This article reports briefly on research into the relationship between Twitter use by community police officers and citizens’ perceived safety. To this end, multiple relevant determinants of safety perceptions were included in the study: assessment of objective safety, perceptions of quality of life and social capital, risk perception and opinion on the police. The use of Twitter proved to have a modest, yet significant impact: followers on Twitter report a lower assessment of objective safety and a more positive opinion on the police. No direct, significant relation was found between the use of Twitter by the neighbourhood police officer and citizens’ perceived safety.

Living in a multicultural environment may be accompanied with an increased fear of crime. Residents may become alienated in a very diverse environment and withdraw themselves in their own social world. This ‘hunkering down’ may ensue feelings of unsafety. However, social scientists have done hardly any research on whether citizens who live in a multicultural environment in Western Europe actually feel more unsafe. This study seeks to contribute to fill in this knowledge gap. The authors’ research reveals that residents are more likely to feel unsafe in neighborhoods with a high degree of ethnic diversity. The aforementioned correlation is the most noticeable in neighborhoods consisting of people on medium incomes.

In the 19th century in many Western states, the close relationship between Church and State came to an end and the Roman Catholic Church developed into a major and active player on social and educational level in society separate from the State.
This was due, on the one hand, to the constitutional changes in the Western states from the end of the 18th century, which led to the gradual introduction of the formal principle of separation of Church and State. On the other hand, it was a result of the search for a new position of the Roman Catholic Church in society that also influenced the theological reflection of the Church on society.
The ecclesiastical reflection on the ideal relationship between Church and State took shape in the course of this process in the Ius Publicum Ecclesiasticum. The ecclesiastical view on the relationship between believers/citizens, society and State simultaneously took shape in Catholic social doctrine, which today still offers a model for modern society. In Catholic social doctrine, the believer/citizen is the connecting element between Church and State in a secular society. The ‘state doctrine’ of the Catholic Church is presented in Catholic social doctrine as an ideal image of the democratic constitutional state in which man is central and forms the central link between Church, society and secular State.

In deze bijdrage staat de vraag centraal of, en zo ja wanneer, een evenementenvergunning kan worden aangemerkt als een schaarse vergunning, en – bij een bevestigend antwoord op die vraag – hoe die schaarse evenementenvergunning dan moet worden verleend met inachtneming van het gelijkheidsbeginsel.

In het arrest Amersfoort en Visser spreekt het Hof van Justitie zich uit over vier kwesties: de verhouding tussen de Dienstenrichtlijn en het kader van de telecomrichtlijnen, de toepasselijkheid van de Dienstenrichtlijn in zuiver interne situaties, de kwalificatie van detailhandel in goederen als ‘dienst’ in de zin van de Dienstenrichtlijn, en de status van (in elk geval één) bestemmingsplan binnen het kader van de Dienstenrichtlijn. Het Hof van Justitie schept in drie van de vier gevallen duidelijkheid over de afbakening van de werkingssfeer van de richtlijn. In het vierde geval, namelijk de kwalificatie van detailhandel in goederen, levert de uitspraak geen echte verduidelijking op, maar voorziet zij wel in een aantal complicaties.
HvJ 30 januari 2018, gevoegde zaken C-360/15 en C-321/15, College van Burgemeester en Wethouders van de gemeente Amersfoort/X BV en Visser Vastgoed Beleggingen BV/Raad van de gemeente Appingedam, ECLI:EU:C:2018:44.

In deze bijdrage bespreekt de auteur het Interbestuurlijk Programma voor het waterbeheer, dat op 14 februari 2018 is gepresenteerd.

In the ‘participation society’ it is expected that citizens actively contribute to solving societal problems, including health care, immigration and security issues. A somewhat similar responsibilisation culture is visible in prisons, where prisoners are held responsible for their own rehabilitation. This article problematizes the way in which prisoners’ agency is promoted in Dutch prisons, considering prisoners’ constrained agency and the normative expectations that are tied to the approach. This critique is advanced through discussion of the promotion/demotion system that has been used in Dutch prisons since 2014. This system, comparable to the Incentives and Earned Privileges system in England and Wales, espouses both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ behavioural norms. The soft behavioural norms reflect a citizenship ideal that extends beyond compliance with the law. It is argued that these normative expectations tied to agency have a limiting effect on prisoners’ autonomy. This article argues in favour of a shift from the citizenship ideal to an autonomy ideal, which applies the principle of minimum restrictions. Furthermore, access to education, reintegration courses and contact with family should be treated as a right, rather than a privilege, in order to maximise autonomy and minimise the harmful effects of imprisonment.

In het eerste deel van het artikel gaat de auteur in op de rol van de agent in zaken die dienen bij het Hof van Justitie van de EU. In het tweede deel worden de vragen besproken die centraal hebben gestaan in de zaak Visser Vastgoed Beleggingen. Aan de hand daarvan worden de posities die Nederland, Duitsland en de Commissie hebben ingenomen toegelicht.

Auteur bespreekt de antwoorden van het Hof, analyseert de gevolgen en beziet tot welke nieuwe juridische vraagstukken deze (kunnen) leiden. Daarbij richt zij zich met name op de gevolgen voor de systematiek van de vrijheden op de interne markt en de doorwerking hiervan in het nationale recht.

Auteur gaat in op de jurisprudentie van de Afdeling bestuursrechtspraak van de Raad van State over het (niet) van toepassing zijn van de Dienstenrichtlijn bij ruimtelijke besluiten, zowel de jurisprudentie over overweging 9 als de uitspraken over de vraag of detailhandel onder de Dienstenrichtlijn valt. Hij gaat tevens in op de mogelijke gevolgen voor het bestemminsplan van de gemeente Appingedam.

Auteurs geven aan dat de ruimtelijke regulering van kleinhandelsactiviteiten in het Vlaamse Gewest twee niveaus kent: (1) het vergunningenniveau, hetgeen betekent dat voor het uitvoeren van kleinhandelsactiviteiten, boven bepaalde drempels, een omgevingsvergunning is vereist; (2) het ruimtelijk planniveau, hetgeen betekent dat ruimtelijke ordeningsplannen beperkingen op kleinhandel kunnen bevatten om ruimtelijke redenen of met het oog op de verwezenlijking van de doelstellingen van het integraal handelsvestigingsbeleid. Zij gaan in op het Decreet van 15 juli 2016 betreffende het integraal handelsvestigingsbeleid en op de mogelijke gevolgen van het Hofarrest voor Vlaamse besluitvorming ten aanzien van plannen en vergunningen.

In this article the author reports on an ethnographic research conducted on the Collective Shopping Ban, a measure taken in the Netherlands in an effort to make shopkeepers co-responsible for maintaining safety and security. By describing the practice of the Collective Shopping Ban in The Hague, he investigates how the involved shopkeepers are dealing with offenses like theft, nuisance, intimidation, and vandalism. The author describes the sociological background of banning orders and what the banning of people means in terms of purification of public space.

In the Netherlands, the number of criminal record screenings performed each year skyrocketed to more than one million. Yet, empirical evidence on its effects has been largely absent. In this article the author addresses parts of the findings of her PhD research, which aimed to fill this gap, by providing a subjective perspective of how having a criminal record impacts the process of re-entry into society, particularly into the labor market, for young adults. It is based on the lived experiences of 31 young adults having a criminal record who were followed during their process of reintegration into the labor market. The vivid, real-life stories of young adults’ strategies of dealing with the stigma of a criminal record, and how this subsequently influences their position in the labor market, highlight the counterproductive effects of increasingly widespread criminal record screening. They provide evidence that many young adults adopt self-exclusion as a strategy for avoiding rejection and exclusion.