Child safety is an important condition for the healthy development of children. Child maltreatment is an extensive problem in society with significant medical, emotional, cognitive, social and economic consequences. In policy-making, attention for this phenomenon has increased, resulting in new laws and measures. However, the Committee for Childs Rights of the United Nations formulated numerous recommendations for a better implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands. This article focuses on how child safety and children’s rights are related and explores the implementation of the convention, considering relevant new laws and scientific (field) research.

Lately, several private and public compensation schemes have been established in the Netherlands for people who have been sexually abused as a minor by representatives of the Catholic Church, childcare workers or foster parents. Eligible for compensation are those who can make a reasonable case of the likelihood that they have been sexually abused. They do not have to provide indisputable proof of the abuse. The author of this article argues that this low burden of proof makes these compensation schemes vulnerable to fraud. He supports his argumentation with several examples of dishonest victims who have been unmasked as fraudsters. Furthermore, he explains that undetected fraud can have several adverse by-effects, such as the condemnation of falsely accused persons and impairment of the credibility of compensation schemes and agencies that run such schemes. The author concludes with emphasizing the need for more explicit policies on fraud prevention, detection, and control.

In their article on the victim orientation in the combat against human trafficking – in particular labour exploitation – Cleiren, Van der Leun and Van Meeteren highlight the limitations of the protection of victims in practice. Based on a brief legal analysis and a secondary reading of the empirical literature, they conclude that the rights of victims remain subordinate to the main aims of the relevant legal domains: criminal law and immigration law. In addition, the practices-based analysis shows a mismatch between a victim-oriented approach and preferences and perceptions of many migrants involved as well as existing tensions between different legal domains.

Although there is evidence for a victim-offender overlap for various crimes, specific empirical research into a victim-offender overlap for intimate partner violence is scarce. The current study empirically examines the presence of a victim-offender overlap among 156 victims of partner violence recruited at Dutch service organizations. Results show a clear victim-offender overlap, especially for behaviors of psychological partner violence and to a lesser degree for physical partner violence. Implications of these findings for the Dutch law on temporary restraining orders are discussed.

Due to digitalization of modern societies, identity fraud is becoming a serious problem. Until recently, Dutch victims of unauthorized cash withdrawals from their bank accounts were reimbursed by their banks in most instances. Because most victims were not confronted with financial damages, this generous reimbursement policy may have unintendedly stimulated moral hazard among victims, due to a lack of incentives to change risky behavior and avoid future victimization. This paper therefore compares post-victimization changes in Internet activities among reimbursed victims of identity fraud and non-reimbursed victims, as well as non-victims. For this purpose, large-scale, representative victimization survey data were used from the Dutch LISS-panel. Overall, we found no differences in Internet activity change between the distinguished groups, which points to the absence of moral hazard in this specific case.

This article focuses on Dutch homicide cases involving victim burial in a clandestine grave. There is a lack of adequate criminological research about the nature of this kind of homicide. The results indicate that there are differences between the ‘regular’ homicide cases and clandestine burial cases. For example, clandestine burial cases included a higher proportion of sexual homicides. Second, different types of burial cases were analysed through cluster analysis, based on victim, offender and crime characteristics. Three distinct types of burial cases were defined which differ substantially with respect to the gender of the victim, where the burial took place and the relationship between victim and offender.