This study provides an in-depth analysis of the resilience of criminal investigators in the Netherlands. Observational studies within three criminal investigation teams and 45 interviews with investigators and team leaders revealed that confrontations with human suffering, decision-making, and dirty and physically demanding circumstances at the crime scene can sometimes be (very) challenging. However, investigators have relatively little difficulty with the strain resulting from the operational stressors to which they are exposed during investigations. They know how to apply different coping strategies to reduce stress. However, this does not apply to organisational stressors. The way in which their work is organised regularly causes tension, dissatisfaction and frustration. The research highlights that investigators suffer more from these organisational stressors than from the stressors that can be associated with criminal investigations. Attention should therefore be focused on strengthening their ‘internal resilience’, the article makes a number of recommendations to support this.

Investigative reporters show an increasing interest in criminal phenomena. Dutch journalists may be allowed access to ongoing police investigations on the condition that they comply with data protection legislation. Working in international cooperative projects, using sophisticated research tools and hot sources, journalists by themselves also manage to uncover hidden crimes that may prompt indictments. The article explores possibilities of future collaboration between criminal investigators and reporters, while acknowledging each other’s professional roles and responsibilities.

Reducing the number of suicides in prison has been highlighted as an international priority. To date, however, studies examining prison suicides in Belgium are lacking. Therefore, adopting a retrospective record-based approach, we sought to investigate all suicides occurring in the whole Belgian prison estate during a 17-year period. The results underline the need for suicide prevention among prisoners in Belgium, and echo prior findings that restrictive preventive measures should be combined with psychosocial interventions in order to address the causes of prisoners being suicidal. Such strategies are ideally embedded within a comprehensive suicide prevention policy on a national level.

On July 1st 2016 a law entered into force that gives the victim or survivors of serious crimes the right to speak unrestrictedly in court. Where the victim or survivors used to be only permitted to make a statement on the consequences of the crime for them, the recent amendment of the law permits them to speak about the evidence, the legal qualification of the crime, the culpability of the offender and the appropriate punishment as well. Discussions on the introduction or extension of the victim’s right to speak mainly focused on the consequences of victim statements on the procedural consequences and on the consequences for the victim. Little attention is paid to the consequences for the offender. This article reports the findings of a systematic literature review on the relation between a victim statement and the imposed punishment. The findings from the American studies show that a victim statement aggravates sentencing outcomes. How desirable is that? For answering that question, more research is needed, which the legislator has not wanted to wait for.

This article deals with the topic of the life imprisonment in the Netherlands. The court Noord-Nederland judged that life imprisonment in the Netherlands doesn’t meet the criteria of the ECtHR, especially the ‘prospect of release of life prisoners. In this article I place the court’s decision in a context of national law and case-law (national, and international). In my opinion, there is still a prospect of release, because of the many independent judicial bodies and procedures that are involved to the decision to grant (or not) a pardon and the new developments in the penitentiary law.

In a recent letter to parliament, the Dutch minister of Security and Justice announced a revision of the regulations concerning the use of force by members of the Dutch police. The police had requested such a revision, because they believe that the current regulations are not up-to-date and lead to an unacceptable criminalization of officers who have used force while on duty. The changes announced in the letter are the introduction of a new criminal offence, the introduction of a new defense type (specifically for police officers) and various changes in procedural law. This article critically examines several of these changes.

Dutch family liaison officers inform and support trauma victims or their relatives. Recent studies suggest that professionals working with trauma victims may develop work-related stress. However, other studies have shown that professionals can also develop personal growth from their experiences with traumatized persons. This study was the first to investigate to what extent Dutch family liaison officers experience work-related stress or personal growth. Results suggest that the majority of the respondents experience no or very low levels of work-related stress. Levels of personal growth appear to be rather low as well, but seem to be more broadly dispersed. These findings suggest that Dutch family liaison officers are able to cope with the potentially negative effects of their work and even experience positive outcomes from working with traumatized persons. In spite of this, many participants provided suggestions for further improvement of their work practices.

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.

Victims play an increasingly more prominent role in the criminal justice process. While the consequences of victim participation in the judicial process have been criticized by researchers and practitioners alike, the possible negative consequences of secondary victimization has been largely neglected in this debate. From a social psychological perspective, I discuss research on just-world theory that can explain these negative reactions and give some insight into the processes that play a role in both negative and positive reactions toward victims. Implications for the law practitioners and scholars will be discussed.

The public prosecutor should act as the knight fighting in court for a victim. A much more communicative strategy instead of one aiming at a juridical discourse will reframe what is happening in court and make it understandable for victims and public in general, Examples are given of how to do so. A discussion on the effects of such a strategy is presented.

Images can honour and dishonour people. But they only do so when that specific meaning is assigned to the image. This article shows that the meaning of images is dynamic and subjective in nature, using three analytical dimensions: content, format and context. These three dimensions are explored in two series of images: painted portraits of deceased American soldiers and photographs of posters of Palestinian suicide bombers. Whether these images are honouring or dishonouring the people portrayed depends on the viewer who constructs their meaning. This not only gives the creator and distributor a (moral) responsibility, but the viewer as well.

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.