This contribution treats debt recovery as an important cause for the emergence and worsening of the debt problem. It is explained that when a bailiff seizes wage, the debtor often has too little left to live on. In addition to seizure of wage, the bailiff can also seize the bank account or seize household goods in order to sell these. The author describes how this can lead to new debts and what legislation is being prepared to modernize this situation. In case of problematic debts, multiple creditors are collecting from the same debtor, which requires coordination. The recovery by creditors facilitated by the current rules focuses on the claims of individual creditors. However, as soon as problematic debts are involved, an integrated approach is necessary, in which the common interest, the interest of all creditors and that of the debtor, takes precedence over self-interest.

Adhering to a strict interpretation, Data Protection by Design (DPbD) can conflict with the needs of law enforcement in their fight against terrorism and criminality. An illustration of this tension can be found in the case of FBI vs. Apple, where the FBI wants Apple to help bypass security on an iPhone in order to gain access to data. The FBI needs the help of Apple – or third parties – to get such access, for which they might need to create new legal mandates. However, private parties like Apple, may want to design their products in such a way that evading and breaking the security of the system is not possible, as consumers demand secure and privacy friendly devices. This article adds to this debate by posing DPbD as an argument in favor of private parties not to cooperate in making their products less secure and less privacy friendly. This argument is especially relevant when a similar case unfolds in the EU under the new regime of the General Data Protection Regulation in which DPbD is explicitly embedded.

Police forces and law enforcement agencies in many countries are continuously trying to optimize the use of technologies in policing and law enforcement. Efforts are being made to remove existing technological, legal and organizational obstacles to create more opportunities of promising technologies, both existing and new. This contribution describes the results of a survey among 46 police forces and other law enforcement agencies in eleven countries. Their experiences with policing technologies and their needs and preferences in this regard are described. The prevalence and satisfaction of existing technologies, including wiretapping, fingerprints, DNA research, database coupling, data mining and profiling, camera surveillance and network analyses were investigated. Legal, technological and organizational obstacles for the use of technology in policing were mapped and the extent to which policing technologies are evaluated and yield success stories was investigated. The main obstacles, according to the respondents, are insufficient financial resources and insufficient availability of technology. One in four organizations is lacking any clear, appealing success stories and half of the respondents indicated they were not performing any evaluations on the effectiveness of using particular technologies in policing. As a result, the information available on whether technologies in policing are actually working is very limited.

In light of the high numbers of persons entering the EU via the southern borders and the current uneven distribution of asylum seekers (five Member States of the EU currently received in 2014 more than 70% of the total amount of refugees), there is a clear and urgent need for the EU ministers to ensure a fairer distribution of asylum seekers within the EU. The Dublin Regulation’s system of allocating the responsibility for an asylum request does not offer a solution for this challenge, also because Member States cannot have a blind faith in the standards of a number of states for processing asylum requests. There are significant differences in the application of the law and the procedures.

Tensions between the central national level and the local level become clearly visible in coffee shop policies, which have to fit within the international VN and EU treaties and strategies, national drug policy principles and local interests of public order. Three cases, all concerning long-term problems of drug tourism, nuisance and crime around coffee shops, illustrate these tensions. In the case of coffee shop Checkpoint near the Belgian border the Public Prosecutor aimed at solving the problem by prosecuting the coffee shop as a criminal network, while the mayor tried to minimize the negative effects by facilitating visitor flows. In the case of the private club and residence criterion in 2012 not all the mayors actually enforced these national criteria. This leads to a bigger emphasis on local tailoring. Thirdly, several mayors have opted for a regulation of cannabis production for coffee shops, while the stance of the national government is that international treaties banning this practice should be respected. The influence of local policies may be small, but in the end the local communities seem crucial when it comes to finding new ways of managing drug problems.

Have recent food fraud cases, combined with a lack of priority and regulatory framework for combating food fraud and increased involvement of organized crime, caused a crisis of the European food chain? To what extent does this necessitate a European response? This article argues that the crisis in consumer confidence caused by cross-border fraud must be urgently addressed at national and EU level and that combating food fraud should be a priority next to the enforcement of food safety rules. Necessary changes of EU rules applicable to the sector and its controls should be made through the EU decision-making process. The European Parliament recommends an approach that should define food fraud to enable the development of EU policy, facilitate cross-border cooperation and information-sharing between member states and encourage sector initiatives, whereas its enforcement should focus on altering the type of controls by public authorities and installing tougher penalties.

National governments have adopted a variety of approaches to the protection of whistleblowers. This article refers to examples in Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and ongoing work in Ireland, the Netherlands and Serbia. It is not always clear what would count as success, but none of the existing laws appears to have wholly achieved its aims. The Council of Europe aims to establish some common ground in Europe by drafting a Recommendation which will establish principles on which Member States should draft laws and establish systems. This article considers the work done so far on the draft Recommendation, discusses some of the most important and problematic aspects, and suggests improvements.

At October the 2nd, the Netherlands Human Rights Institute (NHRI) opened its doors in Utrecht. The NHRI has been established by law, which entered into force October the 1st. The object of the Institute is to protect human rights in the Netherlands and promote the observance of such rights. In order to achieve this goal, the Institute has many tasks and competences, such as advising on legislation and regulations, draft legislation and policy, conducting inquiries and investigations, reporting and making recommendations. It will also encourage the ratification, implementation and observance of treaties, guidelines and recommendations. In addition, the NHRI will collaborate with national, European and international institutions and civil society organisations engaged in the protection of one or more human rights and increase awareness and knowledge of human rights through information, teaching and publicity. Finally, the Institute will take over the present duties of the Equal Treatment Commission, namely investigating whether discrimination as referred to in the equal treatment legislation has taken or is taking place and publishing its findings on this. This will be the responsibility of a separate division of the Institute. This article describes the background of the establishment of the NHRI, elaborates the different tasks and considers what is necessary for the NHRI’s effectiveness.

International police cooperation is characterised by sometimes conflicting dynamics between informal security entrepreneurship and formal institutionalisation and centralisation. In spite of claims in governance literature that states are losing their commanding heights due to internationalisation, experience shows that states are in fact able and willing to control and steer international police networks. Whether matching processes of politicisation and bureaucratisation conflict with operational effectiveness remains to be seen. Both in politics and science the institutional approach is dominant in describing, explaining and evaluating international police cooperation. This runs the risk of losing sight of the ‘logic of practicality’ that in reality is very important for innovations and developments regarding cross-border cooperation. In the logical of practicality, dimensions like intuition, creativity, trust and perseverance are more important than rules, policy preferences or organisational charts.

The future of wiretapping is threatened by encryption and developments in the telecommunications industry. Internet communications changed the wiretapping landscape fundamentally. In practice it is often impossible to wiretap all possible internet connections. Not all communication providers are obliged to execute wiretap orders. This limits the use of a wiretap in an increasingly digital world. Although the content of certain encrypted Voice-over-IP communications and private messages might not be visible to law enforcement officials, the traffic data are. These traffic data show when the suspect connects to certain communication services, which provide important clues to proceed in a criminal investigation. It is important to have a discussion whether our wiretap laws need to be amended to better fit the needs of law enforcement. However, to make such a debate possible we need transparency. A good first step is to provide details and statistics about the use of internet wiretaps.

Because of the special characteristics of the Internet, cybercrime inherently crosses national borders and has fewer natural barriers than classic cross-border crime. This triggers the question whether criminal law with its traditional national focus is able to combat cybercrime. Can legislatures respond to technological change with sufficient speed in an internationally aligned approach? This article tries to answer this question by mapping the dynamics of cybercrime law, focusing particularly on the interplay between European and Dutch legislative initiatives. It shows that the dynamics consist of a European framework of minimum standards on major issues, with much room for national legislatures to interpret the standards and to add initiatives of their own where the European framework remains silent. Although this has worked well so far, if cybercrime continues to transform into large-scale organised crime, a step-change in the dynamics towards more steering European approaches may be necessary.

This article offers an analysis of the side effects caused by the increased counterterrorism measures adapted in Dutch law and public policy after 9/11. Taking clues from Foucault's thinking on securitisation and Beck's risk society, it is argued that focus, referent subject and object of security measures and deployment of counterterrorism laws have shifted from the concrete individual to society and risk prevention as a whole (1), that this shift induces function creep (2) and a much quicker deployment of measures, resulting in an increasing suspect population (3). Rather than arguing against the legality and legitimacy of these measures, the authors analyse the epistemological shift in reasoning and unpack the various probabilistic arguments (as opposed to evidence-based arguments) behind the wave of securitisation after 9/11 - resulting in a lack of knowledge about, transparency and accountability of the generated side effects.

The subjects fraud and corruption play an important role in the recent debate on the constitutional changes within the Netherlands Antilles and the ‘status aparte’ of Curaçao and Sint Maarten. The Netherlands and the various islands keep passing the blame on one another when it comes to fraud and corruption. It seems there is little willingness to look at the underlying causes or to express self-criticism. In this article an attempt is made to outline what is really going on in the field of fraud and corruption in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. Several investigations on fraud and corruption committed by politicians in the past fifteen years will be addressed. Furthermore several socio-cultural, political and economic factors that play a role in causing fraud and corruption are being discussed. In this way the author hopes to contribute to a more constructive debate about the issue of fraud and corruption.

In March 2008 the Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality put forward a bill on animal welfare and animal health to the Dutch Parliament. In this bill five acts on kept animals are integrated. The authors discuss whether the integration is a goal in itself or means to an end. In their view the choice of legislation involved in the integration is not a logical one, and it is questionable whether this integration is necessary at all. Furthermore, the bill in its present form is not an adequate instrument to attain the policy goals in the field of animal welfare and animal health.