nature of police work during the crisis and new types of interventions that police officers are confronted with (e.g. curfew controls). Additionally, the impact of the pandemic on the internal and external relations is discussed. Internally, the COVID-19 measures may have an impact on police officers’ possibilities for personal, social interactions among colleagues, which may potentially challenge the solidarity within the police force. Externally, tensions may arise in relations with citizens, partly because of unclear regulations or variable interpretations of those regulations. Those unclear regulations, but also uncertainties concerning one’s own competences and questions regarding the police’s role in enforcing the pandemic regulations, put pressure on the police’s (self-)legitimacy.

This article examines the use of citizen participation in urgent missing person cases. The Theory of Planned Behavior was used to examine which specific considerations investigators have in this regard and which have the greatest influence on the choice of whether or not to involve citizens. The findings suggest that this choice is primarily attitude-driven. Detectives are predominantly positive about participation, but see harm to the investigation as the main risk. A practical implication is to focus collaboration primarily on professionally organized groups of citizens to reduce (perceived) risks.

Police officers are often the victim of aggression by citizens, which has negative consequences for them and society in general. Therefore, it is important to gain knowledge about related factors. This study examines to what extent experiencing aggression as a police officer is related to their patience with citizens and use of force. Two explanations based on the victim-offender overlap are examined: that aggression experiences and dealing with citizens influence each other and that they have common causes. This study was conducted on the basis of a longitudinal questionnaire survey among police officers (N=693). The results show that interaction with citizens, including patience with citizens and the use of force, is related to the aggression police officers experience. The association diminishes when common causes, in this case socio-demographic and work-related characteristics, are taken into account, but does not disappear. No direct support is found for reciprocal influence. Implications and suggestions for further research are described.

Based on a scoping review regarding international policy recommendations, the authors of this article explore the most important aspects concerning bodycam policies for police services. Even though most literature on the shortlist is situated in the United States, important issues are discussed for a Belgian bodycam policy. Examples are a clear activation policy and regulations regarding warnings. These recommendations are compared to the legal regulations on bodycams in Belgium, such as the individual discretion Belgian police officers have when activating the camera. Throughout the article, the use of bodycams is linked to procedural justice. Because of the scarcity of Belgian bodycam research, we also give some recommendations for further research on this topic.

Domestic violence is a prevalent and persistent problem in society. To be able to effectively intervene in cases of domestic violence, protect victims, and reduce the costs of domestic violence, several initiatives have been implemented in recent years with the aim of improving the response to domestic violence. A multidisciplinary and systemic approach to tackling domestic violence has been introduced, which is especially important in complex cases. Police work together with different partners, among others, the organisation ‘Safe at Home’ (Veilig Thuis) and the public prosecutor. Police play a particularly important role in achieving immediate safety in cases of domestic violence, and work together with partners to accomplish more structural safety for all family members. The development towards a more holistic response to domestic violence in which the police work together with other organisations is important to be able to tackle domestic violence more effectively. Although the importance of collaboration between different organisations has been recognised, the multidisciplinary response is still in development, resulting in some problems in practice.