Cooperation by professionals dealing with cases of stalking by former partners is complex. First and foremost professionals should focus on a shared ambition in order to stop stalking. But in order to achieve that goal partners in safety and security should be in the clear regarding practical matters: how do they consult each other? What appointments are made? How is invested in the development of a mutual relationship and the understanding of each other’s tasks?

The Dutch youth policy limits itself to children who have or cause problems. Our Youth Law is even only related to youth care.
The consequences are disastrous: the results are extremely poor, especially in comparison with other countries. Scandinavian and Eastern European countries have a comprehensive infrastructure to offer children a useful, relaxed and pleasant leisure time. The motto of these leisure time organisations is inclusion. They choose for dilution (some criminal or civil law children are placed together with normal children), while we organise compaction of the problems (we put them all together in one institution).
The Netherlands prefers an unbalanced youth policy, where anything has been professionalized, whereby we look at children through worrying glasses. We do not see chances for development, but worrisome developments.
Politicians do not want to be informed about a better solution. They are consciously incompetent. Criminal law should look at that situation.

Intelligence-led policing (ILP) has been adopted by police organisations worldwide, yet organisational implementation appears to be difficult. Results of this study uncover organisational factors that affect ILP and give insight on how these facilitate or hinder ILP. The organisational factors can be categorised into technological, structural, cultural and people related factors. This research was conducted by means of a literature review and two case studies on the investigation of organised drug-related crime and on football and safety in two different units of the Dutch police. The results of this study can be considered as relevant input regarding future implementation of intelligence-led operations in the whole criminal justice chain.

Structured assessment of the risk of repeated offending has become common practice in the judicial system. However, much less attention has been paid to the way of communicating about the results of these risk assessments to the court or forensic settings. Research shows that the way of communicating about risks of relapse may affect decision-making by judges. In this article, these research results will be summarized and the different approaches to risk communication are discussed. Finally, recommendations are provided for clear communication about risk assessment results.

Recently a project was started that aims to systematically describe and explain the developments in the Criminal Code for the period 1886 - 2017. This article presents the first results of this new project, called the Historical Criminal Code (HWvSr). An overview is given of the long-term developments in the structure – the ‘external’ structure – of the Second Book of the Criminal Code since 1886. The analyzes show that its scope has been substantially expanded over the last 130 years, but also that various articles and article parts have been deleted. The article describes the most important changes in terms of both quantity and content.

A comparative law study into the imposition of provisional custodial measures on juveniles in the Netherlands and Belgium in theory and practice.

Teen sexting is an increasingly common phenomenon. It is doubtful whether primary teen sexting – when minors take sexually pictures of themselves and share these voluntarily with peers – should fall within the scope of the Dutch offence description of child pornography. The German Penal Code contains an exception clause for primary teen sexting, whilst the Dutch Penal Code does not. In this article is argued, through comparative law research, that the Netherlands should also adopt an exception clause. This way not only the right of the child to protection against sexual abuse and exploitation, but also the right of the child to sexual development is safeguarded sufficiently.

The matter for this research is the request from the municipality of Eindhoven to map youth nuisance in the city of Eindhoven and to find explanations for differences between neighborhoods in order to provide policy makers with guidance. Quantitative and qualitative methods tested the social disorganization theory. Factors that may explain youth nuisance are a high degree of ethnic heterogeneity, low neighborhood participation and a high level of physical deterioration. In addition, youngsters who have unstructured leisure time prefer a place to hang out where there is no social control. Policy makers can use these insights to design their neighborhoods.

There is casuistry, where on the one hand it is the turn of the professionals from the investigation, enforcement and prosecution and on the other hand the turn of the social workers from the social domain. This is the case, for example, when domestic violence occurs in circles that are also involved in organized crime. In theory it is possible that the professionals involved work together, but it is also not impossible that they will get into each other’s waters because they have a different vision of the problem to be tackled and, of course, also have to fulfill other roles and tasks based on their positions. A professional must be able to handle complex situations of this kind.

The forensic sector is considered to be a stressful, demanding work environment. Due to the continuous confrontation with disturbing files and challenging clients, (secondary) traumatization and other stressors lurk. Attention to the well-being of the professional working with sex offenders is essential to keep the psychosocial workload under control. However, this appears to be an underexposed topic in practice and literature. To generate more attention, the Dutch-Flemish branch of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (NL-ATSA) organized a symposium on the impact of working with sex offenders. This article is a report of the symposium.

This article explores the boundary conditions an organization has to take to make the workplace, where all kind of people work together, a safe place. Employers are responsible for a safe working environment according to the Arbowet. The confidential councilor is an important part of the infrastructure against workplace harassment. Next to commitment from the top of the organization, a code of conduct based on the support of the employees, a complaints procedure with access to an independent complains committee, the confidential councilor is key to discover and act on workplace harassment. Not all confidential councilors are trained and aware of the pitfalls of the job. Organizations have to set boundary conditions. For example legal privilege within the organization and some sort of protection against retaliation. The confidential councilor follows the lead of the complainant and can put down the responsibility of solving the issue of harassment at the proper authority within the organization.

Gender as a construct has been introduced into criminology half a century ago and has contributed to an understanding of the relation between gender and violence. Therefore, when improving resilience of professionals encountering violent behaviour, gender might be an important construct to take into account. We know from the literature that men and women do not experience victimization and perpetration in the same way but at the same time there are some blind spots with regard to male victimization and female perpetration. Increasing resilience against violence is only possible when we do not automatically use gender stereotyping in understanding and reducing violence.

Working in the forensic social field is interesting and fulfilling and many professionals deliberately choose to do this work. However, it can also be a very demanding job. Experiencing aggressive incidents by forensic clients, continuous tensions in contact with clients and the confrontation with narratives about shocking events are specific characteristics of working in the forensic field that appeal to the resilience of professionals. This article discusses which characteristics of organisations, teams and individual professionals impact on resilience and how it can be enhanced.

In this exploratory contribution, the central question is what will happen to students when they leave school and start looking for a job in security care. Three developments are addressed in this context: firstly, there are organizational changes: the municipal level has become increasingly important; in the second place, the complexity of the casuistry with which professionals are confronted is highlighted, and in the third place attention is paid to undesirable behavior with which professionals may be confronted while performing their work. What do these aspects mean for the resilience of the upcoming professional and the preparation for working life during training?

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the resilience of criminal investigators in the Netherlands. Observational studies within three criminal investigation teams and 45 interviews with investigators and team leaders revealed that confrontations with human suffering, decision-making, and dirty and physically demanding circumstances at the crime scene can sometimes be (very) challenging. However, investigators have relatively little difficulty with the strain resulting from the operational stressors to which they are exposed during investigations. They know how to apply different coping strategies to reduce stress. However, this does not apply to organisational stressors. The way in which their work is organised regularly causes tension, dissatisfaction and frustration. The research highlights that investigators suffer more from these organisational stressors than from the stressors that can be associated with criminal investigations. Attention should therefore be focused on strengthening their ‘internal resilience’, the article makes a number of recommendations to support this.

Violence in the name of honour has an ancient ring to it. But honour codes tend to be very flexible: cyber-space has given a new dimension to honour-related violence. Images and messages that are perceived as violations of honour also pass through social media. Unfortunately these stings on the good name of the family are quite difficult to remove. In this contribution is explained how violations of honour occur on the internet. Next to that will be described how currently in the Netherlands criminal law especially regarding vice is being adapted in order to deal with phenomena like sexting and sextortion. What are the consequences of these changes for dealing with modern forms of the violation of family honour?

A vast amount of research focuses on what should be said and done in suspect interviews and crisis negotiations to make the suspect cooperate. This article discusses the most important findings of five empirical studies that focus on the situation in which something wrong is said, which may undermine cooperation. The findings show that communication errors have both positive and negative effects on the suspect and law enforcement officer. Yet, it is the verbal response of the law enforcement officer that determines its overall direction. It is important to acquire knowledge on this topic, as there is a likely chance of making communication errors in these high-stake interactions and with these insights you can prepare yourself for when this situation occurs.

Neuroscience teaches us that we can obtain information about the brain by the use of neuro tests. An example of a neuro test is the concealed information test (CIT). This test examines whether a suspect recognizes specific details of a criminal offence. Afterwards experts can conclude whether the suspect has knowledge of a criminal offence, which only a perpetrator can know. This way a CIT contributes by the detection and adjudication of criminal offences. In recent decades, the interest in neuro tests such as the CIT has increased, also at the Ministry of Justice and Security. Based on the existing literature, both advantages and disadvantages of the CIT are discussed in this article.

In the early years of kickboxing in the Netherlands, a number of fighters got involved in criminal activities. Literature typically focusses on social learning, but as the inner city of Amsterdam in the eighties provides a specific setting, this article particularly describes a historical process. In the qualitative data from interviews, observations, and various documents, three questions: Who were these kickboxers? Where did they enter the criminal circles? Why did they go along with what happened there? It turns out, successful fighters easily came in contact with people from the underground, as they met in the gyms and in the night life where many fighters worked as bouncers. In a friendly atmosphere, the risks of seduction were hard to recognize for inexperienced fighters.

As part of the project aiming to modernise the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure the regulation on pre-trial detention is being revised. The proposal is to replace the conditional suspension of remand detention for both adults and juveniles with a new modality of provisional restraint. Furthermore, the proposal in its current form implies the exclusion of the alternative enforcement and the possibility of night detention. In this article, the consequences of the proposal on juvenile suspects are being discussed.