Intimate partner violence (IPV) changed from a private problem to a public concern over the last decades. It has become subject of various discourses in different domains. In the social sciences the gender-based discriminatory nature of IPV is contested by some researchers who claim a gender equality in IPV. They call for a gender-neutral approach to IPV as a family problem, de-contextualized from gender-based inequalities. In the Netherlands this degendering is reflected in current policy discourse. However, in the international legal human rights domain, IPV is unequivocally considered to be an issue that affects women disproportionately as a form of women's discrimination that is the result of unequal power relations. Both international binding human rights law and recent ruling of the ECHR impose binding duties to acknowledge this. This article addresses the paradox that is reflected in these two positions and how to get beyond it.

The author advises the protagonists of restorative justice to become less paradigmatic and more pragmatic in their approach of criminal justice and victims needs and interests. The offer of a restorative procedure is not suitable for all victims, nor for all thinkable moments after the event of a crime. Tailoring is needed to make each victim the best offer, and the utility of restorative justice is important, but limited. The author believes that much of the restorative justice literature is aiming at proving the superiority of restorative justice practices above any other type of intervention or service, and he feels that this is partly why restorative justice has not been well received in the Netherlands. A piecemeal implementation of mediation and conferencing in the sphere of criminal justice might be served by being less paradigmatic.

In this article, an ongoing Flemish qualitative research on life histories and criminal careers of women in prison is discussed. We conducted autobiographical interviews with 40 female prisoners aged between 20 and 69 years. Considering our target group, we didn’t always succeed in conducting an autobiographical interview. In practice we often conducted a classic open in-depth interview. By means of file analysis, we reconstituted the criminal career of every interviewed woman. Thanks to the retrospective approach we could reveal a diversity of trajectories. We identified three pathways: (1) youth offenders, (2) early adult-onset offenders and (3) late adult-onset offenders. Remarkably, quite a lot of women are late starters. Three risk factors – to a greater or lesser extent – play a role in these pathways: a problematic educational situation in childhood, drugs and negative love affairs.

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.

Het Europese Hof van Justitie heeft opnieuw beslist dat juridisch advies van de advocaat in dienstbetrekking niet geprivilegieerd is. Dit commentaar is zeer kritisch over de motivering van die beslissing.

In this article the significance and impact on Europe and The Netherlands of the European Probation Rules are discussed. As opposed to Gerard de Jonge the author contends that the Rules are also important to and have impact on the Dutch situation. The CEP, The European Organisation for Probation will undertake several activities to assist the member states in implementing the Rules and will contribute to a future revision of the present Rules.

Recently, the punishment order by the prosecutor (article 257a Code of Criminal Procedure) and the leave to appeal system (article 410a Code of Criminal Procedure) have been adopted in Dutch criminal procedural law. Both legal measures have major consequences for the way in which minor criminal offences are dealt with. Viewing both these efficiency-promoting measures from their mutual interconnection, the question rises whether, in the settlement of these minor offences, a full process that actually does justice to all interests involved, may still be spoken of. It is suggested in this contribution that this question requires a more subtanstial revision and reassessment of the enforcement system with regards to minor offences, whereby decriminalisation may also play a pertinent role.

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.

Consumer fraud seems to be widespread, yet little research is devoted to understanding why certain social groups are more vulnerable to this type of victimization than others. The present paper deals with internet consumer fraud victimization, and uses an explanatory model that combines insights from self control theory and routine activity theory. The results from large-scale victimization survey data among the Dutch general population (N=6,201) reveal that people with low self-control run substantially higher victimization risk, as well as people performing ‘risky’ routine activities, such as online shopping and participation in online forums. Though a minority share of the self-control-victimization link is indirect – because people with low self-control are more involved in risk-enhancing routine activities – a large direct effect on internet fraud victimization remains. This suggests that, within similar situations, people with poor impulse control respond differently to deceptive online commercial offers.

De wijziging van het Statuut die vormt geeft aan de nieuwe verhoudingen binnen het Koninkrijk en alle daarmee verband houdende wetgeving, is op 10 oktober 2010 in werking getreden. De nieuwe verhoudingen zijn gebaseerd op de referenda die op de eilanden zijn gehouden tussen 2000 en 2004 en de afspraken die sinds die tijd tussen de betrokken partijen zijn gemaakt. Met name de twee slotverklaringen van 2006 zijn voor de uitwerking in wetgeving een belangrijke leidraad geweest.

De wetgever is geen persoon maar een procedure. Dit staatsrechtelijke adagium is zowel correct als onvolledig. Niet duidelijk wordt immers wat voor rol personen zinvol kunnen hebben in de wetsgang als procedure. Om dit aspect naar voren te brengen wordt het adagium omgedraaid. De wetgever die geen procedure is maar een persoon komen we onder andere tegen in de literatuur. Aan de hand van een lezing van Italo Calvino’s roman De onzichtbare steden wordt de relatie tussen de wetgever en de adviseur beschreven en doemt een beeld op van een ideale, zij het onzichtbare wetgever.

Pan European Organisation for Personal Injury Lawyers (PEOPIL) werd opgericht in 1997. Zij heeft zich onder andere ten doel gesteld op Europees niveau op te komen voor onder andere het recht op schadevergoeding en toegang tot het recht. PEOPIL organiseert regelmatig seminars en jaarlijks een congres. In juni van dit jaar vond het jaarcongres plaats in Genève, waar de fundamentele rechten in de personenschadepraktijk centraal stonden. In deze bijdrage wordt verslag gedaan van de lezingen die tijdens het congres werden gegeven.

Op 16 augustus 2010 heeft de NMa haar nieuwe Werkwijze analoog en digitaal rechercheren (hierna ‘Werkwijze’ ) gepubliceerd. Na publicatie van de Werkwijze is een tweetal artikelen verschenen waarin mededingingsadvocaten hun visie geven op de Werkwijze. In een eerder naschrift hebben medewerkers van de NMa een nadere toelichting gegeven op de toepassing van de Werkwijze in de praktijk. In reactie op het hieraan voorafgaande artikel van Knapen en Elkerbout willen wij ingaan op enkele door Knapen en Elkerbout bij de Werkwijze geplaatste kanttekeningen. Knapen en Elkerbout gaan, nadat zij een beschrijving hebben gegeven van de Werkwijze, vooral in op de verenigbaarheid van het digitale onderzoek met artikel 5:13 Awb, alsmede op de in de Werkwijze opgenomen bescherming van ‘legal professional privilege’. In dit naschrift willen wij dan ook ingaan op deze twee onderwerpen, waarbij wij de achtergronden nader willen toelichten van enkele keuzes die bij de totstandkoming van de Werkwijze zijn gemaakt.

De ruimtelijke sturingsfilosofie en het ruimtelijk juridisch instrumentarium maken het mogelijk om duurzaam ruimtegebruik binnen Nederland te realiseren. Voor duurzaam gebruik van ruimte die de Nederlandse grens overschrijdt, geldt dit niet. De betrokken staten c.q. overheden bezitten op dit gebied geen grensoverschrijdende rechtsmacht en de Europese Unie is niet bevoegd om de ruimtelijke ordening in en/of tussen de lidstaten te regelen. Duurzaam ruimtegebruik in de grensstreek vraagt om een grensoverschrijdende ruimtelijke visie en om grensoverschrijdende besluitvorming over de inrichting en het gebruik van de ruimte. Als hiervoor geen geschikte juridische instrumenten kunnen worden gevonden, dan zou de Europese Unie net als bij het Europees milieubeleid meer bevoegdheden moeten krijgen tot het (indirect) beïnvloeden van de ruimtelijke ordening tussen de lidstaten.

Various developments since 1960 have lead to a legalization of care, especially the call for individual rights, emancipation, international treaties, the transformation of private problems to public issues and the diminishing authority of professionals. This legalization has important social consequences. Effects are both direct and indirect, positive and negative. The ‘rights revolution’ has gone too far and leads to unrealistic expectations of what law can do. Therefore a down-to-earth and empirical informed perspective on the relation between law and care is of great importance.

The ‘Bureau Jeugdzorg’ is the gatekeeper in the field of youth care policy. From its start the Bureau has faced a difficult combination of empathy and social control. The individual youth was entitled to ‘a right on care’, which in practice was frustrated by long waiting lists. The mental health professionals also resisted the central role of the Bureau. So, soon after its inception Bureau Jeugdzorg is already in jeopardy. It is unlikely that the new political initiatives in this field will improve the legal protection of minors.

Care, self determination and law in child psychiatry is a difficult combination. Three problems arise here: Bureau Jeugdzorg does not have a good working relationship with the doctors, bad coordination between professionals, and finally an unwarranted trust in protection within the family. It is argued that a ‘duty of special care’ for professionals might help. This should prevail over the right of self determination. A second improvement might be a ‘criterion of necessity’ that may overrule a lack of cooperation by the minor.