This special issue focuses on the role of sex/gender in Dutch and Belgian criminological and penological research and theory. This introductory article draws the history of thought and research within Dutch-language criminology and explores international developments, in particular the influence of feminist critique on theory and research.This framework serves the positioning of the other contributions, on the one hand research exploring the differences in crime between men and women and on the other hand empirical and theoretical articles focusing on (the social construction of) gender. Finally some innovative methodological findings will be discussed, also with regard to future criminological research.

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.

Gender, in criminological research, often refers to women. Although ‘masculinities’ and crime have been intertwined internationally for more than two decades, this isn’t so for Dutch research. Based on this international critique, this article introduces the masculinities approach in Dutch penology. Prisons are generally considered as hypermasculine settings (Toch, 1998), but this hypothesis is seldom explored within a gender framework. Nevertheless, ‘doing masculinity’ is an important coping strategy for male prisoners (Jewkes, 2005). This gap is tackled on two levels: (1) the conceptualization of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and (2) a critical, masculinity-oriented analysis of the existing knowledge on prison life, prison culture and prison hierarchy. It aims to tackle prison masculinity stereotypes, since traditional penal insights aren’t necessarily valid from a gender point of view (Evans & Wallace, 2008). Therefore, we conclude by analyzing the value of masculinity studies for penology.

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.

Marriage is considered to be an important life-course event that can lead to desistance from a criminal career. However, desistance is far less obvious when offenders marry criminal partners. The aim of this study is to investigate what impact a spouse’s criminal career at the time of marriage has on persistence in crime. To analyze the relationship between marriage, spousal criminality, and criminal offending, we use a unique longitudinal dataset: the Criminal Career and Life-course Study. This is the first study that contains longitudinal data on the criminal careers of both offenders and their partners. Results show that the frequency of criminal conviction is lower if men marry non-criminal spouses. However, if men marry criminal spouses, their conviction rate does not differ from those who remain single. For women, on the other hand, marriage is related to lower conviction frequencies no matter the spouse’s criminal history.

Little is known about children when the mothers are imprisoned. Especially in the Netherlands, hardly any empirical research has been conducted regarding the whereabouts and psychological well-being of children with incarcerated mothers. We visited and collected data from four female prisons. Via the mothers’ consent we contacted the children and their caregivers. First, we conducted a semi-structured interview about the wellbeing of the child during the separation through detention of mother and child. Second, we asked mothers and caregivers to complete checklists of behavioral problems. The caretaking situation turned out to be diverse. Generally, the children experienced both internalizing and externalizing behavioural problems and specific problems associated with the detention of their mothers. The well-being of the children seems to be partially related with the incarceration of the mother. However, it also turned out that quite a few risk factors such as a broken home and neglect is present for the child being raised. Results are discussed as well as some recommendations for future research.

Just over thirty years ago now, on 12^th January 1977 to be precise, Sir Anthony Bottoms presented his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Criminology at the University of Sheffield, UK. The full text of this almost prophetic Lecture was subsequently published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice and reached a much wider audience. One of its central themes was the emerging tendency within British criminal justice policy to treat really serious offenders in a significantly different manner from their less serious counterparts with whom a more lenient approach might be justified. This tendency he described as penal bifurcation.There were two reasons why such an apparently logical approach might be found exceptionable: the first relates to the general principal of treating like cases similarly, and the second that the practice was proposed on the basis of the relative extent of social risk that might be claimed to differentiate serious from less serious offending. Bifurcation in both of these forms is evident in the use within some jurisdictions of extended and indeterminate sentences for public protection, and in many respects also within parole release considerations.The central proposition in relation to bifurcation within this article is, however, of a somewhat different nature. Restorative justice places considerable reliance upon offenders accepting responsibility for their offences, showing remorse for the harm done to victims in the form of genuine apology, and then making reparation either to the victim(s) directly, or to victims of crime more generally. These principles apply equally to serious and less serious offenders, though the extent of reparation should logically be greater as the crime increases in gravity.In an era of widely increasing penal populations it is apparent that these escalations result from increased severity of sentencing on the one hand, and from wider use of custody and lower thresholds for imposing it on the other. Both forms of resort to custody in sentencing are increasingly justified on the basis of public protection, and to act otherwise is perceived (and often promoted in the media) as being ‘soft on crime’. Politicians anxious to retain electoral credibility do not wish to be labelled as soft on crime, and actively seek to avoid such accusations by supporting increasingly punitive measures against offenders.One of the reasons why restorative justice has attracted only limited acceptance in the world of adult criminal justice is that it is perceived as a less punitive response to offending than the more traditional retributive punishment mode or its ‘justice model’ desert-based counterpart. In the span of this article I shall attempt to describe how, with a respectable measure of bifurcation, a model of reparative and restorative justice can be presented as a viable and optimistic alternative to the penal politics of retributive punishment and social protection. That it might bring with it the potential for reduced use of custody will be left to the reader to decide.