A question that has preoccupied sociolegal scholars for ages is whether law can change ‘hearts and minds’. This article explores whether non-discrimination law can create social change, and, more particularly, whether it can change attitudes and beliefs as well as external behaviour. The first part examines how sociolegal scholars have theorised about the possibility and desirability of using law as an instrument of social change. The second part discusses the findings of empirical research on the social working of various types of non-discrimination law. What conclusions can be drawn about the ability of non-discrimination law to create social change? What factors influence this ability? And can non-discrimination law change people’s hearts and minds as well as their behaviour? The research literature does not provide an unequivocal answer to the latter question. However, the overall picture emerging from the sociolegal literature is that law is generally more likely to bring about changes in external behaviour and that it can influence attitudes and beliefs only indirectly, by altering the situations in which attitudes and opinions are formed.

International human rights law (IHRL) was established in the aftermath of the Second World War to prevent a reoccurrence of the atrocities committed in the name of fascism. Central to this aim was the recognition that out-groups are particularly vulnerable to rights violations committed by the in-group. Yet, it is increasingly apparent that out-groups are still subject to a wide range of rights violations, including those associated with mass atrocities. These rights violations are facilitated by the dehumanisation of the out-group by the in-group. Consequently, this article argues that the creation of IHRL treaties and corresponding monitoring mechanisms should be viewed as the first step towards protecting out-groups from human rights violations. By adopting the lens of dehumanisation, this article demonstrates that if IHRL is to achieve its purpose, IHRL monitoring mechanisms must recognise the connection between dehumanisation and rights violations and develop a positive State obligation to counter dehumanisation. The four treaties explored in this article, the European Convention on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, all establish positive State obligations to prevent hate speech and to foster tolerant societies. These obligations should, in theory, allow IHRL monitoring mechanisms to address dehumanisation. However, their interpretation of the positive State obligation to foster tolerant societies does not go far enough to counter unconscious dehumanisation and requires more detailed elaboration.

The entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) pushed state obligations to counter prejudice and stereotypes concerning people with disabilities to the forefront of international human rights law. The CRPD is underpinned by a model of inclusive equality, which views disability as a social construct that results from the interaction between persons with impairments and barriers, including attitudinal barriers, that hinder their participation in society. The recognition dimension of inclusive equality, together with the CRPD’s provisions on awareness raising, mandates that states parties target prejudice and stereotypes about the capabilities and contributions of persons with disabilities to society. Certain human rights treaty bodies, including the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and, to a much lesser extent, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, require states to eradicate harmful stereotypes and prejudice about people with disabilities in various forms of interpersonal relationships. This trend is also reflected, to a certain extent, in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. This article assesses the extent to which the aforementioned human rights bodies have elaborated positive obligations requiring states to endeavour to change ‘hearts and minds’ about the inherent capabilities and contributions of people with disabilities. It analyses whether these bodies have struck the right balance in elaborating positive obligations to eliminate prejudice and stereotypes in interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, it highlights the convergences or divergences that are evident in the bodies’ approaches to those obligations.

Whereas the starting point of victimisation is clearly marked by a co-occurence of harm and wrong, the end of victimhood is not as straightforward. What is more, because victimisation is a social construct, the label of ‘victim’ is established in social interaction, meaning that third party observers have a role in the understanding of the (limits of) victimisation. In this article, I suggest that third party observers may understand attempts at restorative justice, more specifically, an apology, as an indicator of recovery of the victim. If this is true, they may expect the victim to decrease emotional display that signals victimisation after receiving an apology. If the victim continues to display similar signals of victimisation, this may result in negative victim-oriented responses. In an exploratory repeated measures vignette study, I show that third party observers evaluate the victim less positively after the victim received an apology than before they received this apology. The results imply that in understanding the (limits of) victimhood, we should consider the dynamics between victim and offender but also a broader circle of third-party observers. This is also important for restorative justice.

Talk, chat, and stories are ubiquitous in ethnographic research. Engaging with the recently burgeoning literature around narrative criminology, this article argues that considerations of stories and storytelling can add much to cultural criminologists’ pursuit of ‘criminological verstehen’ (Ferrell, 1997). In doing so, we focus on one case study: ethnographic research grounded within the USA’s contemporary ‘doomsday’ prepping subculture. The article considers the value of attending to narrative during the pursuit of verstehen at two levels. First, we address the importance of storytelling upon entry to the ethnographic field – drawing attention to how the narratives researchers share, and their respect for certain stories, can facilitate deep and experiential access to stigmatized fields of activity (such as prepping). Second, we explore how narrative remains in play during immediate experiences. In particular, we argue that fleeting excitements featured in prepping lifestyles are often shaped by the significance of the ‘moments’ in which they occur to numerous personal narratives. We therefore contend that, for ethnographers interested in verstehen, a consideration of narrative offers a means to expand and deepen empathetic appreciation of participants’ worldviews and activities.

Living in a multicultural environment may be accompanied with an increased fear of crime. Residents may become alienated in a very diverse environment and withdraw themselves in their own social world. This ‘hunkering down’ may ensue feelings of unsafety. However, social scientists have done hardly any research on whether citizens who live in a multicultural environment in Western Europe actually feel more unsafe. This study seeks to contribute to fill in this knowledge gap. The authors’ research reveals that residents are more likely to feel unsafe in neighborhoods with a high degree of ethnic diversity. The aforementioned correlation is the most noticeable in neighborhoods consisting of people on medium incomes.

This article discusses empirical examples from international trial transcripts to see if and why there is a need to use the ‘enemy of all humanity’ label in contemporary international criminal justice discourse. It shows an absence of explicit uses of the concept and an ambiguous set of implicit references; the hosti generis humani concept is simultaneously too precise and too broad for ICJ discourse. Based on these findings, the article challenges David Luban’s suggestion that the term can be undone from its dehumanizing potential and used adequately in the ICJ context.

#MeToo has played a significant role in the struggle to confront taboos around sexual violence, including the acknowledgment of male rape victims. In this article, the authors have examined reactions at three different moments in time (T1, T2, T3) to Dutch journalist Jelle Brandt Corstius, who shared his #MeToo experience via Twitter. The article shows that the Belief in a Just World, victim stereotypes and rape myths seem particularly useful concepts to examine different positive (supporting, compensating) and negative (blaming, distancing) observer reactions. Reactions are most negative at T2, when JBC’s case least adheres to stereotypes and rape scripts.

This paper focuses on the practice of youth justice (termed ‘youth protection’ in Belgium) in which professional actors ascribe deviant behaviour of youngsters to different cultural and migration backgrounds. Intra-European Roma migrants and refugees from the Northern Caucasus in Belgium are chosen as case studies. Discourse analysis of 55 youth court files and 41 expert interviews with professional actors show that deviant behaviour of these young people is explained in different manners. Two discourses are identified: ‘criminal vagabonds’ and ‘war torn children’. These discourses and their effects in practice differ tremendously for both groups. The broader discussion this article touches upon is the selective inclusion and exclusion in the institutions of formal social control, through social practices of culturalisation.

Contemporary cities are increasingly characterised by ‘super diversity’. As Putnam’s thesis about the negative social consequences of ethnic diversity is correct, we may assume that growing diversity also negatively affects crime and fear of crime in cities. After all: the more diversity, the less social cohesion and the less collective efficacy, ultimately resulting in higher crime rates. More diversity also implies less (public) familiarity in neighbourhoods and more fear of crime. On the other hand, some qualitative studies show that particularly residents of relatively homogeneous districts perceive migrants as threatening. Migrants are seen as less threatening when neighbourhood residents are familiarized with ‘the other’ and when there are more interethnic contacts. Various foreign and Dutch studies show an independent effect of ethnic diversity in the neighbourhood on fear of crime. However, this effect disappears when other resident characteristics are included into the analysis. Residents of ethnically diverse and deprived districts are generally less satisfied with their neighbourhood, have less trust in the government and are more often victimized. Precisely these perceptions and experiences explain why they more often feel unsafe in their own neighbourhood.

The author first describes the deontological axioma for the role of the defense counsel in the domain of criminal procedure. Since here the most serious charges are brought against a suspect, who may have all his life-perspectives to lose by severe punishments, the duty of the legal counsel is to be as one-sided in the defense of his clients views and interests as possible and as allowed by professional ethics. He is the guardian of the legitimate interests of the suspect in the context of a legal battle in or out of court about the legal truth of what is said to have happened. In view of the ideals of restorative justice (illustrated by references to Nils Christies Conflicts as property) a new set of rules and customs should be developed that can function as a framework of ‘restorative procedural law’. In the context of restorative justice legal counsel of both the suspect and the victim should be expected and able to function much more as ‘restorative coaches’, seeking co-operation and deliberation between all stakeholders. But, should clients – suspects and victims alike – decide against such an approach and want ‘their day in court’ this should also be possible and be realised. The independent courts should always remain the ultimate refuge for those seeking justice.

This article critically evaluates the prevailing factor-oriented (e.g. a priori defined legal and extralegal characteristics of defendants) approach in analyses of judicial decision-making. Rather than assuming such factors, we aim to demonstrate how Dutch judges engage in interpretative work to arrive at various sentence types. In their interpretative work, judges attempt to weigh and compare various legal and extralegal features of defendants. Importantly, they do so in the context of the case as a whole, which means that these features do not have independent or fixed meanings. Judges select and weigh information to create an image of defendants’ redeemability. However, extralegal concerns other than redeemability also inform judges’ decisions. We argue that studying the naturally occurring interpretative work of judges results in a better understanding of judicial decision-making than outcome-oriented studies, which view criminal cases as collections of independent legal and extralegal factors.

Honour-based violence (HBV) is a tight knot of conflict, gender and ethnicity. It is also the sensational subject of many bestselling books, in which mostly female victims of HBV tell their life stories. Researchers of feminism and multiculturalism argue that migrant women are often presented as passive victims, and migrant men as violent perpetrators. In our first article for PROCES on this subject, we analysed ten (auto)biographies of female victims of HBV, using theoretical insights on stigmatization. After the publication of this article, we continued to collect these true life stories. In our current article, we analyse two new aspects: how do these stories find their way to the Internet, and are there any HBV stories by male authors? Do stories by male authors shed a different light on honour conflicts and on stereotypes of culture and gender?

Sentencing research focusing solely on unsuspended imprisonment does no justice to the practice of sentencing, where many other punishment types are imposed – often conjunctly. To investigate to what extent this imprisonment bias might have caused incomplete and thereby biased findings, we compare the effects of offender characteristics for imprisonment to those for other sanction types, as well as to a model combining sanction types. Findings suggest that the effects of offender characteristics differ per sanction type. When combinations of sanction types are taken into account, some offender characteristics do no longer have mitigating or aggravating effects, or the effects even inverted. Hence, future sentencing research should aim to include all sentences imposed.

D'après le Code civil, et ce dè s son origine, la séparation du couple marié peut donner lieu à une obligation légale de payer au conjoint, ou à l'ancien conjoint, une pension censée couvrir ses besoins. En dehors du mariage, point de lien alimentaire prévu par la loi. Depuis 1804, deux évolutions sociales majeures ont cependant changé le visage de la vie de couple. D'un côté, elle ne passe plus nécessairement par le mariage. D'un autre côté, seule sa dimension affective est censée lui donner sens, ce qui la rend éminemment fragile. La question se pose dè s lors de savoir si le lien alimentaire qui existe actuellement en droit belge entre conjoints désunis répond encore de maniè re adéquate et pertinente aux modes de fonctionnement de l'économie conjugale.
---
According to the Civil code, and in view of its development, the separation of a married couple can give rise to a legal obligation to pay maintenance to the other spouse, or ex-spouse, in order to cover his or her needs. In contrast, outside marriage, no statutory maintenance is available. However, since 1804, two major social evolutions have changed the way of life of couples. On the one hand, maintenance no longer flows inevitably from marriage. On the other hand, only the ‘love’ dimension of a relationship supports the provision of maintenance, which makes this claim eminently fragile.
The question then arises as to whether the maintenance between separated spouses which is presently provided for under Belgian law still adequately and appropriately serves the functioning of the conjugal economy.
In addition, the absence of maintenance rights for unmarried couples also raises questions. The contribution proposes a reconsideration of the right to maintenance between all couples, married or not, on the basis of other justifications, in particular the solidarity which couples establish during their shared lives.

Topical developments regarding the use of restorative justice in the Netherlands are discussed. Several initiatives have been taken, showing a genuine interest in the benefits of the use of restorative justice. However, there are underlying risks for a managerial use of restorative justice. Momentarily Dutch criminal justice policy features a shift towards settlement by the Public Prosecution, implying a use of restorative justice in the context of consensual settlement. However, there are no signs directing towards an intrinsic interest for the concept of restorative justice by the criminal justice authorities. Notwithstanding the legislator having started a fundamental revision of the Dutch Code of Penal Procedure, there are no intentions known to acknowledge restorative justice arrangements to be part of the regular penal procedures and sanctions. Nevertheless, incorporating the use of restorative justice arrangements requires a systematic implementation of restorative justice arrangements.

Rape drugs (or drink spiking) discourse reflects gender stereotypes in a much more differentiated way than previous studies suppose. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of news items and online discussions proved stereotypes of ideal female victims and male perpetrators to be most prominent in news media. Postings to online bulletin boards were more skeptical about the alleged victims’ innocence and truthfulness. Studies in this area that focus on news media and institutional discourse overestimate the predominance of the ideal victim stereotype. In order to correct this bias, the authors urge criminologists to be more attentive to the relevance and power of informal crime stories and discussions, particularly those appearing in social media.