The contribution of sport to reintegrating offenders receives limited attention, both in science and in the practice of probation and the prison system. From the perspective of desistance, this literature study concluded that sport can contribute to the development of individual capital, social capital and an alternative identity. However, the effect of sport is not necessarily positive. There are risks of negative influence or the reinforcement of problem behaviour. In counselling offenders, sport should be combined with other interventions to reduce recidivism. A personalized approach is required, based on the risk-need-responsivity model.

Interprofessional collaboration in the treatment and supervision of clients in forensic mental health care is of great importance. However, collaboration between professionals within and between settings is not always easy. In this article, different forms of collaboration within the forensic mental health care system are described as well as the most important pitfalls and success factors. Finally, some recommendations are provided for practitioners, organizations and policy-makers to design and facilitate collaboration in forensic mental health care.

Professionals from various organisations within Dutch local governments are working together in an integrated-personalized-approach in order to prevent disturbing and criminal behavior in multi problem young adults. The Startbaan study, which focused on the collaboration within such local integrated-approaches, shows that multidisciplinary collaboration is hard to reach because of the amount and versatility of organisations involved as well as the complexity of problems in multi problem young adults. Results from the Startbaan study combined with findings from literature show that a functional mix of organizational conditions and specific professional abilities is needed in order to work together successfully.

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.

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?

While studies on trust in the police are numerous, this is much less the case for other policing actors. It is important to examine this in the light of the increasing number and diversification of policing actors and their legitimacy. Using a survey, 894 youngsters were asked to evaluate their trust in actors involved in the policing of urban nightlife areas: the police, door staff, and CCTV. Results showed that people tend to trust human actors of surveillance more compared to technological actors, however different (demographic and contextual) factors nuance this pattern.

This article concerns an experiment involving three learning communities of professionals cooperating across institutional boundaries to address domestic violence cases in multiple complementary ways. Providers of social services interacted with law enforcement in a juridical context to achieve an integrated approach. This alliance indicates the potential for values-based Good Work based on safety, professional care, and compassionate treatment. Playing with time and capacity can be a strategy, and each professional can benefit from multiple viewpoints for recognising and anticipating patterns of domestic violence before it (re)occurs.
A lack of funding has suspended embedding this Good Work, slowing progress toward achieving long-term goals and making this interdisciplinary approach to assuring sustainable safety unavailable to prevent repeated outbreaks of domestic violence.

Prison staff is exposed to aggression of prisoners which evokes work stress. In forensic psychiatry risk management principles, such as the Risk-Needs-Responsivity-model (RNR), assist staff to manage aggression by means applying risk management strategies. The Early Recognition Method (ERM) is such an evidence based strategy, developed and tested in forensic psychiatry. In ERM, staff gradually try to attune to aggressive behavior by means of the identification of early warning signs of aggression and systematically evaluated these in predetermined intervals. In this article it is explained and discussed how ERM could be applied meaningfully in prison services.

Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) is a method in which volunteers support and monitor a convicted sex offender during his or her re-entry into society in order to prevent new sex offences. COSA was developed in Canada in 1994 as a grass roots approach to an acute crisis in a small town near Toronto, and since then has spread throughout Canada. In 2002, the COSA model was introduced and further developed in England, and from there the approach found its way to the Netherlands, where circle projects are provided by the Dutch Probation Organization since 2010. Until now, more than one hundred sex offenders (‘core members’ in a circle) have participated in a circle in the Netherlands. Although the COSA model predates the Good Lives Model, it’s basic principles align very well to the Good Lives Model. In COSA, a group of three to five volunteers form a surrogate social network, that offers social inclusion, practical and moral support in all kinds of daily challenges the core member faces, and that monitors risk and risk behavior. The volunteers are supervised by a professional circle-coordinator and supported by professionals who are involved in the core members’ after care arrangements. The COSA intervention model describes a number of conditions and strategies that support its effectiveness. Canadian, American and English case-control studies into the effectiveness of COSA shows a substantial reduction of offending behavior in core members compared to controls. Since the international proliferation of the COSA model is ever increasing, protecting the program integrity is a growing concern, and stresses the need for international cooperation between COSA providers.

This article analyses whether the local youth worker can operate on the intersection of social welfare and signalling of extremism. Although it is a rare phenomenon, there is a clear message from the government to watch out for the first signs of deviant behavior and unacceptable behavior. However, shouldn’t we ask ourselves whether youth workers are adequately equipped at local level to signal threat? The qualitative results show that in daily practice there is a lack of clear standards which make terminology for social professionals not easily distinguished. In addition their opinion depends largely on their own intuition regarding the issues. This can create side effects which form a risk that the local terrorism policy does not have the intended effect.

In 2009 the Dutch temporary restraining order Act came into being. The order is a much used instrument in the fight against domestic violence. However, it’s effectivity has yet to be proven beyond doubt. There are signs the order can be effective, but it is unknown what influences this effect: which choices in its implementation, which characteristics of violence and those involved, which characteristics of the care that is provided.
This article claims that the temporary restraining order can be more effective if we collect more data on what it is that makes it effective, and use this data to mirror the order against other instruments that are available in the fight against domestic violence. In that way, we can choose the instrument that best suits the situation, instead of picking the temporary restraining order simply because it is most readily available. This means the following is necessary: 1) more knowledge about the types of situations in which the order can be most effective; 2) more knowledge about the effects of choices that are being made in the implementation of the instrument; 3) an overview of all available instruments for intervening in situations of serious and immediate threat of domestic violence and the effects that can be reached with those instruments; and 4) a better use of available knowledge about the effects of care and assistance to victims and perpetrators of domestic violence to improve the trajectories that accompany temporary restraining orders. This will enable a more balanced choice between these orders and other interventions and will improve the effects of the orders and the care and assistance that accompanies them.

Recently the Dutch probation is faced with changes in the local situation: new forms of cooperation and networks have emerged, due to the transformation of the social domain. The probation officers participate on different levels in these networks. They can no longer simply deliver their ‘products’, but have to ‘do what is necessary. A lot of decisions have to be made on the operational level.
Examples of the changes are given. Recent research on cooperation in the social domain show that ‘cooperation’ is easier sad then done. These changes ask for a new set of competences.

In this article, I report on an ethnographic research project conducted in 2013-2015 in Rotterdam’s neighbourhood Hillesluis on ‘Community Governs’, a community-based program which goal is to solve neighbourhood crime and disorder problems. By making use of the CLEAR model, the article focuses on three factors of effective participation of citizens: ‘Enabled to’, ‘Asked to’, and ‘Responded to’. The results indicate that making residents of a deprived neighbourhood responsible for the governing of safety and security issues is extremely difficult. It also becomes clear that the participants don’t believe that their involvement is making a difference in the neighbourhood. An importantly explanation for this is that the participants are not provided enough information to make the right decisions about which safety problems need to be tackled.

This article discusses the importance of reflection for prison staff. Their work is both physical and emotionally incriminating. That increases risk on turnover, burn-out, psychosomatic diseases and negative experiences with prisoners. To render all challenges in their work it’s important to build up resiliency. One of the means to stimulate resilience is organized reflection. It is described how guided by experts, reflecting on own experiences can contribute to resilience of prison employees and strengthen their learning capacity. That is done by literature study and a description of experiences with organized reflection in PI Vught.

Young people in residential health care are experimenting with sexual behavior and sexual boundaries just like other young people do. But unlike youth in ‘normal’ circumstances, they often face an increased risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of sexual problematic behavior. Professionals often find it difficult to deal adequately with sexual behavior. The ‘Flag system’ is a method that helps them to assess sexual behavior adequately by applying six criteria, and rate satiation with four different ‘flags’ (green = normal behavior, yellow = risky behavior, red = mildly sexual abusive behavior, black = severely sexual abusive behavior). It provides guidelines to react in a way that supports normal behavior and addresses problematic behavior. A set of drawings illustrate situations that range from normal sexual behavior to severely abusive behavior, which can be used to discuss with young people or with colleagues. The original Flag system was developed by Sensoa, a Belgian experts center on sexuality. The original version was developed for use with children from 0 to 18, and therefore an adaptation was necessary to fit the needs of adolescents in residential youth care.
In a 4-year project, a partnership of researchers, program developers and professional educators, all experts in sexual health, develops an adapted version of the Flag system. The project provided a theoretical underpinning for the method, and a conceptual framework of goals and activities for the training program that is mandatory for those who want to work with the Flag system in a professional context. Also, drawings and guidelines were adapted to the context of residential youth care. This version is currently piloted in twelve institutions for residential youth care. Also, schools for higher professional education in social work are involved in a number of project activities to enhance their training programs in order to improve knowledge, skills and comfort of future youth workers to discuss sexual matters with young people.

Recent sociological research and socio-political debates about socioeconomic inequality and social divisions urge legal scholars, criminologists, policy makers and practitioners to have a renewed discussion about the role of socioeconomic status of suspects and offenders in judicial decisions. If social divisions in Dutch society are deepening, we need to look anew at the possibility that injustices of the social structure affect legal rights and decisions about prosecution, sentencing and probation. This article intends to offer various starting points for debate and research.

This article presents how criminal court handle with stories alternative to the accusative story. By analysing verdicts it is showed that reasonable doubt is not merely caused by the simple possibility of an alternative scenario. Under condition of sufficient evidence for conviction criminal courts will reject alternative stories which are without likely indications as well as unusual stories presented in an tardy stadium of law. Therefor it is important for participants in law to focus on the (lack of) support and the (im)plausiblity of alternative stories, instead of (requesting) infinite search for discriminative evidence in merely suggested stories.