The right to counsel of juveniles at the stage of police interrogations has gained significant attention since the Salduz ruling of the European Court on Human Rights in 2008. The legislative and policy developments that have taken place since then and that are still ongoing – both on a regional (European) and domestic (Dutch) level – reveal a shared belief that juvenile suspects must be awarded special protection in this phase of the criminal justice proceedings. This calls for a youth-specific approach as fundamentally different from the common approach for adults. At the same time, there seems to be ambivalence concerning the justification and concrete implications of such a youth-specific approach. This article aims to clarify the underlying rationale and significance of a youth specific approach to the right to counsel at the stage of police interrogations on the basis of an interdisciplinary analysis of European Court on Human Rights case law, international children’s rights standards and relevant developmental psychological insights. In addition, this article aims to position this right of juveniles in conflict with the law in the particular context of the Dutch juvenile justice system and provide concrete recommendations to the Dutch legislator.

This paper discusses the rise of a fundamental issue in Dutch criminal proceedings. The presence of a lawyer prior to and during police interrogations has for a long time been a matter open for debate in the Netherlands. Allowing legal assistance during and prior to police interrogations has been researched on several occasions in the previous century and the beginning of this century. In the Netherlands, one of the most important reasons for not admitting legal assistance was and is founded in the confident reliance on the professionalism and integrity of police officers and justice officials in dealing with the interests of suspects. However, after the Salduz case (ECHR 27 November 2008, Appl. No. 36391/02, Salduz v. Turkey), the Dutch government was compelled to draft legal provisions in order to facilitate legal assistance during and prior to police interrogations. The initial drafts still contained a hesitant approach on admitting the lawyer to the actual interrogation. The EU-Directive of November 2013 (Pb EU 2013, L249) set out further reaching standards compelling the Dutch government to create new drafts. In a ruling of April 2014, the Dutch Supreme Court (ECLI:NL:2014:770) argued that the judgements of the ECtHR were too casuistic to derive an absolute right to have a lawyer present during police interrogation. However, they urged the legislator to draft legislation on this matter and warned that its judgement in this could be altered in future caused by legal developments. The Dutch legislator already proposed new draft legislation in February. In this paper it is examined whether the provisions of the new drafts meet the standards as set out in the EU-Directive as well as by the ECtHR.

A substantial number of children are confronted with the detention of their mothers. Empirical research shows that these children’s well-being is seriously affected, although no study has been able to assess whether a mother’s detention as such causes long-term damage. On the basis of children’s interests, this article defends the principle that mothers who are actively involved in raising their children should not receive a prison sentence but an alternative punishment, unless continuing care is detrimental to the children or if the legal order or interests of society and its citizens would be disproportionally threatened. The article ends with several practical implications.

The Versailles Treaty (Art. 227) called for the prosecution of Wilhelm II, the German ex-Kaiser. Because of the refusal of the Dutch Government to surrender Wilhelm, a trial never took place. This paper tries to elaborate some questions concerning this possible trial. What was the background of the said Treaty paragraph? What would have happened when Wilhelm had been surrendered? Based on a report of a special committee to the peace conference, the possible indictment is discussed. The authors try to elaborate some thoughts for answering the question about Wilhelm’s criminal responsibility, especially as author of the war (‘ius ad bellum’) by starting an aggressive war and/or by violating the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg. Wilhelm’s possible responsibility for violations of the ‘ius in bello’ (laws and customs of war) in Belgium, France, and Poland and/or by ordering an unlimited submarine war is discussed as well. It is concluded that it would have been very difficult for the tribunal to have Wilhelm find criminal responsible for the indictment, except for the violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg. But then, the tribunal would have been obliged to answer fundamental questions about the command responsibility of Wilhelm. From a point of view of international criminal law, it is rather unfortunate that the unique opportunity for a ‘Prologue to Nuremberg’ was not realised, although a trial would not have made history take a different turn than it did in the twentieth century after the ‘Great War’.

Prison policy in Belgium and the Netherlands is changing rapidly. While Belgium struggles with a persisting prison overcrowding, the Netherlands strongly cuts back on the prison system and is closing an increasing number of prisons. This introductory article to a special issue on detention starts with a short outline of recent changes in Dutch and Belgian prison policy, focusing on developments in detention capacity and prison population. Subsequently we present an overview of empirical criminological research in the Netherlands and Belgium, situated within the international literature, with a specific focus on studies regarding life in detention and effects of detention on prisoners' lives and on their social environment. Finally, we reflect upon existing detention research in both countries, e.g. in terms of gaps in research topics and methodology, and discuss some future developments.

Male inmate subcultures can be described as highly gendered settings where power relationships are based on a hierarchical gender order. Cultural idealized forms of masculinity provide an important foundation for these hierarchical rankings. Notions of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities offer a valuable theoretical framework for explaining the power relations and pecking order among male inmates. Drawing on observations and qualitative semi-structured interviews with prisoners in a medium-size Belgian male prison, this article analyses the various intermale dominance hierarchies among inmates and the discourses in which they are embedded: type of offence, social conduct, individual characteristics of the prisoners and the possession of different forms of capital. This article both stresses and nuances the importance of offence categories by explaining how hierarchical status can be enhanced through social performance and acting in accordance with the prison code. Additionally, it describes how hierarchical arrangements operate in the daily practice of prison life through spatial norms.

Employment is believed to function as a ‘turning point’ for released offenders. Several theories state that employment can diminish recidivism, and offer different mechanisms to connect employment and crime, such as job stability and job quality. This study examines the effect of employment and employment characteristics on recidivism among Dutch ex-prisoners. Although recidivism risks are high among this group, longitudinal research on the effect of employment on recidivism risks is scarce. We based our analyses on longitudinal data of the Prison Project (n=842) and found that job stability reduces the risk of recidivism. The results indicate that not the guidance to a job, or a high-quality job, but the guidance to stable employment could help to reduce crime rates among this high-risk offender group.

Not only detainees, but also their spouses can experience negative consequences of imprisonment. Even though these negative consequences can be far-reaching, research in this area is scarce. This paper researches if detention causes female partners of male detainees in the Netherlands to experience negative reactions from family, friends and neighbours and if this causes changes in their social contacts. This study used longitudinal data from the Prison Project on 119 partners of detainees. Results show that many partners of detainees receive negative reactions from their network members. When partners of detainees experience negative reactions from their family in law, friends or neighbours, their contacts with those groups decrease. When partners of detainees experience negative reactions from their friends, their contact with their family increases.

The detention experiences of male criminal foreign national prisoners without legal residence receive little attention in penological literature. A qualitative study amongst 30 prisoners with and 16 prisoners without legal residence in the penitentiary institution Tilburg shows that contacts with the social network and the preparation of the reintegration in society are (more) complicated for foreign national prisoners without legal residence. Besides, communication with the staff is more difficult for this group. These factors have negative impact on their detention experiences. The results show that both deprivation and importation theory apply to foreign national prisoners without legal residence. However, importation aspects – especially the lack of legal residence – may substantially and systematically increase the deprivation and result in additional exclusion and isolation mechanisms for this particular group.

This paper explores the hypothesis that the process of rupture in Brazilian graffiti writer’s subculture resulting in different groups - pichadores, pixadores and grafiteiros - took place in two different, though complementary, stages. The first stage is the commodification of graffiti by successive media campaigns and its penal control by the state. The second stage - which may be considered as a side effect of the first one - consists of the emergence of a new transgressive pixação movement. Instead of merely writing or tagging their signatures and messages on the walls of the city, they claim the freedom of usage of the urban space and contest the importance that property has in the late modernity context.

I argue that a compelling way to articulate what is wrong with racial profiling in policing is to view racial profiling as a violation of the presumption of innocence. I discuss the communicative nature of the presumption of innocence as an expression of social trust and a protection against the social condemnation of being undeservingly investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for committing a crime. I argue that, given its communicative dimension, failures to extend the presumption of innocence are an expression of disrespect. I take the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy as an example of racial profiling and argue that its use of race-based forms of suspicion as reasons for making stops is a violation of the presumption of innocence. I maintain that this systemic failure to extend the presumption of innocence to profiled groups reveals the essentially disrespectful nature of the NYPD policy.

Both in punishment theory and sentencing practices, the subjective sentence severity is an important yet neglected area of research. This paper aims to explain differences between inmates in their subjective severity of imprisonment and to contemplate these against the background of important sentencing goals and sentencing principles. Two models commonly used to explain adjustment to prison life were applied: the import and deprivation model. Data from the Prison Project, collected among Dutch inmates staying in pretrial detention, reveal that both import and deprivation characteristics are related to the subjective severity of imprisonment. No support is found for a moderation effect of personality.

Sentencing research focusing solely on unsuspended imprisonment does no justice to the practice of sentencing, where many other punishment types are imposed – often conjunctly. To investigate to what extent this imprisonment bias might have caused incomplete and thereby biased findings, we compare the effects of offender characteristics for imprisonment to those for other sanction types, as well as to a model combining sanction types. Findings suggest that the effects of offender characteristics differ per sanction type. When combinations of sanction types are taken into account, some offender characteristics do no longer have mitigating or aggravating effects, or the effects even inverted. Hence, future sentencing research should aim to include all sentences imposed.