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Insufficiently protected. Violence in youth care

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. […]

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 […]

The value of victim advocacy in practice

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 […]

Decreasing role of the judiciary: is replacing the judge possible and desirable?

Other bodies usually work faster than the judge and are cheaper as well. But do they do the job as well as the judge would? Are they just as independent, and do they offer just as much legal protection? The risks of devolving judicial tasks In the article entitled The decreasing role of the judiciary: […]

Once a thief, always a thief? A short video of the NSCR

Are criminals susceptible to improvement? NSCR researcher Arjan Blokland explains why confinement is not always the best solution. Director Catrien Bijleveld gives a cross-section of scientific research on the NSCR.

You cannot see whether a suspect is lying

During a hearing, the police would like to know whether a suspect is lying, and so they take careful note of a suspect’s behaviour. People often think that stuttering, looking away and fidgeting are signs that somebody is lying. However, these aspects are not connected. Certain other behaviours can be indicative of lying, such as […]

Who bothers to report cybercrime?

For this research, they used data from the Veiligheidsmonitor over a period of four years (2012-2015). A total of 127,413 offences were investigated, and it was ascertained whether the victims of the offences reported this to the police. More than 36,000 offences were forms of cybercrime, such as identity theft, consumer fraud or hacking. The […]

Expert meeting: victims within criminal trials

Tuesday 12 June | 10.00 AM – 5.00 PM | Forum 2 | Vrije Universiteit | De Boelelaan 1105 | Amsterdam | ACADEMIA MEETS PRACTICE Victims within Criminal Trials – Critical Domestic and International Approaches The expert meeting is free and includes lunch and drinks. Sign up here. In the recent decades, criminal justice systems […]

Victim support in a digitised society

There are already more victims from hacking each year than from bicycle theft Online criminality is a new and diffuse form of criminality. That is reason enough for the Ministry of Justice and Security to commission research into whether the victim support policy needs to be adjusted in this regard. Because what is the impact […]