The population of Central and East European immigrants in the Netherlands has increased following the eastward expansion of the European Union. Over the past years, a lot of media and political attention seems to focus on problems with crime and disorder relating to this immigrant group. This article describes a two-step study on this matter. First, by undertaking a media discourse analysis, we assess to what extent we can speak of a ‘hardened climate’ regarding Central and East Europeans in the Netherlands between 2007 and 2013. Second, we have conducted qualitative interviews with Central and East Europeans in the Netherlands, to explore their perceptions of the Dutch media and political discourse. The results show that this group is often connected with crime and disorder in the media, and that many of our respondents experience this negative framing. Dangers of this trend regarding feelings of discrimination, scapegoating, and self-fulfilling prophecies, are discussed.

The rule that a conviction cannot be based on the statement of just one witness, is codified in article 342 of the Dutch Criminal Procedural Code. The Supreme Court has recently demanded that such a statement finds sufficient support in other evidence and that sometimes the trial judge needs to specify why that statement is corroborated enough by other evidence. However, the Supreme Court has always given a very marginal meaning to this rule, by allowing convictions which basically are substantiated by only that one statement. The evidence supporting the story of the witness does not have to prove that the crime actually took place, nor that is indeed the defendant who has committed it. In this article, I propose the replacement of the rule with a well-founded motivated ruling of the trial judge on this subject.

A fair trial can only be guaranteed if a judge gives as much insight in his line of thinking as possible and if a judge is actively participating in finding the truth in a criminal case. According to statutes and case law a judge has a lot of freedom to show how he feels about certain things during criminal proceedings. A challenge to a judge shall not quickly be admissible. Still, a judge needs to be impartial and willing to review his preliminary decision/opinion.

This paper studies the development of the sentences that were imposed by criminal courts in the Netherlands over the period 1995-2012. Available data cover all principal sanctions: (unconditional) prison sentences, community service orders and fines. A decomposition is made to separate the gravity of sentencing (changes in the type and severity of the sanctions) from size effects (changes in the composition of the criminal cases dealt with). The gravity of sentencing is found to oscillate over the period 1995-2012. There is (as yet) no clear trend towards heavier sentencing, contrary to recent claims by Dutch judicial authorities.

Victims of violent crime who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can request financial compensation from the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF). Problematic with this is that PTSD is amenable for malingering. Malingering involves the invention or exaggeration of psychological symptoms or the attribution of such symptoms to wrong causes. If malingered PTSD remains undetected, the VOCF will run the risk of compensating damages which do not exist. The literature suggests that malingering can be detected by focusing on extreme scores on symptom screeners. The results of the current study, however, seem to suggest that this may not be an adequate strategy.

Several reports and publications criticise the Dutch police for discriminating against minorities during stop-and-search actions. This article argues that discrimination can be found in the police but not to the extent that the critics suggest. Recent research on stop-and-search practices in a large Dutch city suggests that the police treat youth with a minority background differently but that they don’t treat them unequally. The article concludes with a warning against the use of the expression ethnic profiling, because it hinders correction of discrimination by the police.

This article explores the ways in which the work of the police is influenced by ideas about gender. Even though there is a long tradition of doing research about selectivity of the control agencies of criminal law, criminology has hardly had any attention for this topic. The main purpose of this article is to find out the meaning of the theoretical concept of gender for the social control of crime by the police and to give some examples for illustration. First of all, the article takes into consideration any crucial aspects of the process of selectivity.

ASAP: As Soon (or Selective, Smart) As Possible is meant to be a form of summary justice, in March 2011 introduced by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (PPS). ASAP is meant to handle common criminality more rapidly and more effectively. So far, so good. However, the PPS seems to direct all efforts to velocity instead of quality. ASAP was established without interference of defense lawyers. Lawyers, criminal law scientists and National Ombudsman have been criticizing ASAP since its introduction. Values of legal protection, accuracy and sustainability are ignored by velocity. Nowadays, the PPS desires cooperation with defense lawyers in the ASAP method. First of all: it is not easy to climb aboard a driving train. Suspects must be advised and acquainted by lawyers, not by prosecutors or police officers. Equality of arms must be guaranteed. A quick access to the criminal file is one of the demands for a serious and active role of lawyers in the ASAP approach.

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.

In the Netherlands, the debate around police profiling has been rather low key – until recently. Now it has turned into a heated discussion with a clear focus on ethnic profiling. This extensive international literature review aims to show that there is more to profiling than just ethnicity. Factors such as behavior and the vehicle someone is driving can be just as important as a person’s looks. The results of this study put profiling in perspective and level the playing field of the debate, in which the side of the organizations using profiling has not gotten enough attention until now.

In order to support desistance from crime and rehabilitation into society, the probation service has to adapt its service to the individual problems and strengths of offenders. As a result, offenders who have committed similar crimes but differ in the problems related to their offending behavior are approached differently. However, equal treatment of offenders by the probation service is important if their problems are comparable. In this article the results are described of a study about the level of agreement between probation officers about intervention plans. In addition, it was studied whether the use of an instrument for structured decision making improves agreement about these plans.

Starting in 2015, Dutch municipalities will have complete administrative responsibility for all types of youth care on the continuum of preventive child education programs to youth probation and re-entry aftercare. In the process of this so called ‘youth care transition’, the use of available and valid scientific knowledge about effective reduction of juvenile crime (distilled from What Works, desistance focused studies and forensic pedagogy) seems to be suppressed by the administrative and procedural concerns that municipalities are now facing. In this article, these concerns are discussed and some solutions are presented.

Recent research by the National Children’s Ombudsman shows that minors are, or at least feel, insufficiently heard in civil legal procedures such as divorce and guardianship procedures. In response, a conference about the role of minors in the often complex civil litigation was organized at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, on the 31^st of May 2013. Based on the results of this conference, this article identifies both bottlenecks and potential areas for improvement in providing minors with a voice during legal procedures. The main improvement areas include the communication process with minors, child hearings and the appointment of the guardian ad litem and awareness of his role. Specifically, more attention should be paid to the communication between legal professionals and minors. In addition, consensus should be achieved between the courts and tribunals about children’s hearings. The most crucial improvement area is to change the name ‘child hearing’ into ‘conversation with children’. This modification will reduce the associations with criminal law.

A survey of the literature suggested that low participation rates in prison-based rehabilitation programs in The Netherlands can be explained by a lack of treatment readiness amongst rehabilitation candidates and participants. The current contribution aims to examine treatment readiness amongst detainees that have been assigned a candidate for a prison-based rehabilitation program in the Netherlands. To address these aims, data were used from the fourth wave of a research project studying the effects of imprisonment on the life of detainees in the Netherlands. Results showed that about eighty percent of treatment candidates were not treatment ready. This lack of treatment readiness amongst potential participants will no doubt influence both treatment engagement numbers, which studies have shown to be low, and quite possible treatment effectiveness. Results imply that practitioners should be aware of the absence of treatment readiness amongst a large part of their clients. Assessment and (if necessary) interventions to increase treatment readiness amongst candidates and participants seems of the utmost importance.

This article discusses the complicated position of Dutch prison doctors. They not only act as a patient’s personal doctor, but they also have to verify that a prisoner is fit to undergo punishment and they can even be asked by the authorities to carry out involuntary body searches. This can raise serious ethical concerns and cause harm to the doctor-patient relationship. I have tried to determine in what situations the duty to care for their patients conflicts with considerations of prison management.

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.

Prevention is very difficult to evaluate. If the situation you are trying to avoid, does not occur, it is likely to continue with prevention. If the situation does occur, it is logical to continue with the already taken preventive measures or even intensify these. This is what we call the ‘prevention trap’. In the first part of the article, a framework is presented for a methodological way to test policy on signals of the presence of a ‘prevention trap’. In the second part this framework is applied on the way the city of Amsterdam is dealing with the brothers and sisters of the top 600 criminal offenders, in the so called ‘Top 600 approach’. Some conclusions are drawn.

The aim of the current study is to provide insight in the support for victim rights among Dutch citizens. Although it is generally assumed that the Dutch public supports these rights, empirical research into this topic appears to be scarce. The opinion with regard to four victim rights was established in two ways. Firstly, respondents were asked about their attitudes and, secondly, about their willingness to pay extra taxes for those rights. Respondents’ attitudes concerning the victim rights in this study appear to be positive; their willingness to pay, however, is low. Findings indicate the importance of combining conventional attitude questions with alternative methods (such as questions about willingness to pay) when studying public preferences and opinions.

In Forensic Juvenile Center ‘Teylingereind’ a psychiatric and psychological assessment takes place in a residential setting. Following a court order, a juvenile suspect of a criminal offense is observed for seven weeks by a multidisciplinary team. Each discipline has its own expertise. The team generates an observation report, which will advise the Court on the defendant’s pathology, the risk of re-offending and any recommendations regarding treatment or appropriate security measures. For this article we have analyzed the observation reports generated in Teylingereind between May 2009 and May 2012. This analysis shows the variations in participation by the suspects in the assessment and the recommendations in a legal context.Although with juvenile suspects participating in the observation the conditions attached to a suspended sentence can easier be examined, the observation reports of those difficult to examine have also lead to useful recommendations.

In many police investigations, a psychic turns up to help the investigation with his ‘extraordinary knowledge’ of the crime and the crime scene. Little is known about how the Dutch police deals with psychics and their information. We conducted research into this phenomenon through interviews with experts, a review of the legal literature and an online questionnaire for police practitioners. Although a guideline by the public prosecutor’s office states that psychics are not to be consulted without permission, most police practitioners are not aware of this guideline. At the moment, little is known about the actual use of information of psychics in police investigations.