On 8 January 2020, Jelmer Brouwer defended his thesis 'Detection, detention, deportation'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.P. van der Leun and Prof. M.A.H. van der Woude.

A quantitative study on the use of pre-trial detention of juveniles in The Netherlands.

People who are arrested on suspicion of preparing an attack are at risk of becoming radicalised either during or after their detention. Whether or not to arrest someone requires careful consideration. At the end of the prison sentence, it is important to provide effective supervision of the reintegration…

To what extent is the legislation and use of pre-trial detention of juveniles in the Netherlands in compliance with international children’s rights standards?

On 25 January 2018 Yannick van den Brink defended his doctoral thesis titled ‘Voorlopige hechtenis in het Nederlands jeugdstrafrecht’ (‘Pre-trial detention in the Dutch juvenile justice system’). The doctoral research is supervised by Professor Ton Liefaard and Professor Mariëlle Bruning.

The research conducted by Tilburg University and Leiden University on the relationship between aggression among prisoners and the strictness of the prison regime has received much attention in the national media.

On Monday, 27 November 2017 the report 'Pre-trial detention of juveniles in practice' has been published. The report is compiled by researchers from the departments of Child Law and Criminology of the Leiden University.

On 25 January 2018, at 16:15 hrs, Yannick van den Brink will defend his doctoral thesis titled ‘Voorlopige hechtenis in het Nederlands jeugdstrafrecht’ (‘Pre-trial detention in the Dutch juvenile justice system’) at the Academy Building of Leiden University. The doctoral research is supervised by Professor…

On behalf of the Dutch Research and Documentation Centre (WODC), Mark Klaassen and Peter Rodrigues, both from the Europa Institute, conducted research on the procedure of imposing immigration detention on foreign nationals who have to return to their country of origin.

On 6 March 2018, the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection, Mr. Dekker, responded to the Ph.D. dissertation ‘Voorlopige hechtenis in het Nederlandse jeugdstrafrecht’ (‘Pre-trial detention in the Dutch juvenile justice system’) in a Letter to Parliament.

The amici curiae brief was filed with the United States District Court for the Central District of California, on 28 January 2020.

The Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology conducts extensive research on imprisonment. Sending a person to prison is the most severe form of punishment that can be applied in the criminal justice systems of European countries. In most countries, the number of prisoners has risen in recent decades.…

On 27 January 2020, Dr Yannick van den Brink, Assistant Professor at the Department of Child Law, participated in a live webinar titled ‘Pre-Trial Detention of Children in India’.

On 20 May 2019, Dr Yannick van den Brink, Assistant Professor at the Department of Child Law, participated in a live webinar titled ‘Child Pre-trial Detention. A Global Movement to Reduce Length of Stay’, together with colleagues from the United States and Mexico.

On 25 October 2017, the current class of students of the advanced LL.M. programme International Children’s Rights visited juvenile detention center ‘De Hunnerberg’ in Nijmegen (the Netherlands).

The practice of the application of pre-trial detention in the Netherlands raises questions in light of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and must be adjusted.

On Thursday 12 January 2017, Ellen Raaijmakers defended her doctoral thesis ‘The Subjectively Experienced Severity of Imprisonment: Determinants and Consequences’. The defence took place at the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The PhD research was supervised by Professor P. Nieuwbeerta…

Lecture, Lunch lecture by Prof. Eithne Luibhéid

It has been found that the better a prisoner is treated, the more effective the sentence. Leiden criminologists therefore research how detention can be improved in such areas as prison life and contact between prisoners and their children.

This study focuses on violence involving juveniles in conflict with the law who are deprived of their liberty in different institutions within the framework of the (juvenile) criminal justice system (inter alia, police detention, pre-trial detention and deprivation of liberty after conviction or sen…

If you end up in prison somewhere in the world, the chances are you won’t be allowed to vote. If it were up to researchers Tom Theuns and Andrei Poama, rather than disenfranchise felons, we would oblige them to vote. That would be a better way to express democratic values.

A stable home situation is important for the successful return to society of prisoners. So what is their home situation like? And what effect does it have on reoffending? PhD defence on 16 January 2020.

Prisoners who are visited regularly by family or friends are less likely to be reconvicted in the short term than inmates who rarely or never receive visits. Visits should therefore be encouraged and facilitated, according to PhD candidate Maria Berghuis, who will defend her doctoral thesis on 23 June…

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

For a successful return to society, incarcerated individuals must work on their reentry during their sentence. Not all such individuals receive good reentry support. This is according to a report by Leiden criminologists.

Prisoners who have little or no contact with the outside world are more prone to reoffend. What makes visits so important?

Cuts in the prison system threaten to be at the expense of security, including that of society, writes university lecturer Esther van Ginneken in an opinion piece in Dutch newspaper NRC.

Some offenders are given short prison sentences. They tend to be people who are generally not faring well before they go to prison; they may have difficulty finding a job for instance. A short spell in prison can make them even more vulnerable. Attention therefore needs to be paid to continual supervision…

On Thursday 17 November 2016 a delegation from the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Social affairs and UNICEF Tunisia paid a visit to Leiden Law School, organised by the International Juvenile Justice Observatory.

Prison and student life are worlds apart. But in the Learning Behind Bars project, Leiden criminology students get the chance to study inside prison walls with people incarcerated there.

Types of supervision for prisoners on conditional release include the requirement to report regularly to a parole officer, electronic house arrest or community service. These are all serious measures for the person on whom they are imposed and for society. But it is a subject on which little research…

Reasserting America in the 1970s brings together two areas of burgeoning scholarly interest.

In the wake of controversial disclosures of classified government information by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, questions about the democratic status of secret uses of political power are rarely far from the headlines. Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing government transparency – such…

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

What is the current situation of human rights in relation to detention under criminal law and immigration law, now that more and more parties are becoming involved in the administration of detention and crimmigration is on the rise? PhD defence on 21 January 2020.

The Department of Child Law offers organisations consultancy expertise in the field of national and international child law and children's rights.

The central question in this study is: ‘What can the Netherlands learn from the way in which these countries have organized law enforcement and the rule of law in their overseas territories?’

Agressief gedrag van gedetineerden is sterk te verlagen met een aantal aanpassingen in het dagelijkse regime in penitentiaire inrichtingen. Dit blijkt uit de evaluatie van een experiment met een alternatief detentieregime, uitgevoerd door Tilburg University en de Universiteit Leiden.

The Life in Custody (LIC) Study comprises a large-scale research project into prison climate and the quality of prison life in Dutch prisons.

An increasing amount of research is demonstrating the importance of taking parenting from prison seriously. But the plans of Minister Dekker of Legal Protection do not address this issue.

Stephanie Rap and Yannick van den Brink, both assistant professor at the Department of Child Law, presented their research at the 11th EU Forum on the rights of the child: Children deprived of their liberty and alternatives to detention, which took place in Brussels from 6 to 8 November 2017.

One perspective, one cell, one outlook on life: what are we all prisoners of? That’s the question Vrij Nederland put to various experts, including Joni Reef, Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at the Department of Criminology.

Terrorism experts Daan Weggemans (Leiden University) and Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht University) conducted one of the first scientific studies on the societal reintegration of jihadist former detainees. They showed that the reintegration process isn't without problems. Their conlusions are presented…

Subproject of

The Prison Project investigates to what extent imprisonment has consequences for the relapse, health, career and intimate relations of the (ex-)prisoners.

On 8 October, the Independent Expert, Prof. Manfred Nowak, leading the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty presented his report to the UN General Assembly. The presentation of the final report is set for 19 November 2019, at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the…

For the first time, research has been conducted on how the health of detained persons prior to their detention differs from that of non-detainees and to what extent health problems change over the period: from before and after their detention.