The Dutch abbreviation ‘ZSM’ literally means ASAP. In the Dutch criminal justice system, it stands for a response to a crime ‘as speedy, selective, smart and supportive for victims as possible’. The project was initiated by the Public Prosecution Service and the Police, and it also involves the Dutch Probation Services, Victim Support Netherlands and the Child Care and Protection Board. The goal of ZSM is to assure meaningful and fast interventions, based on quality and effectiveness for society, including suspects and victims. To reach this goal, the Public Prosecutor is situated at the front of the criminal justice chain and triages the high volume crimes to determine the best procedure for a case, in cooperation with the partners.

Today’s risk based criminal justice policy leaves but little room to tune sentencing decisions to the individual offender’s mental capacities. As a result, sanctioning has become one-sided, being directed towards retribution. However, in the long run such a non-reciprocal concept of sanctioning, implying a denial of the need to facilitate rehabilitation, weakens the social fabric. Moreover, it holds a denial of citizenship towards (mentally ill) offenders. For the past decades, restorative justice has offered alternative solutions to deal with delinquency. Using informal procedures, taking into account peculiarities of the case, including the offender’s mental capacities, offenders are invited to take accountability for wrongful acts. A similar approach has been introduced within the field of mental health services, including the sector of the forensic mental health care. In response to the popular social biological model, a model of restorative treatment has been introduced, implying treatment to be directed towards reintegration, requiring active participation of the patient/offender. Bearing in mind the communalities between both models, we explore the potential of such a restorative citizenship based approach to better the integration of mentally disturbed offenders.

Following the evaluation regarding the judicial error in the Schiedam park murder (‘Schiedammer parkmoord’), the Public Prosecutor, Police and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) have drawn up an enhancement program to prevent future errors. Part of this program is to fill 20% of the posts within the police investigation process with those who have completed a higher education study of ‘criminal investigation’ and have obtained the Master of Criminal Investigation (MCI) title. One of the MCI’s tasks is to act as counterparties within the investigation research, to reduce the tunnel vision that develops within these investigations. In this way, more attention can be paid to alternative scenarios, so that judicial errors are less likely to occur.

Intelligence Led Policing (ILP) is an increasingly important concept for policing. ILP is about analyzing information and knowledge and using these analyses to support decision making about police work. The implementation of ILP is characterized by different stages of development. In this paper we describe each stage by five aspects. The stages are: intuition, justify actions, guiding actions and prescribing actions. The five aspects are: collecting information, analyzing information, presenting analyses, interaction and using analyses.

Approximately a third of all probation supervision programs is imposed to young adults (18 to 25 years). Literature research shows that young adulthood can be viewed as a separate (developmental) age category. Quantitative analysis of data from the Dutch Probation Service provides some evidence for young adults being a special offender group. Some outcomes cause concerns, e.g. higher absconding rates from supervision and higher re-offending rates. The article discusses these findings and the need for a separate or customized approach as claimed by Probation Service.

Betrokkenen bij het jeugdstrafrecht denken vanuit verschillende domeinen anders over wat er aan de hand is met jongeren die in aanraking komen met justitie en over wat nodig en mogelijk is om daar verandering in aan te brengen. Dat leidt soms tot te hoge verwachtingen en misverstanden en het kan leiden tot stigmatisering van delinquente jongeren als geclassificeerd risico- en probleemgeval.In dit artikel worden de verschillende domeinen en domeinverschillen van de betrokkenen belicht. Vervolgens wordt stilgestaan bij de noodzaak en beperkingen van psychiatrische diagnostiek, classificatie en risicotaxatie van delinquente jongeren en welke rol overleg en registratie en het delen van informatie daarbij kunnen spelen.

In deze bijdrage kijken we naar de huidige situatie binnen de Nederlandse politie met de vraag of de organisatie klaar is voor een succesvolle implementatie van IGP. Het achterliggende idee is dat er weliswaar structurele veranderingen kunnen worden doorgevoerd om IGP gestalte te geven, maar dat deze tekort zullen schieten wanneer de organisatiecultuur en -structuur hier niet klaar voor zijn. In deze bijdrage onderzoeken we in welke mate het gebruik van een old boys network, de graad van machismo en street level bureaucracy invloed uitoefenen op de structurele veranderingen naar een intelligence-gestuurde politie. We eindigen met een korte reflectie op het prestatiemanagement en de recente ontwikkelingen in het veiligheidslandschap.