The Act introducing the Institution for Persistent Offenders Committal Order (ISD Order) took effect on 1 October 2004. The origins of the ISD Order are in safety policy. The order had a strong focus on imprisonment of persistent offenders. It can be seen as an exponent of the risk-oriented attitude towards safety, which has been predominant in recent years. At the start treatment of persistent offenders was of secundary importance and was only available for those who were motivated. But the ISD measure has had to deal with major problems in practice. The imprisoned ISD population proved to be one with complex problems like addiction, psychiatric illnesses and sometimes low intellectual abilities. The ISD institutions are ill-equipped for handling these people. The problems led to a slightly different attitude which is more oriented towards resocialization. Improvements are going on now, a process facilitated by a considerably improved co-operation between agencies around the ISD.

There is a natural alliance between the ambitions of prison chaplaincy and those of restorative justice in the sense that in both approaches (coping with) responsibility and guilt by offenders are important issues and mechanisms at the same time. Both share a relational concept of crime, consider the evil deed as occasion to start a dialogue to examine responsibility, stress the importance of process and bi-lateral partiality with both the victim and the offender. Coping with guilt and making it productive requires that communication with the offender reaches the deeper and more intimate levels of giving meaning to the criminal offence committed, self, others, past and future. For this communication the context should be open and fundamentally loving in a Christian sense, leading the way to a liberation from guilt once it is thoroughly known and accepted. At that point guilt can be transformed into a constructive moral impetus in human relations.

This article focuses on the growing need internationally for accountability of the administration of justice. The CEPEJ report European judicial systems compares the judiciary in the member states of the Council of Europe showing how this justification takes place. Accounting for the administration of justice still involves a lot of attention for the input and the procedures, while accountability for the results is most important. New methods for measuring the experiences of users of the administration of justice are developing. This fits a trend in which hierarchic and internal accountability, for instance through appeal procedures, are becoming less important in favour of horizontal accountability towards stakeholders, colleagues and users of state services.

De bijzondere voorwaarde in het strafrecht verheugt zich in de belangstelling van de huidige beleidsmakers. Dat is wel eens anders geweest. In dit artikel wordt ingegaan op de geschiedenis van de bijzondere voorwaarde in het strafrecht, waarbij in het bijzonder wordt stilgestaan bij de voorwaardelijke veroordeling en de voorwaardelijke invrijheidstelling. De geschiedenis van de bijzondere voorwaarde noopt tot het temperen van de verwachtingen van haar gedragsbeïnvloedende werking, maar toont ook het belang van een goede uitvoeringspraktijk aan. Initiatieven om die uitvoeringspraktijk te verbeteren, verdienen ondersteuning. Enkele voorstellen worden gedaan voor het verbeteren van de effectiviteit van de bijzondere voorwaarde bij de voorwaardelijke veroordeling.

The contribution informs about some of the activities and the philosophy of Gevangenenzorg Nederland, a non-governmental organisation for the care for prisoners, member of the Prison Fellowship International. Holding a person responsible for his or her criminal conduct does not only mean punishment, but also individualizing the person as a person, with his or her own life, history and future. The stay in prison should help the person to return into society as a citizen with an equal status, rehabilitated by his punishment. But social reality is far removed from this ideal. The volunteers of Gevangenenzorg Nederland try to bring closer a form or charitable justice, focussing not so much on the risks that a person may be perceived to pose, but much more on the healthy and socially positive talents of the detainee, against the background of the ‘good lives model’ of Ward and Maruna (2007). The article describes the workshop offered to detainees ‘Speaking of guilt, remorse, victims and society’, wherein participants can investigate and discover in a systematic way their own degree and type of guilt and responsibilities and the avenues that might be available to express remorse and to make amends with victims and society. Family members or other significant others are called in in the stage of concluding the course with presenting ‘restorative gestures’ of any personal kind. Care after leaving the prison is offered and planned, hoping to facilitate a fully rehabilitated reintegration into society.

In een redactioneel artikel geeft de redactie een toelichting op het tijdschriftnummer in kwestie.

In this article the author summarizes the main arguments for and notions of a maximalist conception of restorative justice, as developed in his latest book: Restorative Justice, Self-interest and Responsible Citizenship.While using a rather limited, goal-oriented definition of RJ as ‘an option for doing justice after the occurrence of an offence that is primarily oriented towards repairing the individual, relational and social harm caused by that offence’, Walgrave aims at developing a full blown alternative for penal justice. In the restorative system it should also be possible to impose sanctions, when deliberative processes of mediation and conferencing are not feasible, although the latter have, of course, the greatest chance of achieving restoration.The sanctions of restorative justice are not punishments, because any intention to impose suffering is lacking at the side of the sentencing authorities. But RJ can be seen as a form of inverted retributivism, in the sense that the offender pays his dues back to the victim and the society, to a degree that has to be acceptable to all involved, and seeking a fair amount of proportionality that does not impose unrealistic or unfair obligations. Principles of due process of law should be adapted to fit the restorative process. The high degree of participation in restorative justice serves democracy and so should criminology, by studying the ways in which social capital can be increased.The concept of ‘common self-interest’ is explained as the fundamental understanding that self-interests are best served by serving the common self-interest in as far as that provides full possibilities of deployment to everyone.

Recidivism after a community service is compared to recidivism after imprisonment in a matched sample of adult Dutch offenders. We use longitudinal, official record data to compare recidivism over a maximum of eight years. ‘Propensity score matching’ and ‘matching by variable’ are used to take selection-effects into account. After a community service offenders turn out to recidivate less than after a prison sanction.

How many criminal suspects become victims themselves? A high correlation of offence and victimisation is to be expected because of a marked similarity between offenders and victims. We assume that offenders strongly fulfil the lifestyle and environment criteria, associated with an increased risk of victimisation. By studying self-reported victimisation data from 39.978 respondents, matched to registered criminal suspects, we verified our assumption that criminal suspects are at considerably higher risk of being victims. This correlation is especially high for crimes of violence and for people suspected of multiple crimes.

Wat betreft jongeren en de door henzelf gewenste uitoefening van seksualiteit moet een overheid schipperen tussen twee waarden: bescherming tegen misbruik en vrijheid tot ontplooiing. Voor het bestraffen van ontucht met instemming van jongeren tussen de twaalf en zestien jaar dienen die waarden te worden afgewogen. Bij een veronachtzaming van de kwetsbaardere positie van jongeren bestaat het risico dat hun onbevangenheid en gebrek aan weerstand door de oudere partner abusievelijk wordt aangezien voor weloverwogen instemming. Een al te nadrukkelijk accent op bescherming lijkt de deur echter open te zetten voor allerlei (ongewenste) inmenging van buitenaf. Daarbij moet worden gedacht aan allerhande persoonlijke motieven (wraak of jaloezie) en het algemene belang (de maatschappelijke zeden), die daarmee het bijzondere belang (integriteit van het slachtoffer) kunnen ondersneeuwen.

Jeugdinrichtingen proberen sinds hun ontstaan jongeren die een strafbaar feit gepleegd hebben, weer in het gareel te krijgen. In tegenstelling tot het strafrecht voor volwassenen staat bij minderjarigen het pedagogisch handelen centraal. Recedivecijfers maken echter duidelijk dat dit geen eenvoudige opgave is. Momenteel is de hoop gevestigd op erkende gedrags-cognitieve interventies die in algemene zin hun werkzaamheid bewezen hebben. Maar het opvoeden in een gesloten inrichting heeft specifieke kenmerken die, ruim veertig jaar geleden, door de socioloog Goffman werden beschreven. Deze specifieke kenmerken zijn nog steeds actueel. De vraag is of, ondanks de intenties om het gedrag van de jongeren in positieve zin te veranderen, het probleem niet besloten ligt in het systeem. Is opvoeden, met als doel dat de jongere niet in herhaling vervalt, wel mogelijk in een gesloten setting? In dit artikel wordt deze vraag verder uitgediept.

Rechters leggen straffen op. Maar in België worden gevangenisstraffen tot zes maanden vaak niet uitgevoerd. In de andere gevallen komt het gros van de veroordeelden voor strafeinde vrij. In welke mate hebben ze kennis van de strafuitvoering? En hoe gaan rechters hier mee om? Beïnvloedt een mogelijke vervroegde invrijheidstelling of niet-uitvoering van de straf hun strafbepaling? Gaan ze met andere woorden langere straffen opleggen om te compenseren voor deze niet – of gedeeltelijke uitvoering van de gevangenisstraf?Om deze vragen te beantwoorden lichten de auteurs eerst het (complexe) Belgische invrijheidsstellingsbeleid toe en wordt er stil gestaan bij de in 2007 opgerichte strafuitvoeringsrechtbanken. Vervolgens wordt op basis van survey-onderzoek, individuele en groepsinterviews met Belgische rechters hun visie op de strafuitvoering in kaart gebracht en de argumentaties met betrekking tot al dan niet compensatorisch gedrag besproken. Het gebruik van verschillende bevragingstechnieken zet de auteurs ook aan tot enkele methodologische reflecties omtrent de onderzoekbaarheid van dit vraagstuk.

In Western languages those affected by crime are universally labelled as the sacrificed ones. This label is inspired by the suffering of Jesus Christ and evokes images of helplessness and meekness. It acts as hidden justification for the marginal, self-effacing role of victims in criminal procedure and restorative justice. The author argues for deconstruction of the stereotypical victim label and the creation of more space in criminal procedure for victims as autonomous parties. In his view the recent innovation in Dutch law of a limited Victim Impact Statement still gives victims insufficient voice. He also argues for a reconceptualisation of restorative justice practices as a supplement to the criminal trial rather than as a substitute.

In a column a journal editor or an author expresses his or her opinion on a particular subject.

Research on magistrates’ penal attitudes has long been a blank spot in both the Netherlands and in Belgium. In the Netherlands, a theoretically integrated measurement instrument has been developed revealing the general structure of penal attitudes held by Dutch judges. It showed that the complex of penal attitudes is dominated by two independent perspectives: harsh treatment and social constructiveness. The latter perspective encompasses rehabilitation and restorative justice. Replicating the Dutch measurement instrument, penal attitudes of Belgian magistrates were recently examined. This article reports the results and compares them to earlier findings in the Netherlands. It is shown that, in contrast to Dutch magistrates’ penal attitudes, the structure of Belgian magistrates’ attitudes reveals an autonomous role for restorative justice. This finding and possible explanations are elaborated upon.

In an editorial article the editors supply a commentary on the topics covered in the journal.

Jan van Dijk reageert op de discussie naar aanleiding van zijn artikel De komende emancipatie van het slachtoffer.