The Dutch Minister of Justice has promised that a city’s mayor will be informed if a former prisoner, who was sentenced for a sex offense and/or serious violent crime, returns to the municipality. Because of an improved information position, the mayor is able to take founded and timely measures in order to prevent disturbances in public safety. To determine how this information can be organised in the best way, a pilot was carried out. The evaluation of this pilot suggests that the information meets a need, but that the information processing is vulnerable in certain parts. Following the evaluation the process will be adapted and may be rolled out nationwide.

In the Netherlands, police can request a physical examination of victims of domestic violence. These examinations can be either carried out by the physician who has treated the victim, or, alternatively, by a forensic physician. From a medico-legal point of view, an examination by a forensic physician has several advantages, as forensic physicians are independent and trained in examining victims of violence and reporting to the police. The aim of the current study was to (1) describe the structure of forensic services for victims of domestic violence in the Netherlands, (2) establish with whom the police request physical examinations of victims (forensic physician vs. physicians who have treated the victim), (3) explore the underlying reasons for the choice made and (4) elaborate how the current cooperation of police and forensic physicians can be improved in favour of victims of domestic violence. For this purpose, interviews were carried out with police professionals and forensic physicians throughout the country. The results demonstrated that victims can access forensic services almost exclusively on referral by the police. Furthermore, the police in most cases request physical examinations from physicians who have treated the victim and not from forensic physicians. Reasons for referring victims to treating physicians instead of forensic physicians are costs and lack of information on forensic services. Reports provided by treating physicians are criticized by the police for being illegible, incomprehensible, and lacking information on aspects which are of importance for the legal procedure. In short, the legal position of victims could be strengthened by requesting physical examinations from forensic physicians instead from treating physicians. A major obstacle to change is a lack of funding. Furthermore, forensic services for victims of domestic violence in the Netherlands could be improved if victims could access forensic services without referral of the police.

De Gedragscode Verwerking Persoonsgegevens Financiële Instellingen is onlangs gewijzigd. Deze wijzigingen betreffen met name de verwerking van persoonsgegevens betreffende de gezondheid en zijn derhalve bijzonder relevant in het kader van de verwerking van medische informatie in de personenschadepraktijk. De auteur gaat in deze bijdrage in op de belangrijkste wijzigingen met betrekking tot de verwerking van medische informatie. Deze wijzigingen roepen een aantal fundamentele vragen en onduidelijkheden op (die deels overigens ook al onder de oude versie van de Gedragscode bestonden). Dit betreft onder andere de vraag welke personen aan verzekeraarszijde de medische informatie van het letselschadeslachtoffer mogen inzien en wat de juridische grondslag daarvoor is.

Een collectief actiemechanisme dat zich in het bijzonder richt tegen onredelijke algemene voorwaarden is geregeld in Afdeling 6.5.3 BW (Algemene voorwaarden), in het bijzonder in de art. 6:240-243 BW. De Afdeling geeft regels voor de mogelijkheid dat bedingen in algemene voorwaarden op vordering van belangenorganisaties, waaronder consumentenorganisaties door een bijzondere rechter onredelijk bezwarend worden verklaard. In deze bijdrage een overzicht van haar toepassing door exclusief bevoegde rechter, Hof Den Haag.

‘Informal economy’ is a controversial concept defined in many different ways. This is reflected in the amount of synonyms, such as shadow economy, parallel economy, hidden economy, black economy etcetera. On the international level the concept of the informal sector was first used in 1972 by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in its report on a mission to Kenya. The popular view of informal sector activities was that they are primarily those of petty traders, street hawkers, shoeshine boys and other groups ‘underemployed’ on the streets of the big towns. The evidence presented in the report suggested that the bulk of employment in the informal sector, far from being only marginally productive, is economically efficient and profit-making, though small in scale. The informal sector is formed by the coping behaviour of individuals and families in economic environment where earning opportunities are scarce, or where regulation is too complex. The informal sector can also be a product of rational behaviour of entrepreneurs wishing to escape state regulations. There is a relation between welfare (GDP per capita) and relative size of the informal sector. Richer countries have relatively a smaller informal sector. However, government policies and attitudes are important as well. The relative size of the informal sector depends, among other factors, on the ‘regulatory capacity’ and ‘regulatory intent’ of governments. There is little known about the relation between informal and criminal activities. The informal economy seems to be a permanent feature of both high, middle and low income countries. Due to the actual economic crisis, people are pushed from the formal to informal economy. Rapid urbanisation is a factor as well. While the problem of size measuring is not insignificant, most observers agree that the informal economy is large and growing and will be an enduring feature of the economy of mega-cities.

This article describes the developments in jurisprudence on human trafficking in sectors other than the sex industry. In October 2009, the Supreme Court for the first time ruled in a case about human trafficking outside the sex industry. Whereas the number of cases before the Supreme Court ruling was limited, with only a few convictions for this type of exploitation, and with differences in the way courts interpreted the legal definition, this has changed tremendously after this ruling. The Supreme Court, in the case about exploitation in a Chinese restaurant, gave a very clear interpretation on the elements ‘intention of exploitation’ and the means ‘abuse of a vulnerable position’. Following the Supreme Court ruling, the number of cases has increased, as well as the number of convictions for this type of exploitation. Among these cases are also cases of criminal exploitation. It is not completely clear yet what type of behaviour falls within the scope of criminal exploitation.

The last decade the wearing of face hiding clothes has come up as a rather new phenomenon in the Netherlands and surrounding countries. Although not that many people wear them, a rather wide aversion exists against this phenomenon and is directed especially against the Islamic burqa. A rather intensive public and political debat is going on concerning the allowance of those clothes. In different countries, among which the Netherlands, France and Belgium, the legislator is drafting laws which aim to forbid the wearing of these clothes. This article gives an overview of the debate on this issue in especially the aforementioned countries and reflects upon it, with a special focus on the freedom of belief and religion.

De regels van stelplicht en bewijslast, het arrest B.Olifiers waarin wordt geoordeeld dat de bewijslast van arbeidsvermogensschade bij de benadeelde ligt, de toepassing van de vergelijkingshypothese, de tegemoetkomingen van de benadeelde bij het leveren van bewijs en het feit dat ons medische verleden als gevolg van de dossierplicht van de arts is gedocumenteerd, moeten worden meegewogen in de patiëntenkaartdiscussie. Beschouwing van genoemde factoren leidt tot de conclusie dat het (eerst) de benadeelde zelf is die, wanneer geconfronteerd met de vraag inzage te geven in zijn patiëntenkaart, zijn belang bij het bewijzen van zijn arbeidsvermogensschadeclaim zou moeten afwegen tegen zijn belang bij privacy.

The complexity of the relationship between democracy and modern constitutionalism is revealed by treating democracy as an incomplete ideal. This refers both to the empirical incompleteness of democracy as unable to supply its own terms of application – the internal dimension – and to the normative incompleteness of democracy as guide to good government – the external dimension. Constitutionalism is a necessary response to democratic incompleteness – seeking to realize (the internal dimension) and to supplement and qualify democracy (the external dimension). How democratic incompleteness manifests itself, and how constitutionalism responds to incompleteness evolves and alters, revealing the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy as iterative. The paper concentrates on the iteration emerging from the current globalizing wave. The fact that states are no longer the exclusive sites of democratic authority compounds democratic incompleteness and complicates how constitutionalism responds. Nevertheless, the key role of constitutionalism in addressing the double incompleteness of democracy persists under globalization. This continuity reflects how the deep moral order of political modernity, in particular the emphasis on individualism, equality, collective agency and progress, remains constant while its institutional architecture, including the forms of its commitment to democracy, evolves. Constitutionalism, itself both a basic orientation and a set of design principles for that architecture, remains a necessary support for and supplement to democracy. Yet post-national constitutionalism, even more than its state-centred predecessor, remains contingent upon non-democratic considerations, so reinforcing constitutionalism’s normative and sociological vulnerability. This conclusion challenges two opposing understandings of the constitutionalism of the global age – that which indicts global constitutionalism because of its weakened democratic credentials and that which assumes that these weakened democratic credentials pose no problem for post-national constitutionalism, which may instead thrive through a heightened emphasis on non-democratic values.