Miranda Boone

Judicial Rehabilitation in the Netherlands: Balancing between safety and privacy

This paper is part of a special edition on Judicial Rehabilitation, a topic that derived from Marunas work on rehabilitation and rehabilitation rituals. It addresses the possibility of such rituals in the Netherlands. It describes which data concerning criminal convictions can be stored, how long they may be preserved and which persons and organisations can get access to the criminal records. It also pays attention to the jobs and position for which a conduct certificate is needed and the conditions under which it can be issued. Conclusion of this analysis is that the stricter regulations concerning criminal records, the increase of jobs a conduct certificate is needed for and the stricter conditions under which it is issued, hinder the serious efforts that are made in prison and probation to reduce recidivism.

Community service in Belgium, the Netherlands, Scotland and Spain: A comparative perspective

Current criminological research is particularly interested in the question whether or not we are witnessing a punitive turn and it seems that Western democracies today punish differently than a few decades ago. The ‘new punitiveness’ literature (Pratt, et. al., 2005) and David Garland’s (2001) study on the culture of control have fuelled an ongoing debate and research on this question. There are however many ways to compare penal practices and measure punitiveness. Leading comparative research by Cavadino & Dignan (2006) for example relates variations in incarceration rates to contrasting kinds of political economy. However, punitiveness rankings vary substantially depending on the indicator used and ideally we have to take into account all of them to make sense of the assumed penal change. In this special issue we have focused on the use and implementation of community service and have focussed on its characteristics as a contemporary form of punishment. Through a detailed description of the different aspects of the rhetoric on and practice of community service, we aim to identify commonalities and local differences and attempt to understand and explain them. The question of increasing or decreasing punitiveness therefore is only one of our points of interest.

Only for Minor Offences: Community Service in the Netherlands

Community service for adults was introduced in the Netherlands in the first half of the 1980s as an alternative to custodial sentences. In 1989 it was accepted as a third formal sentence in the Penal Code for adults. Since that time the number of orders increased to 40.000 on a yearly basis. In general, the probation service has managed to deal successfully with this growth. It did have consequences, however for the involvement of the community and the degree of individualization and support. The initial object of decreasing imprisonment by offering an alternative has not been achieved. In terms of reducing recidivism, community service seems to be relatively successful, however.

What works for irregular migrants in the Netherlands

This contribution provides an overview of the extent to which rehabilitation instruments and opportunities are accessible for irregular migrants who are serving a criminal sanction in the Netherlands. It shows that irregular migrants are largely excluded from criminal sanctions that have rehabilitation as a central aim and from rehabilitation opportunities that are provided during the implementation of criminal sanctions. These findings raise questions concerning the legal legitimacy of largely excluding irregular migrants from rehabilitation opportunities and the way in which irregular migrants prepare themselves for their return to society in practice.

The highly reintegrative approach of electronic monitoring in the Netherlands

This contribution describes the way electronic monitoring (EM) is organized and implemented in the Netherlands. It will become clear that the situation in the Netherlands is characterized by, in particular, two features. The application of EM is highly interwoven with the Probation Service and its reintegrative objectives, a characteristic that dominates the organization and use of EM to a great extent. Paradoxically, EM is hardly used in the Netherlands as an autonomous (stand-alone) replacement for short prison sentences. The most straightforward explanation for this situation is that the Netherlands does not really need EM to replace prison capacity since its prison population already decreased drastically since 2005. A second explanation is that the intense involvement of the probation service in the enforcement of electronic monitoring has as a side-effect that these sanctions are not accepted as punitive sanctions, but fully framed into the rehabilitative perspective.

Dynamics between denial and moral panic: The identification of convicted sex offenders in the community

In this contribution the authors describe the main findings of a research study conducted in the Netherlands on the return of sex-offenders to the community. The study questioned how crisis situations can develop following the identification of a sex-offender in the community. The study consisted of an analysis of ten cases in which the return of a convicted sex offender to the community or the ‘discovery’ of a sex-offender in the community resulted in community unrest and attracted media attention. Interviews were conducted with professionals involved in supervising those individuals convicted for sexual offences as well as the individuals themselves. Contrary to the situation in both the United States and the United Kingdom, criminal records in the Netherlands − as in most of continental Europe − are predominantly seen as a private matter and are not made public to those outside the criminal justice system. The article also examines the role of the local Mayor who has a central role in managing the local negative reactions to return of those convicted of sexual offences back into the community in the Netherlands. The findings produced from the data are analysed applying a social construction approach that utilizes the concepts of ‘moral panic’ and denial. The authors found that the return of a those convicted of sexual offences can lead to a range of responses varying from anger and panic to secrecy and denial. Ultimately the authors found that greater transparency led to more positive outcomes in these cases.