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.

It is frequently claimed that the punishment regime in the Netherlands lately has become one of the most severe in North and West Europe. This claim is critically addressed using data over the period 1990-2011 from the European Sourcebooks of Crime and Criminal Justice. Prison stock data from recent SPACE I Annual Penal Statistics are also taken into account. These data hardly do warrant a reliable international comparison of punitivity levels in Europe. At any rate, there is no evidence that the punishment regime in the Netherlands is among the most severe in North and West Europe, on the contrary.

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.