I. Weijers

Requirements for communication in the courtroom: A comparative perspective on the youth court in England/Wales and The Netherlands

The UK Government’s White Paper ‘No More Excuses’ (Home Office, 1997) set out plans for changing the culture of the Youth Court. This article focuses on one crucial aspect of the reform plans: the idea that magistrates need to engage with young offenders and their families. After a theoretical analysis of the foundation and justification for a special youth court, the article presents some findings concerning differences between the communication cultures of English/Welsh and Dutch Youth Courts. The article concludes by questioning the basic assumption of the White Paper, that fundamental changes could be realised without structural reform.

Criminal Responsibility of Adolescents: Youth As Junior Citizenship

Children below a certain age are too young to be held responsible for breaking the law. There is wide consensus about this principle, which is spelled out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in other international standards, such as the Beijing Rules for juvenile justice. The Convention calls for nations to establish a minimum age “below which children shall be presumed not to have the capacity to infringe the penal law”. And since the beginning of this year (2008) it sets 12 as the minimum age, explicitly. Worldwide, though, there is continuing debate about the appropriate age. This debate too often tends to arise when exceptional cases involving children who have committed heinous offences are given prominent coverage by the media. Sometimes this has far-reaching consequences.

Transfer of Minors to the Criminal Court in Europe: Belgium and the Netherlands

The transfer of youths from the juvenile to the criminal court was common in large parts of the world throughout the past century. Right from the start, judicial waiver mechanisms to remove very serious cases from the juvenile court formed part of the juvenile justice system in many countries. It was and is still viewed by many as a ‘safety valve’ for the juvenile courts, and for the juvenile justice system as a whole. The idea was that by offering this safety valve for extremely serious cases that happen only rarely, the special treatment of the mass of young offenders could be saved. There has been little if any research into these mechanisms until recently, when, alarmed by reports from the United States, some researchers in Western Europe started to investigate this phenomenon.

Punishment and Upbringing: Considerations for an educative justification of punishment

Punishment seems taboo both in modern education and in theory. In so far as philosophers of education engage with this problem they follow the pattern of the philosophy of law: consequentialism or deontology. This article starts from another perspective. Its starting point is that punishment in education and upbringing must be seen as an interactive moral process. Two conditions are considered which have to be fulfilled before one can speak of educative punishment: punishment assumes a relationship based both on trust and on authority. The connection between punishment, guilt and shame is analysed and a number of ideas on punishment are set against the back drop of moral development. The outcome of these considerations is a substantial restriction of the occasions in upbringing where punishment can make sense in educative terms .

Zestig jaar kinder- en jeugdpsychiatrie in Nederland (1920-1980)

SamenvattingDit artikel biedt een terugblik op zestig jaar kinder- en jeugdpsychiatrie in ons land. Het beschrijft de ontwikkeling van het vak vanaf het ontstaan in de jaren twintig tot de crisisachtige situatie rond 1980 en het zoekt naar een verklaring voor het ontstaan van die laatste situatie. Er worden drie periodes onderscheiden: na een exploratiefase voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog volgt een fase waarin het vak zich echt begint te vestigen, gevolgd door een periode waarin de positie van de kinder- en jeugdpsychiatrie enerzijds verder wordt geconsolideerd, anderzijds verzwakt. Een sleutelrol speelt daarbij het relativeren van de medische grondslag van het vak.