Deterrence versus procedural justice. Successfully reducing reoffending
An important aim of imposing sanctions is preventing people who have already committed crimes from breaking the law again. However, worldwide, the figures for reoffending are high. Usually, the criminal law system assumes that criminals will reoffend less if they perceive sanctions as (more) severe and if they feel they have been treated (more) fairly […]
Peter van der Laan appointed as interim director NSCR
Peter van der Laan studied special education at Leiden University. In 1991, he gained his doctorate for a thesis entitled Experimenteren met alternatieve sancties voor jeugdigen (Experimenting with alternative sanctions for juveniles). For many years, he has carried out research in the area of child protection, juvenile deliquency and (youth) criminal law. From 1981 to […]
Jihadist radicalization in problematic youth groups
The investigation was prompted by a unique case study in Delft, where several young people from a problematic youth group traveled to Syria in early 2013. For the first time, researchers have reconstructed what exactly happened and how radicalization arose within this youth group. A problematic family background, a lack of perspective in a deprived […]
The sector study focused on three questions: What has happened in the closed (judicial) youth institutions since 1945? How did the violence take place? And how was the violence experienced by ex-pupils and what consequences did this have for their later life? Researchers Van der Laan, Eichelsheim, Dirkse, Bruggeman and Asscher conducted archival research, interviewed […]
Pressure during investigative interview increases risk of wrong sentencing
Miscarriages of justice, such as the Schiedam Park murder case, occur in the Netherlands too. This case led to further research and recommendations to structure the investigative interview differently, and to report it better. In England and Wales, famous cases of miscarriages of justice are the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and the Maguire Seven. […]
For fifty years, psychologists have assumed a bystander effect: in an emergency situation the crowd looks, but nobody intervenes. The higher the number of bystanders, the more anonymous we feel and the smaller the chance that somebody intervenes. ‘But that is not at all what we found’, says cultural anthropologist Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard, who led […]
Reputation influences collaboration within cryptomarket for drugs
Cryptomarkets are online “marketplaces” that are only accessible using encryption software, which hides the identity and location of users. This coding technology makes it difficult for law enforcers to tackle these marketplaces. The markets can be found in the Dark Web, the part of the Internet not indexed by search engines. Trust problem due to […]
Cybercrime has serious consequences for its victims
Online crimes include offences such as hacking into a database containing personal details or using a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to paralyse a bank’s website. ‘Conventional’ offences can also be committed online, however. Examples of this would be online fraud, stalking, making threats, and distributing images of child sexual abuse. Online offences differ […]
In the Netherlands, victims of crime have long held so-called ‘victims’ rights’. EU guidelines setting minimum standards for these rights, and for the support and protection of the victims of criminal offences, were also laid down in 2017. The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security, which has invested in the funding and training of victim […]
Adolescent offenders’ current whereabouts predict locations of their future crimes
Recent advances in the analysis of human mobility have confirmed that human spatial behavior follows remarkably regular and predictable daily and weekly cycles, that can be explained by two simple mechanisms. The first mechanism is preferential return, the propensity to return to locations frequently visited before. The second mechanism is spatial exploration, the tendency to […]
Terrorism suspect often experiences adversity as injustice
The report entitled “Terrorism, Adversity and Identity” provides insight into possible reasons for involvement in terrorism and/or violent extremism of an Islamic but also left-wing or right-wing radical nature. This can concern preparing an attack, calls to violence or travelling to fight in Syria or Iraq. For the study, interviews were held with professionals who work with […]
Are young people encouraged by their criminal brother or sister?
And, ‘how do I survive my criminal sibling?’ ‘The research did indeed reveal that brothers influence each other’s criminal behaviour and sisters likewise. However, this does not apply for mixed brother/sister pairs. There is also a difference between early and late adolescence. In early adolescence, mainly sisters appear to influence each other’s delinquent behaviour, whereas […]
