The aim of the research project was determining the size and the nature of the domestic violence in the Netherlands. The project consists of four studies: the first estimates the size of domestic violence, the second is a victim study and the third an offender study. The article is based upon the fourth study, the overarching synthesis which integrates and cross validates (by triangulation) the main results of these three studies. Every year at least 200,000 victims and about 110,000 suspected offenders are involved in severe domestic violence. Most victims are women (60%). This is a substantially lower share than a former study showed (84%). Most offenders are men (83%). In 65% of the cases the violence is aimed at the (ex-)partner. Offenders are often victims as well and vice versa. 20% of the domestic violence is reported to the police. In 1997 this was 12%. 70% of the prosecuted offenders got into trouble with the police before. 30% of this particular segment of domestic violence offenders commit another violent crime or a serious traffic offence within two years.

Homicides that take place in the family generally lead to shock and incomprehension in society at large. Even though in recent years the number of homicides in the Netherlands has decreased, domestic homicides still claim approximately sixty victims per year. This article aims to describe the nature and incidence of domestic homicide in the Netherlands by making use of both epidemiological data as well as detailed analyses of case reports of domestic homicides. In doing so, several types of domestic homicides are distinguished: intimate partner homicide, child homicide, parent and sibling homicide, multiple family homicide and finally, domestic homicide followed by suicide. The findings are discussed and put into perspective.

White-collar crime is mostly committed by men. It remains to be seen if this will stay this way. Increasing numbers of women succeed in attaining management positions in organizations. Could we therefore expect an increase in female white-collar crime?Criminological theories on female crime and on white-collar crime lead to contradicting hypotheses.Research on white-collar and organizational crime predominantly produces a situational hypothesis explanation according to which we could expect that the rise of women in organizational hierarchies will also bring more female white-collar crime.Research on female delinquency might lead to an opposite gender-difference hypothesis that would predict less white-collar crime, because they have a lesser tendency to show risky behavior.In this article, both assumptions will be elaborated for further research, against the background of possible gender bias in the relation between women and white-collar crime.

Over 700 students judged fictitious descriptions of court cases, in which the gender of the offender was systematically varied, as well as a number of aspects pertinent to theories that explain disparities in sentencing between females and males. The results show that females indeed received shorter sentences than males, and that this difference could be attributed to the fact that male student-judges gave women shorter sentences and differential sentencing for violent crimes. We found mixed support for the chivalry as well as for the perceptual shorthand theory. More research is needed, in more realistic settings, to explain gender differences in sentencing.

Rape drugs (or drink spiking) discourse reflects gender stereotypes in a much more differentiated way than previous studies suppose. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of news items and online discussions proved stereotypes of ideal female victims and male perpetrators to be most prominent in news media. Postings to online bulletin boards were more skeptical about the alleged victims’ innocence and truthfulness. Studies in this area that focus on news media and institutional discourse overestimate the predominance of the ideal victim stereotype. In order to correct this bias, the authors urge criminologists to be more attentive to the relevance and power of informal crime stories and discussions, particularly those appearing in social media.

Two explanations can be found for the unequal geographical concentrations of avoidance behaviour: (1) the demographic composition of residential areas, and (2) the social and structural contextual effects of residential areas. Different studies all over the world have shown that women report more fear of crime than men. In this article we study contextual as well as individual determinants of avoidance behaviour for men and women separately to gain a better insight in the explanation of individual differences in avoidance behaviour. The theoretical framework of this study is derived from the collective efficacy theory. In the present study a contextual model was tested on a 2009 survey of 2,080 residents from 40 municipalities in Flanders (Belgium), by using block-wise multilevel analyses on data from the Social Cohesion Indicators in Flanders Survey (SCIF-survey), the Security Monitor and the registered crime statistics. The results indicate that economic disadvantage in the residential area increases the risk on avoidance behaviour both for men and women, because these areas often have high disorder and violent crime rates. With regard to the social ecology of crime this study shows that more research is needed on the differences in contextual effects of structural area characteristics on avoidance behaviour.

In the present study, the B-SAFER was coded for 146 files of spousal assault cases from the Dutch probation service. The aim of the study was twofold: (1) identifying subtypes of spousal assaulters and (2) examine the relationship between the subtypes found and the advice the probation officers gave to court. Four subtypes of assaulters were identified: family-only, generally violent/antisocial, low-level antisocial, and psychopathology. There was only a significant relationship between the subtypes and the advice on two of the ten advices. The type of advice showed a strong relationship with the region of the probation offices where the batterer was examined.

The Netherlands fire safety regulations require certain types of buildings to have a direct connection between the building fire alarm system and the dispatch centre of the fire brigade. These automatic fire alarm systems are mandatory for example in premises where inhabitants such as small children or elderly people have limited self-evacuation capabilites in case of fire. These automatic fire alarms aim at saving lives by a faster response of the fire brigade. However, the fast majority of these automatic alarms are false. As a result these calls constitute a considerable and undesirable drain on the fire brigade resources. These calls cause unwanted direct costs (salaries) and indirect costs (road accidents due to fire brigade mobilisation) apart from the regular maintenance costs. Up to now no data is available for the costs and benefits of the system of automatic fire alarms. This article describes the results of a study of the automatic fire alarm system in the region Twente. The yearly social costs are calculated at about € 3 million. In order to calculate the benefits all incident reports from automatic fire alarms during a period of 29 months have been investigated. In this period no call form an automatic fire alarm system has occured in which the fire brigade had to deploy its resources for a live saving or evacuation action.

Dit artikel geeft een gestileerd overzicht van verschillende methoden voor economische regulering en bespreekt per methode de sterke en zwakke kanten. Het accent ligt daarbij op de energienetten. Het beoogt op toegankelijke wijze de algemene trends en de lessen uit de reguleringsgeschiedenis van de afgelopen decennia weer te geven en snijdt een aantal thema’s aan die momenteel spelen in de reguleringspraktijk. De auteurs betogen dat de regulering periodieke aanpassing behoeft in het licht van nieuwe maatschappelijke ontwikkelingen en de marktontwikkelingen in de gereguleerde sector. Vaak is hierbij de uitdaging meer ruimte te bieden aan maatwerk zonder de voordelen van moderne reguleringsvormen zoals maatstafconcurrentie prijs te geven.

Religion in the public domain has been a theme of remarkably current interest for a long time in our country as well as elsewhere in Europe. Not only in dialogue and debate, but primarily also via specific occasions, practices, and situations. One can think here of the position of the many redundant church buildings, the granting of permits for public religious manifestations, the ringing of church bells or public calls to prayer, the role (or abandonment of the role) of governments in rituals following disasters and accidents, the structure of citizenship rites and other forms of civic/civil ritual, the involvement of governments in religious celebrations in the public domain such as processions or Iftar meals, et cetera. This contribution explores the place of religion in the public domain in a specific way, i.e. on the basis of practices: its starting point lies in traceable manifestations of religion in our culture and society, in practices and rituals. After some conceptual orientation, this approach takes the form of a general panorama of religious-ritual presences and manifestations in that public domain and a further exploration of those via a model of so-called ritual-sacred fields.

Globalization has generated an increasing necessity of having to litigate in foreign courts and to enforce judgment in other countries. The diversity of procedural regimes represents an important obstacle for an efficient access to justice, which triggered a debate on the need for harmonization of civil procedure. These topics were explored in the conference organized by Dr. Xandra Kramer and Prof. dr. C.H. (Remco ) van Rhee on 17-18 June, 2010, under the auspices of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The instant conference report summarizes the arguments on the future of procedural harmonization in Europe, which seem to favor a horizontal approach to harmonization.

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.

This paper argues that Neil Walker’s analysis of the complementary relationship between democracy and constitutionalism remains one-sided. It focuses only on the incompleteness of democracy and the democracy-realizing function of constitutionalism rather than also taking into account the reverse complementary and constitution-realizing function of democracy. In this paper, I defend a fuller account that takes into account this mutual complementarity between democracy and constitutionalism. Such an alternative approach is consequential for Walker’s argument in two respects. In terms of the general analysis of the relationship between democracy and constitutionalism, my adjusted approach leads to a defence of the Habermasian thesis of the co-originality of constitutionalism and democracy which is too quickly dismissed by Walker himself. A fuller appreciation of this co-originality suggests that the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy is perhaps, after all, more singularly complementary (as opposed to being both complementary and oppositional) than Walker recognizes. In terms of the more specific analysis of the impact of globalization, this adjusted approach tilts the argument in favour of the critics of current practices of postnational constitutionalism. Without complementary postnational democratic structures, this constitutionalism remains problematic and potentially oppressive.

Evaluative studies show that victims are generally satisfied with their participation in a restorative intervention, even when concerning violent crime. Therefore, we don’t have to ask whether restorative justice should be offered to victims of crime, but how it should be offered. Using the victimological literature, we explore the appropriateness of two opposing models with regard to the offer in violent crime cases. The protective model, as for instance endorsed by victim support services in Québec, is based on the concern for the protection of vulnerable victims. The proactive model, as inscribed in the 2005 law on the general offer of mediation in Belgium, is based on the informed consent principle. Both models respect the needs of victims, while ranking these needs differently. The available empirical and theoretical observations on the subject do not unilaterally support or reject either model. We, therefore, present a complementary, albeit theoretical model, i.e. the integration of the invitation to a restorative intervention within victim support services.

Discussions in the movement of restorative justice about the fundamental question, whether its interventions are alternatives to punishment or alternative punishments, have become repetitive and seem to be in a dead end. The author reviews the arguments against the background of the ‘last resort’ principle in Husak’s work. Husak distinguishes between last resort in terms of sentencing and last resort in terms of criminalization. Since the restorative justice movement does not fundamentally reject the primary criminalisations, but accepts the definitions of certain forms of conduct as crime, it merely strives to offer alternatives to punishments that would otherwise be imposed. If protagonists of restorative justice want to avoid this, they should consider an abolitionist option to strive for decriminalization.

How can the social environment of a prison be accurately assessed? Why is it important to measure? How should the prison experience be represented in empirical research? How do we capture distinctions between prisons, which can be good or bad in so many different ways? There is considerable consensus about the inadequacy of narrow and selective performance measures, such as hours spent in purposeful activity or serious assaults, in representing prison quality. The difficulties are both methodological and conceptual. This paper will outline one attempt to address these questions in England and Wales. Based on a series of studies aimed at identifying and measuring aspects of prison life that ‘matter most’, prisoners describe stark differences in the moral and emotional climates of prisons serving apparently similar functions. The ‘differences that matter’ are in the domain of interpersonal relationships and treatment. A developmental programme of empirical research on the quality of life in prison suggests that (a) some prisons are more survivable than others and (b) important differences in identifiable aspects of prison quality exist and may be related to outcomes. These findings have implications for our understanding of the meaning of terms like ‘inhuman and degrading’ treatment as well as for our uses and expectations of the prison.

Voor zorgprogramma’s in de tbs-sector ontbreekt vooralsnog de evidence base, een empirische onderbouwing van wat werkt bij wie onder welke omstandigheden. Doel van dit artikel is te schetsen hoe zo’n evidence base tot stand kan komen.Ten eerste kunnen in een quasi-experimenteel design interventies worden geëvalueerd met behulp van Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM). Daarnaast zijn studies met een waarlijk experimenteel design (Randomised Clinical Trials of RCT’s en single case-studies) een noodzakelijke aanvulling. Ten slotte wordt responsiviteitsonderzoek aanbevolen, dat zich richt op interne (behandelinggerelateerde) en externe (patiëntgerelateerde) factoren die samenhangen met een gunstige behandeluitkomst.

My current research concerns contemporary judicial practices in Tunisia. I focus on what I call ‘delicate fields of law’, such as domestic violence, unmarried cohabitation, children born out of wedlock, virginity, abortion, etc. Such topics are delicate in any given society, as they are related to a fundamental ‘symbolic order’ (Françoise Héritier). Because of their sensitive character, the legislation concerning these topics is generally characterized by vague and open norms, leaving much interpretational freedom to judges. My research examines how Tunisian judges deal with these discretionary powers.
I conducted fieldwork in Tunis for a period of fourteen months (2008-2009), when I collected court decisions, attended court hearings and interviewed judges, lawyers and litigants. To treat these empirical data, I developed a non-culturalist approach that is both praxiological and ethnomethodological.
My research is praxiological as I treat legal practice as an object of investigation in itself (en tant que tel, Dupret), instead of using legal practice as a medium to study society (‘mirror thesis’, Tamanaha). This means that I describe how Tunisian judges apply open norms in delicate fields of law, without interpreting from a meta-level why judges apply the law in one way or another. However, this does not mean that my study remains merely descriptive. For the interpretation of what judges do, I follow the ethnomethodological approach.

This article compares two studies on the compliance with judicial decisions and friendly settlements in Dutch civil court procedures. A new study (Eshuis 2009) finds a higher rate of compliance, which can largely be attributed to the selection of cases. The older study (Van Koppen & Malsch 1991) included a high number of default judgments, which are associated with a low level of compliance, while friendly settlements – associated with a high level of compliance – were excluded. The new study finds full compliance rates of 31% for default judgments, 74% for judgments in defended cases and 85% for friendly settlements. The high compliance with friendly settlements suggests these settlements are ‘better’ outcomes; however, the difference in compliance can well be explained by selection effects. Interviews reveal that many friendly settlements are not the harmonious solutions one might expect.
The new study finds no solid relation between compliance and procedural or distributive justice. In two relevant ways the conditions in the ‘real life’ judicial procedure are different from those in experimental research in which such relations are found. First, a large part of the non-compliance is caused by an inability of parties to comply. These participants may find the procedure and outcome fully ‘just’, but still won’t comply. Second, for those who can comply, there is no free choice on whether to comply or not. There are quite effective means of enforcement for such cases. So, those who can comply will, even if the procedure and its outcome are experienced as fully ‘unjust’.
The first part of the title of the article is a comment on Van Koppen and Malsch’s earlier research. They concluded that winning in court often was a Pyrrhic victory, and the loser would win after all. In the interviews however, few of those who do not comply were found to fit the image of a ‘winner’. The sad conclusion is that in judicial procedures winners and losers do not come in the same numbers; after all, it produces far more losers than winners.