Those involved in a motor vehicle accident often have emotional needs that are not being met within the current framework of personal injury settlement. These needs include sharing one’s (side of the) story, getting in touch with the other person(s) involved and offering or receiving apologies. Following Nils Christie’s theory of ‘stolen’ conflicts, the fact that the people involved are often represented by lawyers or insurance companies is problematic because it alienates them from each other and it thwarts proper recovery. Incorporating restorative justice could offer a solution to this ‘theft’ of conflict, as it focuses on bringing all involved together to restore any of the harm done by concentrating on their needs. The central question to this dissertation is: how can restorative justice play a role in the sustainable resolution of conflicts after motor vehicle accidents so that the current insurance and liability system can better meet the immaterial needs of victims and perpetrators? Via several projects, the role of lawyers and insurance companies is studied. How beneficial or adversarial are their influences on victims and offenders? And can they incorporate restorative justice in their practice? The first publication is expected at the end of this year.

A forensic mental health report is requested in about 30% of more serious cases presented to the criminal court. These reports can be used at sentencing and advise the judge on criminal responsibility, recidivism risk, and possible treatment measures, but is not a formal factor in decisions about guilt. The current study focuses on the (unwarranted) effect of forensic mental health information on conviction decisions. Using an experimental vignette study among 155 criminology students, results show that when a mental disorder is present, conviction rates are higher than when such information is absent. In line with the story model of judicial decision-making, additional analyses showed that this effect was mediated by the evaluation of guilt rather than by the evaluation of other physical evidence. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.

Within orthodox-protestant schools in The Netherlands there is growing diversity and uncertainty about internal religious, cultural and social norms. Though orthodox-protestant schools are among the strongest semi-autonomous social fields, where it is difficult for equal treatment law to pervade, this growing diversity and uncertainty about internal norms can make this pervasion possible. The uncertainty about the meaning of the exception clause in equal treatment legislation for the appointment policy of religious schools also affects this.
Because of the uncertainty about the meaning of the exception clause the position of the school board was strengthened in comparison to the employee, even though the intention of the equal treatment law was the opposite. At a later stage the clarification of the anti-discrimination norm by changing the exception clause has strengthened the position of the employee. Though this is only possible when religious, cultural and social norms are changing. In that case orthodox-protestant schools, as semi-autonomous fields, are more open for the effects of this legal norm.
Uncertainty about the meaning of the requirement of a consistent appointment policy has led both to tightening as well as relaxation of the policy. In the first place tightening or relaxation of policies depends on the development of religious, cultural and social norms within different school denominations. Thus, uncertainty about internal norms works both contrary as well as strengthening to uncertainty about equal treatment legislation.

To control the COVID-19 outbreak Dutch government opted for a so-called intelligent lockdown. The virus as well as the lockdown caused significant personal and societal damage. It also created, however, a unique natural experiment. How did the forced stay in affect the crime levels? This article presents empirical data on crime trends during the lockdown. Initially, the general crime level decreased sharply. However, the general crime level quickly returned to pre-lockdown levels. Different types of crime displayed divergent trends, e.g. property crimes decreased sharply whereas online crime rates increased considerably. These trends fit rather well with an opportunity theoretical approach regarding crime.

In our daily decision-making processes, attitudes play an important role. An attitude is an evaluative judgement of a person, object or an issue on a scale of favorability. A large amount of research has been done on the role of attitudes in our daily decision-making processes. There is, however, a gap in empirical knowledge when it concerns the role of attitudes in the professional judicial decision-making process. It has been accepted that the professional judicial decision-making process has a subjective element, but this subjective element remains unexplained. Attitudes are inherently personal and subjective, and they can make our decision-making process easier. They can, however, also be the basis for biases and prejudices. Herein lies a potential risk, especially in the professional judicial decision-making process. If attitudes play a role in the decision-making process of judges there is a possibility that impartiality, one of the judiciary’s core professional values, might be unobtainable. To see whether attitudes play a role in the professional judicial decision-making process semi-structured interviews will be conducted among judges, who will also be asked to fill in a scenario survey. Hopefully the obtained data will lead to a start in filling this gap in empirical knowledge.

In the Netherlands, mayors are entitled to close public and non-public premises if drug-related activities are being conducted there. Using data from the case law of Dutch lower courts, published between 2008 and 2016, this article examines the relative success of different types of litigants, and the influence of case characteristics on drug-related closure cases. We build on Galanter’s framework of ‘repeat players’ and ‘one-shotters’, to argue that a mayor is the stronger party and is therefore more likely to win in court. We categorise mayors as ‘upperdogs’, and the opposing litigants as ‘underdogs’. Moreover, we distinguish stronger mayors from weaker ones, based on the population size of their municipality. Similarly, we distinguish the stronger underdogs from the weaker ones. Businesses and organisations are classified as stronger parties, relative to individuals, who are classified as weaker parties. In line with our hypothesis, we find that mayors win in the vast majority of cases. However, contrary to our presumptions, we find that mayors have a significantly lower chance of winning a case if they litigate against weak underdogs. When controlling for particular case characteristics, such as the type of drugs and invoked defences, our findings offer evidence that case characteristics are consequential for the resolution of drug-related closure cases in the Netherlands.

Research on the significance of representation indicates that lawyers contribute to positive outcomes of legal procedures not only by their substantive expertise but also by the relational expertise they bring. The latter involves understanding how to navigate the relationships involved in getting work done. In this paper these insights are used to investigate the highly specific and atypical practise of the preliminary reference procedure in the European legal system in order to reveal how lawyers deal with such an unexpected change of (legal) context. The empirical data, collected through semi-structured interviews with twenty-eight lawyers with past experience with the procedure, reveals the significant ways in which lawyers’ positive contribution to such cases is undermined by their lack of both substantive and relational expertise in pleading a case before the European Court of Justice. The fact that such cases do not necessarily fall into the hands of the professionals best equipped to plead such disputes before the Court, and the inability of the less well-off parties in particular to hire further expertise, points in the direction of a disadvantaged position for this group of litigants in having their interest represented effectively at the European level.

As a reaction to the perceived enforcement deficit of criminal law in the field of drug control, several countries implemented alternative regulatory strategies. One such strategy is the reregulating drugs, especially cannabis. Another strategy is the use of civil or administrative law to address drug-related crime. Especially the use of eviction to combat drug activities has become increasingly popular.
My PhD research focuses on these two developments within the field of drug control. More specifically, on the underlying rationales for the policies on recreational cannabis, the possibilities that international law provide to regulate recreational cannabis, the legal protection against drug-related evictions, and the explanation for the use of eviction to fight drug-related activities.

This PhD project uses a mixed method design to study perceived procedural justice among defendants in Dutch single-judge criminal cases. To find out whether defendants are concerned with perceived procedural justice and to get a better grasp on the concept, the first empirical project reviewed here is an interview study among defendants conducted in 2017. In this study, defendants were interviewed after their court hearings about perceived procedural justice during their court hearings. The second empirical project, which started in January 2019, zooms in on experiences of defendants with a non-western migration background. Using a questionnaire, I examine whether and how perceived everyday discrimination affects defendants’ perceptions of and reactions to procedural justice during their court hearings. I am currently designing a third empirical study, which entails a scenario experiment among people with a non-western migration background. I plan to manipulate the level of perceived procedural justice during a hypothetical court hearing to examine its influence on, for instance, people’s trust in judges, and again assess whether people’s reactions to perceived procedural justice differ depending on their levels of perceived everyday discrimination. At the end of my dissertation, I plan to connect the empirical findings to the legal domain by assessing possible normative implications.

Victims who suffer severe damages due to the act of a violent crime can request state compensation from the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF). VOCF workers who decide on these requests use their discretionary powers to translate the VOCF’s rules and policy into concrete actions. This study investigated (1) to what extent these VOCF workers match Lipsky’s definition of street-level bureaucrats and (2) what routines and heuristics they use to deal with time and information constraints. On the basis of document analysis and interviews, we found that the decision makers of the VOCF can to a certain extent be seen as street-level bureaucrats. To make decisions timely, some of them use routines such as the ‘downstream orientation’. This means that they award requests for compensation if they think that the applicant would be able to successfully contest a rejecting decision. To deal with a lack of information, they sometimes include a review clause in the text of a rejection decision. The use of heuristics was not found among the lawyers who decide in first instance, but in case of appeal hearings heuristics such as the affect and representativeness heuristic seem to play a role in the decision-making process. Future research should investigate whether these routines and heuristics lead to disparities in outcomes.

This paper analyses how street-level bureaucrats in the Netherlands decide on detaining asylum seekers. The paper is based on interviews with officers of the national police and the military police who take these decisions as part of their job. The relevant Dutch and European legal rules are not clear and unambiguous and the officers are given wide margins of discretion in making these decisions. Many interviewees said that they ultimately rely on their ‘feelings’. The paper therefore pays special attention to whether and how gut feelings and emotions of the officers influence their decision-making. In addition, the paper examines whether and how the increased use of ICTs and the Europeanisation of migration and asylum law have reduced the officers’ discretion and autonomy.

This quantitative empirical research project describes how notaries evaluate disciplinary jurisdiction. Findings show that perceived procedural justice matters for notaries’ trust in the disciplinary jurisdiction of their cases. For example, those respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case themselves, rated the disciplinary judge with a 5.3 on a 10-point scale when procedural justice was perceived by them to be relatively low. In contrast, when respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case perceived procedural justice to be relatively high they rated the disciplinary judge with 7.6 on the same 10-point scale. This suggests that perceived procedural justice matters among an interesting type of professionals (notaries) who are involved in an interesting procedure in their profession (a disciplinary evaluation of their professional handling) in which important decisions are made. The current paper can contribute to the development of a barometer of notary disciplinary law.

Similar to the more current Regulator Intermediary Target (RIT) model, Griffiths’ Social Working (SW) theory points to the relevance of intermediaries for explaining rule following behavior. In this article, the author applies both theories (RIT and SW) concerning the role of intermediaries in rule following to explain developments in Dutch prostitution policy: the non-implementation of the emancipatory, sex workers’ rights based approach, and its replacement by a more repressive policy of closing down sex facilities. The analysis shows that although both theories contain useful starting point for explaining these developments, the SW theory’s special value is its acknowledgement of how regulatory intermediaries operate in a social field with existing social rules and a specific balance of power. Such rules and power relations have put barriers to the implementation of the Dutch prostitution policy as formulated in 1999. As illustrated in the article, the SW- theory offers more tools than the RIT- model for an analysis of how legal rules work in practice.