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. |
Zoekresultaat: 4 artikelen
De zoekresultaten worden gefilterd op:Tijdschrift Recht der Werkelijkheid x
Artikel |
De beslispraktijk van het Schadefonds Geweldsmisdrijven: een kwalitatieve studie naar de beoordeling van verzoeken tot tegemoetkoming |
Tijdschrift | Recht der Werkelijkheid, Aflevering 1 2019 |
Trefwoorden | slachtoffers, geweldscriminaliteit, schade, tegemoetkoming, beslispraktijk |
Auteurs | Mara Huibers MSc., Prof. dr. mr. Maarten Kunst en Dr. mr. Sigrid van Wingerden |
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie |
Artikel |
|
Tijdschrift | Recht der Werkelijkheid, Aflevering 1 2018 |
Trefwoorden | Legal culture, Civil law, Justice, Experiment, Empirical Legal Research |
Auteurs | Prof. dr. Willem van Boom, Dr. Chris Reinders Folmer en Dr. Pieter Desmet |
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie |
A common conception in the legal literature holds that in a given country, the law in force is to be understood against the background of shared beliefs about justice in that particular country. If that conception holds true, the applicable civil law in a particular country should reflect the shared views on ‘civil justice’ within that country and, as a result, citizens should reveal a preference for domestic civil law over the civil law of another country for a given case. In this research we empirically investigated to what extent the applicable law in particular cases corresponds to actual beliefs about what is seen as just in those situations. Does Dutch liability law in a particular case correspond with what citizens in the Netherlands consider to be just in that case? And does the applicable English liability law correspond to what English people consider fair in that case? |
Boekbespreking |
De deelgeschilprocedure |
Tijdschrift | Recht der Werkelijkheid, Aflevering 3 2017 |
Auteurs | Mr. dr. Rogier Hartendorp |
Auteursinformatie |
Artikel |
Simulatie onder slachtoffers van schokkende gebeurtenissenEen pleidooi voor onafhankelijk onderzoek naar de echtheid van psychische klachten in schadevergoedingsprocedures |
Tijdschrift | Recht der Werkelijkheid, Aflevering 2 2014 |
Trefwoorden | victims, compensation, malingering, detection |
Auteurs | Maarten Kunst |
SamenvattingAuteursinformatie |
High-impact incidents, such as (natural) disasters, severe (traffic) accidents, and exposure to (war) violence, may have severe psychological consequences, both for direct and indirect victims. Such consequences may qualify for financial compensation. However, some victims malinger their psychological status to get compensated for damages they have not suffered. This type of fraudulent behavior costs insurance companies and publicly funded compensation services enormous amounts of money and may eventually make compensation unaffordable. To prevent this from occurring, it is argued that lawyers who need to decide upon victims’ claims for compensation should call in independent experts to evaluate the genuineness of victims’ reported psychological symptoms by administrating a malingering detection test. To enable correct interpretation of the outcome of such a test, the base rate problem is extensively discussed. In short, this problem means that correct test interpretation in individual cases depends on the prevalence of malingering in the population to which a victim belongs. Finally, several counter arguments for the standard assessment of malingering by independent experts are discussed. |