Comparing the developments in the Netherlands with those in Belgium the authors find important differences relating to the questions pertinent to implementation. Experiments have also been done in the Netherlands and their evaluations showed positive results, but there were different models which were not clearly – or not at all – related to the traditional criminal justice process. They all were lacking the formal collaboration with the courts, that was seen in Belgium. There has been no form of central direction and no important influence from the academic world and the various projects have officially been replaced in 2006 by a national policy of implementing ‘victim-offendertalks’. These talks have their merits and are appreciated by victims and offenders, but they do not amount to mediation in a restorative style, since restorative agreements are not allowed to result. Nevertheless, there are a number of indications that restorative justice practices could still become recognized and accepted. Staff of the police, the public prosecutors office and judges are interested and new experiments are beginning. The new development of local ‘veiligheidshuizen’ (‘front offices for safety’) offers a promising setting for interagency co-operation and conferencing with citizens in trouble and conflict. The conferencing-model has gained broad acceptance in the context of juvenile care and may continue to inspire justice personnel. In process now is the foundation of a new restorative justice network, called ‘Restorative Justice Netherlands’.

The author, reflecting upon both Bouverne-De Bie & Roose and Walgrave, deplores to some degree the fact that the Journal for Restorative Justice, from its foundation, has narrowed its focus and scope by making it a priority to attempt to influence the criminal justice system. Most of the conflicts and troubles between citizens never reach the criminal agencies and are dealt with by other methods, such as methods of social work, without approaching the police. The potential scope for influencing conflict-behavior is therefore immensely greater outside the sphere of the criminal law.

Victim-offender-mediation started in Belgium as early as 1993 and nowadays the Belgium landscape shows a variety of restorative practices, including conferencing with juveniles and mediation with adult offenders, on the basis of a number of legal arrangements. Progress can still be made in quantitative terms and qualitatively by harmonizing the various legal instruments that are available. The diversionary mediation that is possible at the level of the public prosecutor differs in a number of ways from the mediation that can be offered in subsequent stages of the criminal procedure. A variety of motives and reasons explain the reception and growth of restorative practices, such as the desire to offer victims a better service and to improve the delivery of justice. The willingness to experiment and to collaborate between protagonists of restorative justice and the agencies of criminal justice, and the strong scientific support from the Catholic University of Leuven, are amongst the key factors that promoted the integration and consolidation of restorative practices in the legal system.

Blad responds to Groenhuijsen by showing how political decisions in the Netherlands, after successful experiments with restorative justice for juveniles and adults, were based on the belief that criminal justice would lose its punitive foundation and tenor when restorative justice practices would become integrated in the justice system. Criminal justice should not be about resolving conflicts between victims and offenders and the type of mediation, that could lead to an agreement as an important element to be considered in sentencing, was therefore rejected. In so far as restorative justice ideology took influence, it seems to have been a misconception of restorative justice as merely a new form of penal abolitionism. The fact that restorative justice does not deny the legitimacy of the provisions in the substantive criminal law and that all important restorative projects co-operate with criminal justice agencies was apparently ignored. Against the background of the dominant political culture of ‘punitive populism’ and intensified use of severe punishments it seems highly unlikely that abandoning the ambition to develop a restorative justice paradigm would further the implementation of restorative justice.

This special issue focuses on the role of sex/gender in Dutch and Belgian criminological and penological research and theory. This introductory article draws the history of thought and research within Dutch-language criminology and explores international developments, in particular the influence of feminist critique on theory and research.This framework serves the positioning of the other contributions, on the one hand research exploring the differences in crime between men and women and on the other hand empirical and theoretical articles focusing on (the social construction of) gender. Finally some innovative methodological findings will be discussed, also with regard to future criminological research.

In this article, an ongoing Flemish qualitative research on life histories and criminal careers of women in prison is discussed. We conducted autobiographical interviews with 40 female prisoners aged between 20 and 69 years. Considering our target group, we didn’t always succeed in conducting an autobiographical interview. In practice we often conducted a classic open in-depth interview. By means of file analysis, we reconstituted the criminal career of every interviewed woman. Thanks to the retrospective approach we could reveal a diversity of trajectories. We identified three pathways: (1) youth offenders, (2) early adult-onset offenders and (3) late adult-onset offenders. Remarkably, quite a lot of women are late starters. Three risk factors – to a greater or lesser extent – play a role in these pathways: a problematic educational situation in childhood, drugs and negative love affairs.

Gender, in criminological research, often refers to women. Although ‘masculinities’ and crime have been intertwined internationally for more than two decades, this isn’t so for Dutch research. Based on this international critique, this article introduces the masculinities approach in Dutch penology. Prisons are generally considered as hypermasculine settings (Toch, 1998), but this hypothesis is seldom explored within a gender framework. Nevertheless, ‘doing masculinity’ is an important coping strategy for male prisoners (Jewkes, 2005). This gap is tackled on two levels: (1) the conceptualization of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and (2) a critical, masculinity-oriented analysis of the existing knowledge on prison life, prison culture and prison hierarchy. It aims to tackle prison masculinity stereotypes, since traditional penal insights aren’t necessarily valid from a gender point of view (Evans & Wallace, 2008). Therefore, we conclude by analyzing the value of masculinity studies for penology.

Discussions in the movement of restorative justice about the fundamental question, whether its interventions are alternatives to punishment or alternative punishments, have become repetitive and seem to be in a dead end. The author reviews the arguments against the background of the ‘last resort’ principle in Husak’s work. Husak distinguishes between last resort in terms of sentencing and last resort in terms of criminalization. Since the restorative justice movement does not fundamentally reject the primary criminalisations, but accepts the definitions of certain forms of conduct as crime, it merely strives to offer alternatives to punishments that would otherwise be imposed. If protagonists of restorative justice want to avoid this, they should consider an abolitionist option to strive for decriminalization.

Legislation affects restorative justice in four ways: existing legislation may allow it, new laws may enable it, laws may limit it, or restorative justice may be the norm. Examples from different countries are given and specific questions about the relationship of restorative justice to the criminal justice system discussed. It is suggested that, broadly speaking, safeguards should be legislated and practice regulated by an independent body. It is concluded that restorative practices, have the potential to transform society’s response to harmful behaviour.

Marriage is considered to be an important life-course event that can lead to desistance from a criminal career. However, desistance is far less obvious when offenders marry criminal partners. The aim of this study is to investigate what impact a spouse’s criminal career at the time of marriage has on persistence in crime. To analyze the relationship between marriage, spousal criminality, and criminal offending, we use a unique longitudinal dataset: the Criminal Career and Life-course Study. This is the first study that contains longitudinal data on the criminal careers of both offenders and their partners. Results show that the frequency of criminal conviction is lower if men marry non-criminal spouses. However, if men marry criminal spouses, their conviction rate does not differ from those who remain single. For women, on the other hand, marriage is related to lower conviction frequencies no matter the spouse’s criminal history.

Due to immigration the Dutch have made a significant contribution to the development of New Zealand, especially in the field of juvenile justice and adoption. As for New Zealand’s Youth Justice Service, the introduction of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act in 1989 has been a landmark in New Zealand’s history of dealing with juvenile delinquency. While it was not designed as a restorative justice system, the current system is tuned towards restorative justice. Until then, New Zealand had a shameful history as far as the handling of juvenile delinquency is concerned. The Maori, whose youngsters were – and still are – overrepresented in juvenile statistics, heavily criticized this model, emphasizing the need to strengthen the bond between the (extended) family and the juvenile offender, as well as the need to provide for redress. In the same period, the United Nations Convention on Children’s Rights (UNCROC) was introduced (1989), the Act of 1989 paying tribute to the UNCROC. As the national juvenile justice system to some extent does not live up to the standards of the UNCROC, there remains room for improvement. However, black clouds gather over New Zealand’s juvenile justice system, for the present government has announced to be in favor of a punitive oriented policy; there is a call to get ‘tough on juvenile crime’. This policy, however, implies setting back the clock and endangers the current orientation on restorative justice, as well as the legal values set out by the UNCROC.

This contribution starts with an introduction of human rights, children’s rights and restorative justice. What are the links and differences between these concepts and how do they interrelate? An overview of human rights for children in international standards relevant to the discussion on juvenile justice, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and additional instruments, is given. It is examined how restorative justice fits in this framework.
Human rights are one of the main pillars of our modern society. General juvenile justice principles such as diversion, the use of detention only as a measure of last resort and focusing on re-integration give a clear basis for restorative justice practice. Recent international and European conventions, guidelines and recommendations dealing with juvenile justice explicitly recommend the use of restorative justice. It is actually seen as the main priority focus of the reaction to youth criminality. The Committee on the Rights of the Child declared in General Comment 10 that the best interests of the child imply that the traditional aims of criminal justice – repression and retribution – should make room for rehabilitation and reintegration. Today’s focus on youth delinquency should be a restorative one. But how to implement rather broad notions such as restorative justice in individual cases and to make them fulfil internationally accepted human rights standards. With the model of Mitchell and Moore it is explored how children’s rights (mainly article 40 and the main principles of the CRC) and restorative justice are connected and how they can use each other. The need is stressed and some tools are given to work towards a ‘rights based restorative justice’.

This article focuses on migration with criminal motives. Two specific groups are discussed, British migrants in the Netherlands and Dutch migrants in Spain. Little is written on criminal migration motives in combination with Western subjects. On the other hand, investigative authorities have first-hand knowledge on this matter. An analysis of 25 closed case files shows that within these two groups of migrants, some people are heavily involved in the international drugs trade. Although their numbers are small, their function is important. Through their actions it becomes possible for certain cities or areas to evolve into international criminal drug marketplaces. There are also some differences between British and Dutch criminals abroad. British criminals are often involved as brokers. They broker drugs for third parties in Great Britain. Their stay in the Netherlands seems temporarily. They do not invest in the economy or buy property. Conversely, Dutch criminals in Spain could be described as leaders of organized crime groups. They invest in Spain by buying companies and property.

Little is known about children when the mothers are imprisoned. Especially in the Netherlands, hardly any empirical research has been conducted regarding the whereabouts and psychological well-being of children with incarcerated mothers. We visited and collected data from four female prisons. Via the mothers’ consent we contacted the children and their caregivers. First, we conducted a semi-structured interview about the wellbeing of the child during the separation through detention of mother and child. Second, we asked mothers and caregivers to complete checklists of behavioral problems. The caretaking situation turned out to be diverse. Generally, the children experienced both internalizing and externalizing behavioural problems and specific problems associated with the detention of their mothers. The well-being of the children seems to be partially related with the incarceration of the mother. However, it also turned out that quite a few risk factors such as a broken home and neglect is present for the child being raised. Results are discussed as well as some recommendations for future research.

Just over thirty years ago now, on 12^th January 1977 to be precise, Sir Anthony Bottoms presented his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Criminology at the University of Sheffield, UK. The full text of this almost prophetic Lecture was subsequently published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice and reached a much wider audience. One of its central themes was the emerging tendency within British criminal justice policy to treat really serious offenders in a significantly different manner from their less serious counterparts with whom a more lenient approach might be justified. This tendency he described as penal bifurcation.There were two reasons why such an apparently logical approach might be found exceptionable: the first relates to the general principal of treating like cases similarly, and the second that the practice was proposed on the basis of the relative extent of social risk that might be claimed to differentiate serious from less serious offending. Bifurcation in both of these forms is evident in the use within some jurisdictions of extended and indeterminate sentences for public protection, and in many respects also within parole release considerations.The central proposition in relation to bifurcation within this article is, however, of a somewhat different nature. Restorative justice places considerable reliance upon offenders accepting responsibility for their offences, showing remorse for the harm done to victims in the form of genuine apology, and then making reparation either to the victim(s) directly, or to victims of crime more generally. These principles apply equally to serious and less serious offenders, though the extent of reparation should logically be greater as the crime increases in gravity.In an era of widely increasing penal populations it is apparent that these escalations result from increased severity of sentencing on the one hand, and from wider use of custody and lower thresholds for imposing it on the other. Both forms of resort to custody in sentencing are increasingly justified on the basis of public protection, and to act otherwise is perceived (and often promoted in the media) as being ‘soft on crime’. Politicians anxious to retain electoral credibility do not wish to be labelled as soft on crime, and actively seek to avoid such accusations by supporting increasingly punitive measures against offenders.One of the reasons why restorative justice has attracted only limited acceptance in the world of adult criminal justice is that it is perceived as a less punitive response to offending than the more traditional retributive punishment mode or its ‘justice model’ desert-based counterpart. In the span of this article I shall attempt to describe how, with a respectable measure of bifurcation, a model of reparative and restorative justice can be presented as a viable and optimistic alternative to the penal politics of retributive punishment and social protection. That it might bring with it the potential for reduced use of custody will be left to the reader to decide.