In this contribution the author reviews De aanklager by F. de Vlaming..

This article develops a victimological perspective on international criminal justice, based on a review of the main victimological characteristics of international crimes. These include the complicity or active involvement of government agencies, the large numbers of victims and the peculiar position of international crime victims who, at the time the crimes are committed, are usually not viewed as victims by the perpetrators, but placed outside the moral sphere or even depicted as perpetrators rather than victims.Key elements of this perspective concern the external coherence of the criminal justice reaction - the interlinking of criminal justice with other reparative efforts - as well as its internal coherence - the extent to which the procedures of international criminal justice are aligned with what it realistically can and should achieve. With internal coherence in mind, the article examines the victimological findings relating to the main rights of victims in the criminal procedure (recognition/acknowledgement, information/participation and compensation/reparation) and subsequently analyzes how the specifics of international crimes moderate them.

In this contribution the author reviews Public support for vigilantism by N.E. Haas.

What do we know about the criminological aspects of international crimes? What do they entail and what are facilitating factors which can help us understand their causes and how should we respond to these crimes? Are international crimes merely a more extreme form of ordinary crimes or are they a different kind of criminality? In the past few years a growing number of scholars both at a national and at an international level have devoted their scholarly attention to this important and urgent research theme. In this special issue we aim to present a number of articles in which different perspectives on this topic are presented. By doing so we hope to enhance our knowledge of this phenomenon and to provide an impulse to further criminological research within this area in both the Netherlands and Belgium. This introductory article gives an overview of the state of the art of international crime criminology in the Netherlands and Belgium, and the rest of the world.

Early this year, a bill was introduced proposing mandatory minimum sentences in the Netherlands. Despite harsh criticism from within the legal complex, the bill has not been withdrawn, instead its scope has been broadened. This article states that the reasons given for the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences have no empirical foundation and that the objectives of the bill will not be reached: mandatory minimum sentences will not contribute to the prevention of crime. The reason for the introduction of the bill is nothing less than a textbook example of penal populism.

The position of victims of crime has shown marked improvement over the past 30 years. The rise of the victim has been associated with the growth of a unified ‘victim movement’; a social movement that strives to improve the position of victims of crime. However, it is questionable whether the victim movement should be viewed as a unitary phenomenon. Instead of one movement, there appear to be a number of victim movements. There are differences between the victim advocates in the United States, Victim Support in Europe, the violence against women movement and proponents of restorative justice.. In this article, reasons for these differences are sought in victim-endogenous factors: differences in victims’ characteristics and the idealtypes employed by the different movements are an important explanation for the divergent development in organisations representing victims interests, which in turn influences their policy preferences. It is argued that advocates of restorative justice would benefit from understanding both the reality and the distortion involved in the idealtypes, including their own. This would allow proponents of restorative justice to adapt their practices in a manner that is both suitable and convincing to the representative and target group of the different victim movements.

In de koloniale samenlevingen staat de uitvoerende macht boven de rechterlijke macht. Deze bijdrage beschrijft de verzelfstandiging van de rechtspraak op Aruba tussen 1816 en 1919 op basis van de notulen van de rechtsprekende organen en omliggende archiefstukken. Tussen 1824 en 1848 had het Vredegerecht rechtsprekende, wetgevende en uitvoerende taken. In 1848 kwam een aparte wetgevende Adviserende Commissie tot stand en in 1869 een kantongerecht. Onafhankelijkheid van de rechterlijke macht werd ongedaan gemaakt door het gegeven dat de gezaghebber veelal aan het hoofd van de rechtsprekende organen stond. In 1919 kwam daarin verandering met de oprichting van het Gerecht in Eerste Aanleg.

An analysis of about 2,200 cases of homicides in the Netherlands committed between 1992 and 2006 shows that lethal violence typically results from conflict in symmetric relations in which social rank is ambiguous. The settings of homicides are mostly well-integrated, small communities, including families, rural villages in tribal and agrarian societies, modern urban neighbourhoods, gettos, criminal organisations, and ethnic enclaves. The mechanism that drives antagonism between people in such places is their attachment, close-knit structure, and common features. Earlier, Simmel developed this insight in lethal conflict when saying ‘the more we have in common with another as whole persons, the more easily will our totality be involved in every single relationship to that person, hence the disproportionate violence to which normally well-controlled people can be moved within their relations to those closest to them.’ Contemporary sociologists, ethnographers, and historians amply corroborated this view of lethal violence. In his comparative work Gould shows a compelling connection between ambiguity of social rank and lethal conflict. Knauft investigated the high homicide rates in a New Guinea community and found that lethal violence resulting from sorcery attributions is not the anti-thesis of the ideal of ‘good company’ but its ultimate culmination.

This article discusses tropical deforestation from a cultural criminological perspective, by using qualitative methods such as ethnography and interviews, and by emphasizing the difficulties, dangers and dilemmas of ethnographic research. Case studies include timber smuggling from Indonesia to Malaysia and deforestation for bauxite, soy and timber in Brazil’s Amazon. Also described are meetings with (Dutch) timber traders, policy makers and law enforcers. Tropical deforestation is responsible for a great deal of harm, crime and violence, mainly committed by ranchers and loggers. Victims are humans (including humanity’s oldest societies), future generations (considering the impact on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change) and non-humans (with risks of extinctions).

This article studies community notification of suspects, as in Crimewatch and its Dutch equivalent, Opsporing Verzocht, and on police websites. It explores how these messages frame crime, and how these frames change when police messages are copied by private websites. Publication of suspects by the police is characterized as responsibilization, because it legitimizes the authority of the police and reinforces existing relations between police and the public. The new media, however, undermine the frame of authority as it is presented by the police, either because publications aiming to detect suspects are transformed into news or entertainment, or because private websites select those publications that give room to the questioning of police performance. As for the presentation of the publications, this article compares the Dutch TV program Opsporing Verzocht and the website GeenStijl. Opsporing Verzocht centers around the victim, while GeenStijl presents the subject from an enforcement point of view. GeenStijl users are not addressed as the police’s helping hands, but as autonomous agents of social control, sometimes standing in for the police. Community notification of suspects therefore not only influences detection rates, but also the relation between the police, the public, and offenders in society.

Casefile analysis concerning serious youth offenders under a mandatory treatment order in The Netherlands showed that, amongst youth offenders of various IQ-levels (IQ < 70, IQ 70-85, and IQ > 85), behavioural and mental health problems and social background characteristics are in many respects very similar. However, differences found in for example social skills and relationships and the needs inherent with having an intellectual disability (ID) have important implications for the way treatment is offered. As a large proportion of the serious youth offenders has an ID, this is important to consider. Furthermore, as intelligence has a dynamic aspect, the authors advise to occasionally reassess these youths.

Since 2001, the Netherlands have broadened their array of antiterrorism legislation and policies. However, there is hardly any insight into the level of public support for them. This article assesses the Dutch public opinion on four measures that were recently made effective: enhanced possibilities for stop-and-search, broadening of possibilities for special investigative resources, increased obligations for identification, and body scans in airports. Two randomly selected, comparable groups were asked different questions about these issues: attitudes or willingness to pay. The results show that respondents have positive attitudes towards newly introduced antiterrorism measures, yet simultaneously, they have low willingness to pay. Both groups were also asked how they would allocate an imaginary fixed budget to various criminal justice policies and tax rebate. These results show similar relations for both attitudes and willingness to pay, suggesting they both measure the relative importance assigned to antiterrorism policies. A right political orientation predicts both positive attitudes and high willingness to pay. Furthermore, people with high income have higher willingness to pay. The results underline the necessity to pay attention to the subtleties underlying public opinion on crime control.

In Vrijheid van discriminerende uitingen? De zaak Wilders bespreekt C.W. Maris het lopende strafproces tegen de Nederlandse politicus Geert Wilders vanuit het rechtsfilosofische schadebeginsel. Wilders is beschuldigd van beledigen en aanzetten tot discriminatie van moslims. Wilders zelf beroept zich op uitingsvrijheid. Volgens de auteur is Wilders’ beeld van de islam bezijden de waarheid. Niettemin verleent het schadebeginsel in dit geval voorrang aan de vrijheid van meningsuiting boven het recht om niet te worden gediscrimineerd. Aanstoot of belediging is onvoldoende reden voor een strafrechtelijk verbod. Voor zover er schade dreigt, kan die beter worden beperkt door tegenargumenten dan door een verbod.

In this contribution the author discusses the broad question whether religious commitment does – or does not – stimulate violent types of criminal behaviour. Based on a review of relevant literature (criminology and religious studies), it is first specified that religious commitment in many respects functions as a protective factor to prevent people from criminal behaviour. By contrast, many orthodox and fundamentalist groups consider defensive violence (self-defense) and punitive violence (retaliation) to be legitimate options. In the final section the author discusses some of the assumed relationships between crime, violence and muslim-radicalism in the Netherlands.

This editorial offers an introduction to the current issue.

Which role do religious beliefs and practices play in radicalization processes of individuals and groups? In the Netherlands, the authorities are not entitled to interfere in religious content, given this content does not undermine democratic order. On the other hand religious orthodoxy is increasingly perceived as a source for violence and coercion in public discourse. Former minister of Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin argued for a better understanding for the value of religion in society. ICCT-director Peter Knoope explained how the government can enable the development of counternarratives to violent jihadism within the civil society. James Kennedy criticised the fact that religion is increasingly problematized and politicized and argued for a more reluctant and relaxed view on religious radicalization.

Since the 1990s, in the Dutch public debate on the societal meaning of religion a discourse has emerged which does not only relate extremist forms of Islam to terrorism, but more broadly, religious orthodoxy in general to coercion and violence. In this contribution this emergency is described and analyzed. It is related – among other things – to two switches in the perception on orthodox religious groups of prominent opinion leaders, namely: firstly from groups which become less powerful towards groups which become more powerful, and secondly from groups which adapt to their secular and liberal environment towards groups which are characterized by revitalization and radicalization. The upshot of these changes is that religious orthodoxy is framed as a threat that has to be limited and sometimes fought.