Every human being strives for the experience of a stable identity over time. In order to achieve this, the conscience constantly evaluates whether our self-esteem at a given moment fits that identity. When our self-esteem rises we experience pride, but when it falls we experience guilt or shame. Many of these evaluations are based on the ability to be empathetic, because empathy allows you to estimate how you relate to the other person. Another source of evaluation is being aware of values, norms and rules. In pro Justitia reports on delinquent young people, diagnosis of conscience is an important point of attention. How does the offense fit with his identity and what does it do with his self-esteem? To gain insight into this, the diagnostician focuses his attention on several areas of the young person’s life. Assuming the alleged ethnic-cultural specificity of criminal behavior is a pitfall that should be avoided.

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.

Following the example of ‘teen courts’ in the US, recently some schools in the Netherlands are experimenting with this. It means that pupils adjudicate justice on fellow pupils as a result of mildly undesired behavior. However, this approach is not well thought out in several respects and it poses a risk to the children involved.

Life in prison goes hand in hand with far-reaching restrictions in the personal autonomy of offenders. Lack of personal autonomy and the coercion to perform certain actions disrupt the ‘normal’ intrinsic experiences of voluntary action (i.e. sense of agency). Disturbances in the neurocognitive basis of voluntary action have a number of clear effects on human functioning, including self-reliance. This paper provides a first analysis of the relationship between personal autonomy and the intrinsic experience of voluntary action, and how this may be the key to understanding how freedom restrictions in detention can reduce self-reliance.

This article was written by Claudia Mazzucato for The International Journal of Restorative Justice 21(2) and translated for our thematic issue. Mazzucato explains that there is something in restorative justice that resembles art. In her view restorative justice is made of the same fabric. Both deal with ‘creativity and rigour, imagination and insight, preparation and improvisation, vocation and inclination, talent and skill’. Both trigger innovation and have a political dimension when identifying problems and look for transformations or cultural change. The use of art in the restorative field is growing and visible in literature, paintings, theatre and films. Art can become a sort of mediator of restorative encounters or can give a concrete shape to stories that otherwise cannot be told. The author asks questions about liaisons between restorative justice, law and art. The leges artis of restorative justice are values and standards as drafted by the United Nations and Council of Europe. Do they nourish criminal justice in terms of beauty? To a certain extent yes. A challenging task of the art of restorative justice is in her view: ‘to approach the complexity of the quest for justice in the real world, combining hard and soft skills harmonically, and complying rigorously with the proper restorative leges artis, in order to amend in democratic ways what has proved wrong and harmful, and to prospectively avoid its reoccurrence’.

Dutch prisons are not exempt from incidents. Despite the negative impact of violence on the safety of inmates and the chances of successful reintegration, not much is known about the prevalence of victimization in Dutch prisons and the characteristics of victims. Additionally, previous research has pointed out the overlap between victim status and offender status. In this contribution, the authors will discuss the prevalence of self-reported victimization among Dutch inmates and the characteristics of victims and victim-offenders. Data from 3,485 participants from the Life in Custody Study are used for this purpose.

This introductory article of a special issue on naming and shaming addresses the origins of the concept and its transformation during the last decades. The main conclusion of the article is that contemporary forms of naming & shaming come closer to humiliation and public lynching, rather than redemption and self-reflection.

This contribution reports on an ongoing study into the impact of the COVID pandemic on the rights of vulnerable litigants in the handling of court cases concerning supervision orders and custodial placements of juveniles. The research is based on interviews with judges, lawyers and other professionals in the youth protection chain and a survey among litigants. The central question is whether the handling of these cases should be considered acceptable from the perspective of procedural and fundamental rights. In addition, the procedural justice experienced by litigants is examined. The preliminary results, based on desk research and interviews, is that of varyingly successful improvisations with telephone and digital hearings, in which procedural and fundamental rights could not be fully realized. This is mainly due to technical problems and the complexity of judicial case management under these circumstances. The interviewees differed about whether the bottom of what is acceptable was reached and how often this was the case. The final report will take stock of this and draw lessons for the future.

We are witnessing a remarkable trend in the youth crime in the Netherlands. A spectacular crime drop is accompanied by growing concerns about the serious nature of youth crimes and young people on a pathway to become hardened criminals at an early age. In this article, we focus on the rise of young offenders in organized drug crime in the Netherlands. We describe some of the features of these young offenders, highlighting their intelligent, strategic and professional behavior. Furthermore, we signal the development and the (territorial) violence of the (youth) groups these young offenders are usually embedded in. In light of these developments, we argue that there is a need for more specialism amongst law enforcement and judicial authorities to identify and deal with these young and potential serious criminals.

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.

Restorative justice practices and policies have been growing in Belgium during last three decades. This article looks in particular at policy developments in the Flemish Community. It reconstructs how restorative justice has adopted a legal basis in 2005 and 2006 respectively in adult criminal law and juvenile justice. The rise and fall of the Belgian model of ‘restorative prisons’ is discussed. Special attention goes to the role of the Belgian State reform process, where the regions were given more competencies also in restorative justice matters. We investigate how this process of devolution has shaped the restorative justice landscape for the sectors of penal mediation, restorative mediation and conferencing. Some ambivalences in policy making are shown. Moreover, in recent years there are signs of a declining political interest in restorative justice.

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.

Thought experiments have been widely used in virtually all sciences and humanities. Law is no exception. We can find countless instances of such experiments in both the legal practice and the legal theory. However, this method has hardly been studied by legal scholars, which contrasts with the vast literature devoted to it in other fields of knowledge. This article analyses the role that some thought experiments – those where an imaginary legal change is made, and its social effects are observed – may play in law. In particular, we show why these empirical legal thought experiments might be useful for the practice and theory of law, the main principles for conducting them and how the law deals with them.

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.

In 1932 the court room of the Juvenile Judge in Amsterdam was redesigned and this work was marked as 'spadework'. In 2021 in a joined project of law student and art students ‘Design of Justice’ a concept for a court room of the future is developed. Again 'spadework'? In this article the author reflects on this and other current developments in the field child-friendly justice in criminal youth cases.

In 1985 the Second International Congress on (Prison) Abolitionism took place. The organizers wanted to denounce the formalistic-legal approach to crime and revise the criminal pretensions. The aim was to develop a non-repressive process of conflict regulation. This contribution addresses the question of whether or to what extent the development of restorative justice in recent decades is an extension of the abolitionist perspective. Among other things, the developments in punishment and restorative detention and restorative justice in The Netherlands are discussed. It is concluded that restorative justice in a broad sense- and the introduction of small-scale, tailor-made detention are a realistic, at this time appropriate continuation of the efforts to find solutions for resolving conflicts outside criminal law.