Intimate partner homicide (IPH) constitutes one of the most prevalent types of homicide. This study aims to assess the nature and prevalence of intimate partner homicide in the Netherlands in the period 2009-2014. In doing so, we make use of police data, court data, and media articles. Findings show that IPH occurs 29 times per year, resulting in a victimization rate of 0.20 per 100,000, similar to other Western-European countries. Our results further show a decline in IPH in the last years. IPH in the Netherlands mostly occurs in heterosexual relationships, and involves male perpetrators and female victims. Finally, we reflect on possible causes for the decline of this type of homicide.

Besproken wordt allereerst het algemene functioneren van de WMO, daarna zoomt het artikel in op het functioneren van de wet ten aanzien van de in de derde evaluatie onderscheiden deelthema’s: de reikwijdte van de wet; het informed consent-vereiste; het functioneren van de toetsingscommissies (CCMO en METC’s); de proefpersonenverzekering en het toezicht op de naleving van de wet. Vervolgens wordt aangegeven welke aanbevelingen het meeste prioriteit hebben en wordt ingegaan op de toekomstbestendigheid van de WMO.

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.

The security landscape has changed rapidly. New or revived threats have emerged, such as terrorism and cybercrime, bringing new or revived fears and anxieties as well. Actors in security policy feel a need to address these fears, but do not know how. Can the criminological subdiscipline of fear of crime studies provide the knowledge and understanding that is needed? A quick scan of the state of the art in this research domain, gives two reasons why it cannot: (1) fear of crime studies have yielded much knowledge on operationalization, measurement and determinants of fear of crime, but far less in mechanisms, trends, effects and influenceability, whereas insight in the latter issues is what is mostly needed in security policy; and (2) fear of crime studies are still mainly focused on the ‘traditional’ fear of crime, while fear of new crimes and threats remains under-researched. A shift of focus in fear of crime studies is urgently needed.

In a recent research study entitled Encountering ‘The Other’: Victim Offender Dialogue in Serious Crime the impact and outcomes for victims/survivors of meeting with the prisoner participants who had caused them harm were examined. In the vast majority of those cases, organised within the context of the Victim Offender Mediation Program (VOMP), forgiveness was offered by victims and received by offenders. This research, utilizing a qualitative multiple case study method, examined twenty-five randomly selected cases referred for victim/offender mediation over a 10-year period, in which victims/survivors, following a period of preparation, had participated in at least one day-long dialogue with their offenders facilitated by trained personnel. This article addresses only one of the research questions posited in this study, namely, the ways in which apology and forgiveness played a part in those dialogues and in the experience of the participants following their mutual encounters. It is argued that granting forgiveness can have great power in its effects when experienced by the participants.

Women are less likely to commit criminal acts than men. This gender gap appears to be particularly pronounced in white-collar crime. This systematic literature review examines existing theories, such as the situational hypothesis and the ‘gendered theory of focal concerns’ and evaluates to what extent they find support in empiricism. The results seem to offer the most support to the ‘gendered theory of focal concerns’. This nourishes the hypothesis that with an increase of women at positions in the upper tiers of the company ladder a decrease in the prevalence of white-collar crime can be expected. However, it is also possible that the explanation of corporate crime does not lie in a lack of femininity, but in a lack of gender diversity. Furthermore, limited access to informal criminal networks, the ‘old boys networks’, seems to play an important role in the gender gap of white-collar crime.

This article studies the development in the prison system over the period 1837-2016 in the Netherlands. It describes trends in three characteristics of the Dutch prison system: (a) the number of prisoners, (b) the number of cells, and (c) the inflow of persons from the free society. The findings are twofold. On the one hand – when examining absolute numbers – the article shows that three distinct periods can be distinguished: a period of 140 years with low stable numbers (1837-1975), four decades in which the numbers tripled (1975-2005), and a subsequent decade where the numbers halved (2005-2016). On the other hand – when examining relative numbers, i.e. per 100.000 inhabitants, and thus controlling for the growth in population – the article displays that developments in the prison system in the Netherlands between 1837-2016 can best be characterized by a long-term continuous decrease in detention.

In deze bijdrage beantwoorden de auteurs de vraag of het wenselijk is om de (algemene) gedragsnormen die onder meer voortvloeien uit de jurisprudentie in Boek 2 BW te codificeren. Voor de beantwoording van deze vraag zullen onder meer de gedragsnormen uit de Companies Act 2006 aan de orde komen.

In deze bijdrage staat de auteur stil bij het nieuwe erfrecht en het oplossen van erfrechtgeschillen, en in het bijzonder bij de complexe structuur van het nieuwe erfrecht, de positie van de langstlevende echtgenoot en de positie van de rechter bij erfenisconflicten.

De Kroniek wetgeving gezondheidsrecht geeft de lezer een overzicht van de ontwikkelingen op het gebied van Nederlandse wetgeving in het gezondheidsrecht. De selectie van wetgeving is gemaakt met behulp van de zoekmachine op de website van de Eerste Kamer, en behelst aanhangige en aangenomen wetsvoorstellen van 1 januari 2016 t/m 1 juni 2018 van de ministeries van VWS en VenJ, en consultaties van beide ministeries.

De ex-antewetgevingstoetsing heeft sinds 1990 onder invloed van met name het streven naar vermindering en vereenvoudiging van regelgeving een hoge vlucht genomen. Het lijkt er echter op dat juist op het punt van deregulering en alternatieven voor wetgeving de meerwaarde ervan de afgelopen decennia beperkt is gebleven, mede omdat het toetsingsproces te veel gericht is op het vinden van consensus in plaats van het organiseren van kritiek en tegenspraak. Deze bijdrage stelt voor om een andere weg in te slaan, waarin meer nadruk ligt op procedurevoorschriften, afstandelijker toetsing en een meer systematische koppeling van ex-ante- en ex-postevaluatie.

The last decades have shown a tendency in which tasks are transferred from the judge to other authorities, such as the police and public prosecutor, administrative bodies, administrative procedures, or private parties. The central question in this article is whether these authorities can really replace the court. A comparison is made between legal proceedings and procedures for other authorities on the following aspects: truth finding, openness and legal protection of the (vulnerable) citizen. The author also discusses a recent legislative proposal for an own budget for the Judiciary, which aims to strengthen the independence of the judge towards the two other state powers. It is argued that the courts should be also accessible in the case of relatively small offenses and for vulnerable citizens.

Under Article 13b (1) of the Dutch Opium Act, the mayor is authorized to impose an order under administrative coercion when drugs are sold, delivered, supplied or present in houses or premises This much-discussed article, also cited as the ‘Damocles Law’, gives the mayor the power to close drug shelters even before the suspect’s guilt has been established in legal proceedings. It is not necessary to show that the interests of public policy are at stake. Moreover, the means of defense against the closure are very limited. The author argues that the current application of Article 13b is exclusively punitive in nature, whereby in case of criminal prosecution, there is also a violation of the ne bis in idem principle.

This paper looks at the number of administrative sanctions for minor offences since 2005. Administrative sanction can be divided into two categories: restorative sanctions and punitive sanctions. Information is limited and dispersed. The number of offences handled by welfare agencies has decreased with 21% in the period 2005-2016. In the same period the number of administrative sanctions for traffic offences imposed by the police/public prosecutor have decreased with 14% (mainly originating from automated traffic cameras). Also administrative sanctions imposed by supervisory financial agencies have decreased with 58%. For some organisations the observation period is a shorter. In the period 2011-2016 the number of administrative sanctions for traffic offences imposed by municipalities has increased with 41% and the number of administrative sanctions imposed by supervisory non-financial agencies have decreased with 47%. There is no information available on administrative sanctions for tax fraud.

In the United States, the term disproportionate minority contact (DMC) is used to refer to the disproportionate number of minority youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system. Statistics on DMC in the United States put the issue on the political agenda and measures have been taken to reduce the inequality. In the Netherlands, there are some studies on the representation of ethnic minority groups in suspect statistics, but data regarding all ethnic groups at various stages of the juvenile justice chain are lacking. Due to this lack of information, DMC is not mentioned in Dutch research literature and is not a political issue. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to explore whether DMC existed in the Netherlands and whether elements of the US policy could be applied to the Dutch situation. To investigate this, the likelihood (odds ratio (OR)) was calculated for young people with a migration background to be registered and held as a suspect, to participate in an alternative punishment program (Halt) and their likelihood of incarceration. It turned out that the OR for young people with a non-Western migration background to be registered as a suspect was more than three times as high, with an OR of 5 or higher for some ethnic groups. The chances of a Halt-settlement were much lower for young people with a non-Western background. The odds of ending up in a youth prison was over six times higher for youngsters with a non-Western background compared to their Dutch native peers. For young people of Caribbean and Moroccan origin the likelihood was more than ten times higher. These results showed that DMC is present at all examined stages in the Dutch juvenile justice chain. The large overrepresentation of young people with a migration background (especially of Moroccan and Caribbean origin) shows that further research is needed in order to develop programs to reduce DMC. To establish this, it is important to register the ethnic origin of the individuals at all stages of the juvenile justice chain.

This article examines whether samples obtained through offline and online modes, within the context of juvenile delinquency research, differ from one another, when in principle the same population of youths could be reached. Youths participating through a computer-assisted web interviewing mode (CAWI) report less delinquent behaviour, fewer risk factors for delinquency, and exhibit a lower prevalence in police registration, compared to youths participating through a mixed computer-assisted personal interviewing and computer-assisted self-interviewing mode (CAPI/CASI).